Homeliness What food is all about

[Music]

[Applause]

hi everyone this is

extremely privileged and honored to be

speaking to all of you

i love the subject of today focus and

unfocus

we’ve got to focus on things which

matter to us and we got to learn how to

unfocus on things which

actually stop us from moving forward

who actually distract us from our focus

there’s an old saying that climbing the

mountain

is easy mountain is not the hindrance

it’s the little pebble inside your shoe

which stops you so you got to remember

that that you know

the bigger challenges are sometimes

easier to overcome as compared to the

smaller ones which

actually make us stop

and slow down so we’re going to talk

about focus first

from the very childhood i had an extreme

focus of

being in the food industry

of being a chef but i was also clear i

do not want to be just a chef

i want to be a michelin star chef

so the difference between both are

it’s like an actor who’s working in

movies and then there’s an actor which

is an

academy award winning actor

so though the difference is not much

it’s like how we see them

they’re both actors at the same time

there’s a huge

uh amount of challenges

which have to be endured to be that

academy

award-winning actor just like a michelin

star

awarded chef i started early

my i was at my grandmother’s kitchen

helper

almost like four four decades ago

and then very early age i started my own

business with my mom and my grandmom

it was amazing it was such a learning

ground for me

understanding what hospitality is what

it actually means

customer service and how do you value

your customer

more than anything else i learned all

that

at the same time i also learned the idea

of what food means from my grandmom’s

kitchen to the community

kitchens of golden temple to lawrence

garden which was our first business

at the same time i learned if you want

to

have to move forward in life we got to

train ourselves

we’ve got to be trained with extreme

focus

understanding that that is going to be

my next step i joined

welcome group hotel administration

school which is called waksha in manipal

i went there between 1991 and 1994

seems like centuries ago

i learned the basic art of international

cooking

though my focus was totally indian food

but i was trained

with the international cooking

techniques and

tips and ingredients and that actually

helped me to expand my mind

and one day i was just going to the

books in library and

i asked the chef as a chef what is this

guide is

said the red book the red book is a

michelin guide

he’s saying you don’t have to worry

about it it’s mostly for

caucasian or white chefs and don’t worry

it’s impossible for indians to get it i

love the word impossible

it’s like music to me because i’ve

always been a rebel

so impossible word really works and

resonates with my ears

i’m like wow i kept doing more and more

research on it of course

at that time in 1991 or 1992 there was

no indian chef who had ever

achieved it the first indian chef

whoever did it was

veneer party in london and that was in

2001

and i was in new york at that time but i

kept learning

growing understanding on that focus that

it will require extreme level of focus

dedication and to put my blinders on to

achieve that

excellence in cooking

i got an opportunity to work with taj

with obroy’s

with itc hotels and eventually i got an

opportunity

to work with the leela kampanski in

mumbai and that was

eye opening for me first job

big deal in mumbai

i come back after a few years to

amritsar to continue running my business

at that time you know i had given up on

that dream

because i knew it from amritsar i will

just be somebody who’s going to be

making money

i was extremely successful with my

catering business

but i would never be achieving that

glory it’s like you know

you can be a multi-millionaire but to

achieve something

which you can’t buy which you have to

earn which you have to really work for

you have to compete for it

i might not be able to do it so maybe

somewhere back of my mind i’d forgotten

about that focus

but in 2000 there was a mishap which

happened in amritsar in my banquets and

i decided to move to us

and i decided at the age of 29 i moved

to new york

again i started working under many chefs

it’s a tough industry

this extreme level of hard work

uh focus required this extreme level of

racism in the industry there’s like

i’ve never seen this kind of harsh

industry when it comes to

um when it comes to rising

there’s a extreme level of nepotism too

in this industry which is on a different

scale

you know they will not let you rise to

the higher level of executive chefs or

top chefs because everybody is a

roadblock

so that was okay because you know i love

those challenges but some days it was

half

very hard to crack this but i kept the

focus on but it was in paris where i was

working once

in 2008 training under a chef and i

realized when he said that

you know indian chef will never achieve

this kind of glory of international

stages

that really broke me that broke me and

that time i came back to new york i said

now the only way we can achieve it

with extreme focus i focused and i just

stood by that i stood by that dream

which was in my heart for years and

years

but somehow it was impossible to achieve

so i kept suppressing it

and pushing it back on the back burner

but eventually in 2008 i put all my

energy and focus into this in 2010

we opened a restaurant in new york in

2011

on october 4th i got the michelin star

focus but i didn’t want to

after having such an international

award i wanted to use it and kept the

focus on to keep

adding things to my to my resume to my

life to my arts to my creativity i kept

moving on and on

now we talk about unfocus

unfocus is extremely important it’s

actually more important than focus

because there’s so much of distraction

around us there’s so much going around

us there’s so many people pulling us

from all the directions

how do you keep your focus on that one

target you want to keep

people will come and say oh you should

just doing caterings because there’s so

much of money you should just be doing

this there’s so much of

like you know name in it and but you

said no i just wanted the award

but at the same time there’s so much of

so much of hardship in this industry

if i had listened to everyone around me

and focused on them

instead of my dream i would have never

been sitting in front of you guys and

talking about this

i had to figure out a way to filter

unfocusing is filtering you filter it

out

you know if you seen somebody cook we

sift the flour so that all the

impurities

they all are in the strainer and you can

throw it and discard it

and what do you get you get the right

perfect extract

the purity so sometimes you got to

strain this whole thing around you

you need to let things go which don’t

matter to you

you need to let those things be pushed

back because you feel

that they are the we call them vampires

of energy because they’re going to suck

your energy

so that is why it’s extremely important

to unfocus there were so many people

around me in the circles

who would constantly keep pulling me

down

i don’t even remember the names

that’s the power of unfocus

you got to continue to move on

it’s very easy to say i’m focused on

this but being unfocused

is a much bigger challenge there’s

internet there’s so

so much of social media around us

there’s so much of competition around us

who is ahead of us who is behind us does

not matter

it’s a long game and eventually you’re

only competing with yourself

so it just doesn’t matter you when you

have to focus something you need to put

the blinders on

you’ve got to constantly think about one

subject in your mind

repeatedly saying that i want to move

forward

and this is my dream and these are the

things which are blocking me or sucking

my energy

i need to cut them off i need to block

them

it’s very necessary unfocusing is much

harder

because there are too many parameters

and there are too many forms of it

focus only has one form so you got to

remember that

it’s equal in perfect ratios

if you want to rise to excellence

achieve something which is of

global recognition you want to be

applauded by the world

you’ve got to remember you’ve got to

focus on the target and then you begin

to unfocus on things which are actually

those little pebbles and no shoes

which are going to stop you and hinder

you from climbing the biggest mountain

which is right in front of you so clear

your shoes and your mind

and move forward

you’re the new hope for a country you’re

the new hope for your family

cities wherever you are you might be

able to create a new vision of

art or maybe create so much of

employment for people

you might be able to empower people some

of you will open your foundations

maybe you will be the reason we all say

with

a lot of pride that we are indians

that can only happen if we continue to

train ourselves

we cannot stop reinventing we cannot sit

on our laurels

we can’t say that you know what i did

this and i’m done

no you got laurels come to your life and

accolades come to your life in terms of

responsibility

and those are your awards for your focus

but those are responsibilities to push

the card even further

things which uplift you remember to use

those tools

to uplift others thank you

[Music]

you