When the pandemic stuck, Chef Asma Khan changed tack which helped her and her all-women team to return in a new avatar, says Aaliya Ashwin
When the pandemic hit in 2020, that uncertainty and chaos were extremely hard on chef and restaurateur Asma Khan and her all-women team at Darjeeling Express, London. She had to shut down her restaurant a week before the lockdown in the UK but continued to pay her staff, as they had to support their families as well.
No one knew how long this was going to last. But, even in the face of all that darkness, and uncertainty, she was hopeful. “I had to lock up, but I left a small light in the kitchen on, so I could find how to come back. This is umeed (hope) you cannot close all hope and leave,” Khan remembers. She managed to not just survive the crisis professionally, but thrive as the restaurant with its new formats like thali lunches and biryani takeaways, found newer clientele, including a few Hollywood stars, visiting London.
Personally, however, she has had no time to assess the impact the pandemic has had on her. “I have given a lot to everything and everybody, but I think now, there is a time to just reflect on myself for a bit and physically become a bit stronger because it's been very tough, and I probably need a bit of healing myself,” she tells me in a zoom interview from Kolkata, her hometown, where she has been spending some downtime.
“I didn't have the luxury to worry about my mental health, which does not mean that I haven't been impacted. I think this is probably why I feel that now things are okay. I need to just spend a bit of time for myself. So this is where I know there is an impact on me. There was no impact during the crisis because I was fighting and thinking of new ideas, doing biryani takeaway and trying to protect everybody. Because I was leading my entire team of 35 people through the pandemic, I had no time.”
Khan has been an ardent champion of women’s rights and has an all-female team of home cooks in her restaurant. These women, like her, have no professional experience, none of them went to culinary school, but they have the talent and the life experience to help them make Indian food in the kitchen. Khan believes in equal wages for her and her entire team, as all of them, whether they make the chaats or fluffy pooris, are equal. “This has happened to women where our rotis and our rice was taken for granted. In many houses, women eat last and girls eat least.” That's why no one is valued less than the others.
Khan urges people, especially women, to get help during this time and to not go at it alone. “Please do not think that you are being weak. When you say that you struggled, it is very tough to admit that it's been very difficult. But say it to yourself, find help and try to make connections with other women and communicate with people.”
Khan’s journey began three months before she got married and moved to Cambridge in 1991. She was 21 and in a foreign country, and as if that wasn’t tough enough she didn't know how to cook. It was only after she came back to India, that she learnt to cook, in just a few short summers. She never imagined opening a restaurant, “At that time, when you looked around, there was nobody like me, everybody was, you know, white or man, or a female who had trained under some male chef who was a mentor and godfather, you know? So nobody from outside, untrained, unqualified or, in other words, just a home cook. You didn't see a restaurant open from someone like that.” Khan remembers.
But, still, she enjoyed cooking to feed other people. In 2012, Khan started offering a series of private supper clubs in her home for a dozen people for £35 each. She especially mentions the Cambridge students like her, coming from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and more who didn't know how to cook themselves. It was when she was cooking for them that she realised just how memorable her food was. “I could see them in tears, you know, sitting and eating food,.... so silent, this is the thing that I remember. I remember the silence of the students when they ate because it was a very emotional thing. And I realised that I have the skills to take someone so far away, take them home.” It was only after this realisation, that she realised her dream and opened her restaurant, not just to feed people the taste of home, but tell stories about that home too.