When the pandemic hit us in 2020, many wonderful initiatives helped many cope with the devastation. Chef Vikas Khanna’s food drive, Feed India, was at the forefront of such movements. Both the intention and scale of this venture has helped deliver sixty-five million meals to those in need. However, the journey of this initiative is deeply rooted in Vikas’ own journey, from his childhood surrounded by food and community kitchens, to his belief in the power of food and its sharing. Now, through the recently released book Barkat, he takes us on this fascinating and inspiring journey. So we connected with him to talk more about the Feed India drive, the book, and his journey.
Excerpts below:
What is your earliest memory of food?
Lot of memories of food. When you’re raised in a city like Amritsar, you have an amazing balance of street foods, farms, community kitchens, temple cooking and home cooking. So my brain reacted to everything differently, even in the way how I retained all those flavours and smells. Some of my earliest memories were definitely of home cooking and some really good memories are associated with this mango tree we had in our backyard. Most of the mangoes were picked for making pickles or chutneys, or just eaten raw, but when there was a ripe mango, an ice-cream would be made out of it in these wooden buckets. These were hand-churned ice-creams, you’d put crushed ice and salts on the side, and then you’d rotate this mixture which was a combination of this custard and mangoes. I think sitting in the verandah, in that summer shade, when everybody took their turns to churn the ice-cream, is one of my fondest childhood memories. And never ever has mango ice-cream tasted better than then.
And when did you realise that food is powerful?
Realising the power of food came from community kitchens at the Golden Temple. Understanding how, as humans, we can support each other when everyone shares, and how an entire kitchen is run by volunteers where everybody is welcome. I also saw it from the lens of NRIs because many of our family friends had moved out of India and one thing that they felt belongs to them was those community kitchens. You know, you're born and raised in a city and after your parents move, you don't feel that you have ground there. It's a very common feeling that you don't feel the city belongs to you, but because of these institutions, the grounding of these kitchens and these places and the people feeding you, you feel connected to your roots.
So that was when I began to realise how powerful food is because it's not only just for physical sustenance, it is something that provides mental balance. It's a spiritual sustenance for our bodies and our minds, and very important because it holds the community together. So this is where my understanding of food came from.
What is the origin story of Barkat? How was the book conceived?
The word Barkat was used a lot by my grandmother, because she used to say this saying in Punjabi, which translates to English as “the abundance or the blessings or the fruits are given to the intentions, sometimes not even to the actions.” It's a very powerful statement that if you do things with good intentions, you will have blessings, you will have abundance. And I always found it very difficult to translate the word Barkat. Although, you know, it can simply just mean blessings, but “barkat rahe”, it is like a very large word. So it was a very difficult word for me to understand — it could be growth, it could be a success. It was a very beautiful word. And it was always stuck in my head because it always came as a blessing.
So I always thought it was a beautiful word. And I always wanted to use it for something, maybe for a cafe or a restaurant or a book. Then, you know, you keep such things in your heart and one day, when you have a perfect project, you can name it with these words. That’s how the book’s name was conceived. However, the book’s idea was conceived by the Penguin team. I was only documenting everything. What was going on for Feed India, the day-to-day operations, and a lot was being written about it. Not even in my dreams I had thought that this would be turned into a book. Feed India was a promise of mine. It was extremely personal because I ran the entire food drive, which is still going on, from such a distance. Remotely doing something on this massive scale had never been done before. It was unheard of. The book’s concept, which came together to life by brainstorming and talking about it, was about why this initiative was important, not just for us, but also for the next generations.
What did your writing process look like? Since this is a deeply personal narrative, did the writing of this book, and reflecting back on your journey, affect you in any way?
It was a very good process. I got to start from beginning because you just don't wake up one morning and say that I'm gonna be feeding sixty-five million meals. It doesn't happen like that. It's a very step-by-step evolution or growth. And it doesn't happen overnight because this is very much guided by your initial development as a child, how you were raised and the structure around you, and how these things had so much value for you. One day, you felt that there was a need for you to do something, which was very important, not just for yourself, for your country, for your people during these very dark times.
So the process was very different for this book. I have never ever done or written anything which is comparable to this book. It's almost like a semi-autobiography, especially the first initial chapters before we get to Feed India and how we started it with just one spam email. But when I'm looking back at the narrative of this book, it seems like we’ve divided the chapters based on the journey of how everything was adding up to the story of Feed India. So that is why this journey is not just the journey of Feed India. It's my journey, collectively with a lot of people. And I'm always gonna be grateful for it.
The Feed India drive must have come with its challenges? Could you acquaint us with the biggest challenge of it all and how you managed to tide over it?
Feed India was a big dream. It started very small with just a few deliveries, but as we got into this pandemic, in the beginning of April 2020, we felt that the need was much bigger. We needed to get the food, the cooked meals, the sanitary pads, the slippers, the clothing, for people who were not just migrant workers but who were also in the remote parts of the country, on the highways, everywhere. I think the most difficult part of this journey was, for me, logistics.
The logistics of running such a massive drive was almost like running ten Michelin star restaurants in different parts of the world. You have to be alert in every time zone. You have to know which inspector is visiting which restaurant and everything has to be done so perfectly because when we were doing it, we knew that the whole world was watching. So I wanted to do it in a very high quality way. Also, I did not want to break any protocols of the government. We didn't want to make people feel that we are not taking enough measures to run such a massive food drive. So there were some extreme calculations implemented by the teams, which were based in India, Dubai and America. And that coordination was very difficult. I'll be honest with you, even now, when I think about it, I think that somebody was watching over our shoulders from somewhere up in the sky to help us live up to what we had promised and how we delivered it.
You’ve been instrumental in promoting regional culinary traditions of India. Could you tell us more about the significance of such traditions and how they can be introduced to new generations, and simultaneously preserved?
My entire career is based on Indian food and will always be based on Indian food, in its beauty. For me, it’s the diversity, it’s the regional elements and identity of different places. In Europe or America, you always think of very North Indianized menus. I have always moved away from that. I always think and believe that our true strength of our Indian cuisine lies in our regional cooking. And I think that the important significance of introducing this to generations, to diasporas, to the people in the foreign countries is to make them understand that this is not a very general cuisine, where you can stereotype very easily.
We were born in a non-internet era. So, for us, to understand the cuisine of Tanjore or Tellicherry, it is important to understand the difference of these cuisines in person. We physically go there and meet some people. Sometimes we get lucky and learn from them, or sometimes we just enjoy the food and it gets stuck in our mind, and so we recreate the cuisine ourselves. I also got lucky understanding the regional cuisines of India because I was born in Punjab, but my biggest training happened in Karnataka, at Manipal University. So for me, it's very sacred, traveling and understanding the regions of the country and putting them on the menus and the global map.
After all these years, could you tell us about the most significant cooking advice you’ve received?
I think the biggest advise I’ve ever received in cooking was from former American President Clinton. He had traveled extensively in India and even during his time at the White House, Indian cuisine was a part of their circulation of the menus. So there was an event which was happening for his foundation, the Clinton Foundation, and I was one of the hosts. I asked him, what advice would you give me to promote this cuisine? Because he spoke very highly about Indian cooking, he thinks it's very technical, very sophisticated and extremely diversified. And I said, but how do you make Americans — especially because I was running places in New York — understand this? You should combine the culture with the cuisine, he said. That becomes an amazing winning combination. That advice got stuck in my heart. If you look at everything I do, I always try to bring a bit of culture in every recipe. This is a very important part of how I write about food and how I design the menus.
The pandemic has affected some of the biggest restaurants across the globe? What has your experience been like with your own restaurants and where do you think the industry is heading in terms of coping with this struggle?
The pandemic has really affected the hospitality industry because of two reasons. I think primarily it is because of the spread of the virus that safety of restaurants became an important concern. And second was the lockdown. Of course it is necessary to control the virus, but what has happened with the lockdowns is that it broke the routine of running restaurants and people going out and eating. So it really affected the industry. As we are coming back I do hope these things get better and we become more stabilised in the world with this virus, we'll have to live with that. The chefs will play a very important role in comforting people's hearts. Cooking is gonna be a very important part of our happiness, cheer, sharing and bringing people together. The chefs are going to be at the center of this. And I hope that cooking becomes a very important part of the healing process for these last two years of many people living in isolation.
Lastly, what are you working on next in this new year?
I have a lot of projects coming up because I was not working in the year 2020 as I was running Feed India, and even for a part of 2021 I was not working because I was totally focused on Feed India. And now, many things on the back burner are coming back on the front. We have an amazing feature film coming out, and I'm very proud of that. We have two documentaries, four books and two more restaurants coming up. I love to break the stereotypes because I feel that there are amazing opportunities when you're stereotyped and then you surprise people by research, by putting more effort and understanding how to operate businesses. And I hope this is gonna be a great year.
After all these years, could you tell us about the most significant cooking advice you’ve received?
I think the biggest advise I’ve ever received in cooking was from former American President Clinton. He had traveled extensively in India and even during his time at the White House, Indian cuisine was a part of their circulation of the menus. So there was an event which was happening for his foundation, the Clinton Foundation, and I was one of the hosts. I asked him, what advice would you give me to promote this cuisine? Because he spoke very highly about Indian cooking, he thinks it's very technical, very sophisticated and extremely diversified. And I said, but how do you make Americans — especially because I was running places in New York — understand this? You should combine the culture with the cuisine, he said. That becomes an amazing winning combination. That advice got stuck in my heart. If you look at everything I do, I always try to bring a bit of culture in every recipe. This is a very important part of how I write about food and how I design the menus.
The pandemic has affected some of the biggest restaurants across the globe? What has your experience been like with your own restaurants and where do you think the industry is heading in terms of coping with this struggle?
The pandemic has really affected the hospitality industry because of two reasons. I think primarily it is because of the spread of the virus that safety of restaurants became an important concern. And second was the lockdown. Of course it is necessary to control the virus, but what has happened with the lockdowns is that it broke the routine of running restaurants and people going out and eating. So it really affected the industry. As we are coming back I do hope these things get better and we become more stabilised in the world with this virus, we'll have to live with that. The chefs will play a very important role in comforting people's hearts. Cooking is gonna be a very important part of our happiness, cheer, sharing and bringing people together. The chefs are going to be at the center of this. And I hope that cooking becomes a very important part of the healing process for these last two years of many people living in isolation.
Lastly, what are you working on next in this new year?
I have a lot of projects coming up because I was not working in the year 2020 as I was running Feed India, and even for a part of 2021 I was not working because I was totally focused on Feed India. And now, many things on the back burner are coming back on the front. We have an amazing feature film coming out, and I'm very proud of that. We have two documentaries, four books and two more restaurants coming up. I love to break the stereotypes because I feel that there are amazing opportunities when you're stereotyped and then you surprise people by research, by putting more effort and understanding how to operate businesses. And I hope this is gonna be a great year.
This is an exclusive article from our January 2022 EZ. To read more such articles click here.
Text Nidhi Verma
Date 21-01-2022