Amninder Sandhu, executive chef of Arth, Mumbai and Pune

Transcript: Amninder Sandhu, executive chef of Arth, Mumbai and Pune

What are the challenges of being a professional chef in India?

I think [the] challenges of being a professional chef are pretty much the same [the] world over, and there’s nothing in particular which is Indian and challenging. But I think if you’re a female chef, and not so much now, but when I started out, you weren’t taken seriously. And, like, I remember, my chef from my culinary school, like, my faculty, a guy who I looked up to, and he was my role model, and I was, like, “I want to be a chef like him”. And he turns around and he says one day that “it doesn’t matter if you don’t get this right, and it doesn’t matter if you can’t make a living out of this, because you’re not the sole bread earner of your life. You’re going to get married and your husband’s going to earn.” And he said that multiple times, and I remember feeling really shit about it. And even in the kitchens where I trained, I was bullied. I had [a] very, very bad two years of training, where I was constantly told that I am not good enough, and I’m not going to get anywhere in life. “You’re too small, you’re too skinny, you’re too… you don’t have the physical strength.” Because we were always made to feel like being a chef was all about big muscles and about being physically very strong, and never that idea was inculcated that it’s all about the love and care and the eye [for] detail that makes you a great chef. And so [it was like that] all through my training. But there was something within me. I was just so passionate about it. And because, you know, I showed up to work every day and I was ready to face that struggle. I mean, if someone told me to do that now, I’d probably not be able to do it. But I could do it then when I was younger.