Once upon a small town, lived a girl with a motley crop of hair, running sneakers and a complete tomboy swank that was not unusual in an all-girls Convent school. Besides being a super athlete, an all-rounder really, her real skill was that she could gyrate like Akshay Kumar in the popular 90’s song, Chura Ke Dil Mera, Goriya Chali. Needless to say that as she knee-dived into the (imaginary) sand at the back of the class, someone else jumped into the fray as the dancing partner. Loud hoots, claps and a class-full of hollering girls, this was one of the many things that made 7th grade truly memorable!
Her parents had given her name, but everyone abbreviated it to word that means lizard in Tamil. No one knows if she minded, but nobody really cared enough! Every once in a while girls gave each other affectionate names, so a lizard she was to be! Today she has rechristened herself. This time it is no longer a nick-name. Instead it’s a phrase that she proudly carries with her as an identity.
…Just Roy
Just Roy she calls herself now is her online avatar of the woman who tells soulful food stories. The deft hand behind the Heuristic Kitchens, a student of culinary science and art, a food stylist, a photographer, an avid traveler, that’s Just Roy! Once upon a System Analyst & Portal Specialist with a decade long corporate career panning Wipro and Accenture, Roy has now nose-dived into the gastronomical world as a student at Le Cordon Bleu, pursuing her life-long passion for food. But we’ve heard that before, haven’t we? Leaving the corporate rat race for an alternate career? What is so different about her story? Roy’s story is a journey of ‘discovering’ herself through her food. It is about resurrecting a forgotten passion. Of satisfying an insatiable hunger, her ‘gargantuan appetite’ like she calls it! And somewhere, it is about a woman trying to find peace with her mother. It is about as Roy says ‘practicing the rare art of slow living in this razor edged world’.
Slow-cooking today is really an antique art. With dine-ins, frozen food, instant meals, packaged parathas, sliced veges in packets, heat & eat food, almost everyone is in a rush to get over the meals in the quickest possible time. Slowing down therefore became a conscious decision for Roy, where it is really about creating a soul-stirring food story. “I was born into a family where people foresee their dinner at the breakfast table!” she recalls. Was food then an inspiration or a distraction? Roy goes on to reveal some more, “Back in school we had a book called as Students Companion where I discovered the idiomatic expression ‘gargantuan appetite’ i.e. strong appetite. I always dreamt that I ate so much that I have a long cylindrical tummy. And then my imagination wove strings of dreams around it. How I would sit in class? How would I move past the door? How would I ride my bicycle? How whimsical it may seem but this childhood innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves. The day we start fretting about our future our dreams lose their charm.”
If food became a distraction and a source of imaginative soirees then it was inspired Roy in many ways, “I constantly write that food is like faith in my family. I come from a family where men cook better than their wives so it’s quite satiating for the female ego. My mysticism and insatiable hunger are big sources of inspiration for me!”
With her heart set in her stomach and a salivating tongue for inspiration, following her heart into the kitchen was not easy. Life in the 90’s, especially one in a small town where everyone knew each other, is like a slice out of ‘slow-living’. For most of us who now live in the big city, life in a small town is a thing of the past, something that we look back with affection and as a respite from the stressful big-city life. “I come from a brilliant little city which remains warm and relatively devoid of pretension. I am thankful to my school and my city,” says Roy sitting from her home in London. A trip down memory lane has its own charm, as Roy reveals her backstory, “I belong to a middle class family and looking back if a doctor diagnosed my childhood then it would be ADHD on paper as I have 44 stitches and 11 mishaps to my credit. I was naughtiness personified and my mom had a tough time with me. I was always good in sports and I slowly climbed the academic ladder only to perfect my balance by my boards. I was jack of all trades and awarded a school all-rounder always. Till date my school friends remain my dearest pals.”
Back then, growing up in a small town meant with its own traditions and expectations. With a serious lack of mentoring, career guidance and a sheer lack of understanding of the world outside, vocational and professional studies were never the torch bearers. Almost everyone was expected to go the Engineering or Medical way. Roy was not to be a breakaway child yet. “I was blessed with two distinct personalities; my mother a conventional/conformist and my dad a rational. My dad always read my mind and he got me a culinary management form and my mom held the Zoology honours form. To please my mom I wanted to become a doctor while my subconscious mind dreamt of becoming a chef. Her nurturer and crusader image was too much to handle for me. So I relented to her arguments. She believed that I could always cook at home and didn’t need to cook for others. I know this is typically bollywood-ish!”
Little Roy with her parents and younger sister.
So Engineering happened, and for the first-timer in the family it soon became a matter of pride. “To confess I never wanted to become an engineer I went to answer a joint entrance examination. My rank was 1000 in medical and 100 in engineering. I had already started studying zoology when I was bribed with a First AC ticket and self-travel bait. I got admitted into a very good college and calls started pouring in congratulating the first engineer in their family. All this seemed monumental and I just got carried away in its glory,” Roy recalls. The heady feeling of being back-slapped for making the cut sure took its own course, “I was literally eating my linear differential functions and Fourier series. I was nicknamed the college nerd. Loads of oiled hair, 0.75 specks and a complete fashion faux. The only glamorous part I topped my batch!”
What about the food dreams? Did they dissolve with time? “The dreams were fumbled and stored in trunk number 4. But I kept saying to myself “Hope is a waking dream”.
While in her 2nd year of Engineering Roy lost her mother to brain meningitis. Her father took voluntary retirement to look after her mother. Roy chose to finish her mother’s wish, she went on to claim a career that would made her mother happy.
And then came the life that her mother had imagined for her. A high-paying corporate career, a chase for the materialistic dreams, “I poured myself into it and my creative inside was disillusioned,” she says. “It gives you a lot of things exotic vacations, dream house and machine. It’s sad when lot of our weakness also become our personal strength. Most importantly the power to earn your buck and lose it too.”
For Roy however, she chose to look at her corporate career as a cushion for her dreams. Maybe she was driven by her gargantuan appetite, or the ghost of unfinished dreams, Roy finally decided to satiate her hunger pangs for by enrolling herself in Le Cordon Bleu last year on her birthday. “I believe we’re multi-dimensional creatures, infinitely faceted and complex,” she says, “The courage factor comes with time and acceptance. We are consumer oriented beings. I occasionally start looking for appreciation. And I am always hungry!”
Le Cordon Bleu as is the Mecca for food enthusiasts!
Going back to college was a decision of a life time, somewhere to make complete her unfinished dreams and perhaps to tell her mother that life’s choices needn’t always have to be at the cost of another. “Le Cordon Bleu is like a Mecca to a food enthusiasts! We all cook our meals heuristically but there is a science behind food. How food ferments in warmth, how much temperature gives the right texture and how food’s nutritive quotient is preserved. The complete diploma cost a bomb which is currently out of my reach. So I have split my learning into short term courses summarized as culinary management. It’s great to be back in college and where you mention chef (not mam) this is no working. You feel like a child and are conscious of doing things right and taking notes. You also get to meet people who have dared to dream,” says Roy.
Roy’s Heuristic Kitchen satiates her hunger for living life as it happens, to discover the taste and texture, to uncover the story and soul in every recipe. “Heuristic is pronounced as hyu-RIS-tik and from the Greek word “heuriskein” meaning “to discover”. The science of cooking comes from two basic principles; trial by error and rule of thumb and these are underlying sentiments behind “Heuristic Kitchens”. The plan is to reach a wider audience who are hungry for soulful food stories.”
Soulful food stories that stir up an appetite
Roy describes her food stories as reaching down-up. Where no recipe is just about the food, instead it is the story of how the recipe came into her life. The meal she is serving up is not just about filling her family’s tummy, but it is about touching their souls. Most of her food stories revolve around memories, anecdotes and moments in life that trigger an almost impulsive need to cook up something. “I first think about my narrative and conceptualize my recipe around it,” says Roy. “Most people cook first and then write which is a more top-down approach. Most stories are anecdotal and occasionally sprout from a conversation/thought.” Like how the Blueberry Cheese Cake is really a little peak into her love life. Roy likes to keep her family behind the covers, her husband who is her rock now likes to keep away from the limelight. So that little story about the Blueberry Cheese Cake is really all we know about her muse. Or take this little trip down memory lane, where she discovered the essence of to love, to tend to feed as a parent. Her discovery of the mother in her with the healthy food she prepares for her daughter. Somewhere else it is about a snowed-in Londoner looking for warmth from an Indian soul food called Khichdi (or the Indian Risotto)! Roy’s food stories are elaborate spreads that are meant to tickle the taste buds not just with the recipe, but with its equally evocative presentation so beautifully captured through her photography. Completely untrained, this amateur photographer is completely self-trained as far as her work with the lens is concerned.
The eye behind every picture
“The recipes are seasonal and dominantly palatable to my family as I dislike wasting food. The photography is greatly inspired from photographers. I have no fancy equipment and it is all directional natural light. I think a lot about lines of view, action, shadows, and negative space when composing a shot,” says Roy speaking of her food blog.
Is it then easy to follow one’s heart? After all, your heart is free, how do you muster the courage to follow it? It isn’t easy, Roy says, “There are a lot of compromises like we need to really budget our expenditure in order to plan for my courses. One needs to keep calming down one’s questionable mind. Plan your living first then start chalking down simple goals. Many people do it simultaneously which is exceptional. For me I don’t want to have a multi-pronged approach!”
Life for her now is a rollercoaster, studying in college, attending food festivals and serving some more soul-stirring food stories. In between comes her family of husband and daughter for who she devotedly serves happy meals. And a lesson or two from her mother as she practices those with her daughter. She says, “The one thing that I have learnt from my mother is to stand at the doorway when your child goes to school and stand at the same position when the child returns. This is a single great metaphor.”
How does she think her mother would react to her leaving the corporate world to pursue her love for food? Though Roy feels a vacuum in her life, her thoughts towards her mother are still ambivalent, “As protective as she was she would have completely overpowered the mother within me and become a great grandmother. I am not sure that’s good or bad. As for the chef she would have shed a tear of happiness as she always did for my every smallest achievement. She always showed her face at the finishing line after I won the race. She would never let me know she had arrived at the stadium. She’s watching. Peace? That’s complicated!”
Roy with her daughter
As a mother today, Roy feels she is similar yet very unlike her mother. “My mother was a very affectionate person and her untimely exit left a void in my life. I feel quite proud of my upbringing. Quite recently I realized the power of motherhood. Alas, chasing my career in the first two years post-delivery marked by hush-hush kisses, nanny empowerment and mere weekend soirees. I am slowly becoming a replica of my mother.” Will she then let her daughter chase her own dreams? Make choices from her heart? Chase her passion and not the degrees? Reach for the stars and not the Dollars? Roy’s answer is simple again, “My sole advice to her would be to know one’s weaknesses. Mug up the Incy Wincy Spider for life. Climb. And fall. And climb again without fear.”
We are but a sum of our choices. We are a sum of our battles, our struggles, our stories; the journeys that we make in our life and the legacies that we leave behind. Roy dared to follow her heart. And in her story we see it is never too late! Never too late to begin from scratch, or as Roy says, “let go off a six figure salary and then come down to earn a three figured or none at all!” Roy’s new story has just started again. It’s a story in progress. It’s a journey, like her cooking one of discovery, liberation and peace.
What’s yours?
Romie; a touched story seems like flashback for me. As u know we all are foodies. Hope u improvise some ODIA dishes.