Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir Read Online Free PDF

for work for capricious girls with catalog and ad clients. I was luckier than many of my colleagues making the same transition, because I had a roof over my head. Still, I was anxious to make something of myself beyond modeling and prove my worth to my family back in India. I knew they were happy for me. My modeling had brought me much financial success, and also brought me home to India more often. But I am not sure if I could call what they felt about my work “pride.” The thing that gave me the most satisfaction was cooking. In the kitchen I felt happy and confident.
    Eventually, I got around to signing another contract with my publisher, who had been asking for a second cookbook for quite some time. This was right before my marriage to Salman. I had been tinkering with recipes for a few years, but my other writing always took me away, as did those intermittent auditions. I would stop everything I was doing to studymy lines or finish an article on deadline. I also had, of course, to sit home on these occasions instead of accompanying my future husband to the many events he developed an appetite for attending. Salman’s movements had been so extremely curtailed and limited by the fatwa and the entailed security issues that now that he was free—or freer—to go about his business, I found he was making up for lost time. Who could blame him?
    At first it was fun going to all those events. I met many wonderful people I would have never had occasion to come across. I was modeling, acting, writing, and now about to embark on getting another book published. I was also trying to develop another show on food. It became difficult to manage it all. When I was cooking, I felt the hours slip by. I was never so happy as when barefoot in the kitchen with my hands sticky and my hair smelling slightly of grease. My schedule was erratic and unpredictable. It was a bummer to stop what I was doing in the kitchen, shower, and go to audition for a part that I knew I probably wouldn’t get. I should have been happy to have the audition. Wasn’t it what I wanted? Hadn’t I studied for a chance to do precisely this?
    My acting work was picking up: I had just been cast as Princess Bithia in ABC television’s new version of The Ten Commandments, which meant I would be away for five weeks in Morocco filming. Salman grumbled about my being away that long. Coming to visit me in a Muslim country was not a possibility. Indeed, the producers hired two security officers to accompany me twenty-four hours a day, the whole time I was there. I felt embarrassed because I was the only actor who needed this precaution due to my personal life. But I was relieved that the producers were willing to hire me in spite of this additional expense.
    I still wanted to find a way to combine being in front of the camera with my love of all things culinary. I wanted to do another show about food and culture. I had loved doing Padma’s Passport, but I didn’t want to do another how-to show. I took to hosting Planet Food like a duck to waterand found I was actually pretty good at it. I had a glorious time doing that show. Being thrown on Italian television when I was at the tail end of my modeling days in Italy as part of the cast of Domenica In taught me much about hosting. You had to be quick-witted and ready for anything. You had to gauge the set and your guests and adjust accordingly. The adrenaline rush of having no script and being on live TV suited me well. I learned so much on Domenica In that I still use today. I wanted to go back to TV, as a host, and do another show on food. I met an executive at the E! network in L.A. who suggested I meet with her friend in New York at Bravo. I was an avid watcher of their show Inside the Actors Studio, and I knew they had had great success with Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. So I went up to 30 Rockefeller Center to see Bravo’s president, Lauren Zalaznick. She and her vice president Frances Berwick listened intently to