When a sudden cerebral attack left 22-year-old Payal Kapoor permanently blind,
she went overnight from being a happy young girl to a physically and emotionally
disabled person. Her desire to be a chef now seemed like a pipe dream. Her practical
mother thought otherwise. After all, who needed to be able to see to string beans or
grate carrots? Soon Payal was back in the kitchen, and slowly, with the help of recipes
in Braille and even Braille measuring cups and a talking weighing scale, she began
to cook again. Now, being her family's resident chef and mentor to others similarly
afflicted, gives her unparalleled satisfaction and a growing sense of being bigger than
her disability.
Cooking changed the life of both Jaya Vaishya and her son Mihir, born with athetoid
cerebral palsy. Thanks to the Veruschka Foundation, a space that trains children with
special needs to become independent chefs, Mihir now cooks aloo chat, dosa and
Chinese fried rice-and the pride and joy he feels is a balm for both mother and son.
For warzone photographer Giles Duley, the depression that engulfed him when he
witnessed the human tragedy in Mosul, Iraq, in 2017, when countless thousands
were killed, seemed like an abyss he would never escape. Until he began to cook.
Today, despite having lost both legs and an arm in a landmine explosion, this 'onearmed
chef' continues to find solace in cooking for, as he says, 'Food is life.'
From bipolar disorder, clinical depression, an abusive marriage or childhood traumas
to simply finding one's feet in a foreign land, each person in this collection of
personal narratives, poetry and fiction, finds comfort in the kitchen-cooking to give
their lives a focus and stability. Heartwarming and immensely moving, their stories
are an inspiration for each one of us to get up and smell the coffee.
