Asma Khan: More Than My Food

This week, famed chef and author Asma Khan joins Trevor and Eugene for a conversation that shreds traditional fine-dining elitism to pieces. The trio discusses Asma’s upbringing in India, the frustration of over-complicated modern technology, and how she discovered her passion for cooking through pure homesickness after moving to England. Between tales of hitting cheating childhood friends with cricket bats and surviving Cambridge’s soul-crushingly bad food, Asma gets real about how food is truly about identity, storytelling, and dismantling imperialist garbage.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Trevor Noah?

  So I love pig trotters.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:07Trevor Noah?

  Right. Generally, any, any like.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  So it's like paaya.

• 0:09Speaker 02

  You can't call them pig trotters.

• 0:11Trevor Noah?

  Okay, any hoof.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Okay, whatever, trotter or trotter.

• 0:16Trevor Noah?

  Any hoof, any, you know what I mean?

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we have paaya, Nehari.

• 0:19Trevor Noah?

  Is that what it's, yeah, okay. Right, so pig, cow, you name it, just like anything with the hoof. Yeah, I'm in, I'm in. The gelatinous, I love gelatinous food, you know? So you can't really find much of it, especially like Hunanese, I think that's how you pronounce a cuisine in, in South Africa. So Eugene one day says to me, he goes, yo, why don't I, I can cook that for you? Then I was like, shame, my friend, he's really, this is like a lovely gesture, but completely unnecessary.

• 0:48Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean? And then he was like, he's like, I was like, what do you mean? Then Eugene said, oh, I cook.

• 0:54Trevor Noah?

  Then I went, ah, I understand what he means. He means that he will put food together on a stove, heat it up, and then ingest it. Now, many people can cook.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:07Trevor Noah?

  Most people shouldn't cook. Do you understand what I'm saying?

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I've met many people who can cook.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14Trevor Noah?

  I've met many people who say, you should come over, I, I will cook.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:18Trevor Noah?

  And then when you go there, you go, I pray this never happens again. I pray this, this thing you've done to me should never be done to another person. If I could call The Hague, I would.

• 1:32Trevor Noah?

  Because of what, in fact, I'm shocked that you spent time doing this. The fact that you said we'll be busy for the next few hours and this is what you made.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:46Trevor Noah?

  This is What Now with Trevor Noah.

• 1:53Trevor Noah?

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• 2:28Speaker 03

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• 2:58Trevor Noah?

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• 3:02Trevor Noah?

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• 3:47Trevor Noah?

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• 4:16Speaker 02

  I feel like the universe conspired for, for this interview to happen today because of what happened to me this morning. And I feel like you might be overqualified for this question, but you will indulge me. It's not really a question, it's actually a, for a word we use a lot in India, calamity?

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Oh, now I want to know what happened to you. You use the word calamity.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  That's not, that's not a small word. That's a loaded word.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  So this morning, bought groceries.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Two days with the groceries. And I thought to myself, this morning, let me make myself egg and toast, right? And a little bit of Italian sausage.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Then I tried to turn on the stove. The stove said, do you have the app?

• 5:13Speaker 02

  I said, no, I don't have the app. Downloaded the app, swear.

• 5:17Trevor Noah?

  Was the stove talking or does it write this?

• 5:18Speaker 02

  It writes, they're on the screen.

• 5:19Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay, cool.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  You see where, on the oven side, where it's supposed to show you the temperature of whatever setting you are on?

• 5:24Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it said, do you have the app?

• 5:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, it says, download app.

• 5:27Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Searching for app. Then I downloaded the app. Then the app said, connect to, put Bluetooth and also Wi-Fi.

• 5:34Trevor Noah?

  For a stove?

• 5:35Speaker 02

  Stove.

• 5:36Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Then I was like, okay, maybe let's give up on the oven. Let me go to the induction top side of it. Put the plate, put the pan, put the oil, switched it on. The stove said, do it. And I was like, we're on, we're in business now. Picked my temperature. Five seconds later, stove went off. Kept doing that. Went onto YouTube, tried to Google what's going on. At the end of searching, after five videos, it says, for the induction stove of that make exactly, you have to have steel bottom.

• 6:07Trevor Noah?

  Pans?

• 6:08Speaker 02

  Pans.

• 6:08Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I looked under the pans and they looked like metal.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  This is not a visual thing. This is a real thing. Because induction will not, every pan doesn't work. So calamity is also, I think it's, it's too big a word for this. This is more.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Why were the pans there in the first place?

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Induction isn't, every pan doesn't work on induction.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  The pans were there.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  I know, I'm not disputing that. But I'm just telling you, it's not calamity, it's a kind of you not knowing what you were doing.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Me or the person that bought the pans?

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Okay, the person who bought the pans.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  So are you, you've come hungry?

• 6:52Speaker 02

  Well, I knew you were coming, but I thought you would bring a little Tupperware or something.

• 6:55Trevor Noah?

  Do, do people expect that of you everywhere you go? No, because I, I assume if you are a world-renowned chef, who has appeared on Chef's Table, Time 100 Most Influential People, the royal family has come to your restaurant to participate in the making of food, and then they call you to the palace to come and be honored. You would think now the pressure of food follows you everywhere.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 7:21Trevor Noah?

  It doesn't?

• 7:22Speaker 01

  No, because I don't allow that to come through. Because I am more than my food. I bring to the table the blessings and the stories of my ancestors.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  Is this an excuse, Asma? I feel like you're just giving us a fancy excuse for not bringing food.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  I, I, I was so.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  I know Asma Khan, she'll trick you real quick. You're like, where's my food? She's like, let me tell you about my ancestors. Then you're like, ah, so there's no food here.

• 7:48Trevor Noah?

  Do they have the Tupperware?

• 7:49Speaker 02

  No, I can't say anything because you said ancestors.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  I, I owe you, I owe you Tupperware, I owe you Tupperware, come to London. I'm staying, I'm, at least I don't have induction and fancy pans. I was just staying in a hotel, an ordinary hotel. That I couldn't even work out how to use the coffee machine to make tea.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:04Trevor Noah?

  What a calamity.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  I, I, yeah, that's a calamity. I said, shut up, put the water in, drop the button on, that's all, you know, this might just set off the fire alarm. So I, I had to buy the tea.

• 8:15Trevor Noah?

  I think it's a scam that they, I think they do it on purpose.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  When did we get here? When switching on an oven and making a coffee and, and, and it's become so technical and.

• 8:24Trevor Noah?

  You know, you know what it is? It's because somebody tricked us into believing that all things need to be updated in terms of their technology. But there's no real reason for this. Your fridge doesn't need to be connected to the internet. That's not a thing. Your microwave does not need to be connected to the internet. These are things that were working just fine. There, there is no benefit to them being connected to. People like, oh, but then your fridge knows when it's empty. You know who also knows when your fridge is empty? You.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  You don't need the internet to know that your fridge is empty.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  That is so true.

• 8:53Trevor Noah?

  We just, we've just, we've just added, it's almost like a.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  A layer of difficulty.

• 8:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but it's, it's also, it's also a myth of progress, I, I find.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:02Trevor Noah?

  Right, sometimes, sometimes what we do in societies, we go, in order to prove that we're moving forward, we have to add complications and layers on top of something, when the simplest execution of it was actually the best. Sometimes the real way to move forward is to go like as far back as possible. And then you find like the real, sort of like, the evolutions or the progresses that have been forgotten, I would even argue.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  You're becoming more and more anti-technology as you grow older.

• 9:29Trevor Noah?

  I'm not, I'm not, no, no, I'm pro-technology. I'm 100% pro-technology.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  You'll be having shoelaces on your shoes.

• 9:34Trevor Noah?

  No, no, I'm.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  Analog.

• 9:37Trevor Noah?

  Let me tell you, I'm a hundred percent pro-technology.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:40Trevor Noah?

  That's why I don't like technology in the wrong places.

• 9:43Speaker 02

  Wait, wait, wait.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  I think that's a very valid point because where technology is used in areas where it's not required. I think that technology has done amazing things and you know, lives are saved, you know. You, you can do a lot with it, but I completely agree with you that this is being used literally like a blanket on everything.

• 10:03Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  And it's almost like sometimes I feel when I struggle with things that you know, that everything has been updated and you know, gone through this. You know, technological uh process, maybe I need to do it, I need to go into some machine and get zapped. So I know what the hell is happening because you know, it's you know, at fifty-seven, I never saw a computer till I was in my early twenties. So I, I'm that uh generation, we had, the year I left India is when we first got color television. And we used to get just state television for a few hours.

• 10:38Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  And uh, and I feel I'm the most blessed generation. Without technology and also without getting into trouble because no one could then text my mother and say, is your daughter in school? I've just seen on a motorbike with this guy. I know, but nobody could say anything to her mom. But I, I, I feel that technology is great, but I feel that this, my generation is so blessed. Because we lived a real life and now no one can. Cause you're constantly watched, you're scrutinized, you're analyzed, you, and we live in images in front of us. Constantly feeling that, understanding that this may be filtered and maybe A I, but feeling inadequate.

• 11:21Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Because you're comparing yourself to something that's not real. And then you, you left that doubt. Like I watch like an obsessive person, these cats dancing. I know it's A I, I know it's A I, but I'm, I'm dying to figure out how to do it so I can make my cat dance in a video. But I don't, and, but this is like fun of it, you know, that there's this kind of technology that you see. You know, a cat is like grooving and dancing. I'm just obsessed with it. I have like endless videos of that. But I, but I just feel that, you know, there's a space for everything. All the lines are being blurred in everything.

• 11:54Trevor Noah?

  I, I feel like you exist in one of the last bastions for real, right? It, because when I, when I was thinking of this conversation, I was thinking of who you are, Asma Khan. I was like, there's so many places to try and position you. But you exist, you spill over into more than one space, which is, which is what I think I've, I've always loved about you as a person. You're so dynamic. You know, you, you can say, Asma Khan, from Chef's Table. That's how a lot of people go, oh yes, Chef's Table. I've watched Chef's Table. And it's, it's, it's like art. That talks about food and then it talks about culture and then it brings you into a world and, and, and if people know you from there, they'll know one side of you.

• 12:32Trevor Noah?

  There are some people who'll know you from your restaurant in England and they'll go, oh, I've been there. It's, it's one of the most amazing places and, and the food and the stories in the kitchen and, and, and the. You know, everything that goes into preparing this, this feast is how I know you. And then I'm sure there's some people who know you back from India. There's some people who know you just from England, from getting your P H D. There's some people who, you, you, you're this person who's so complex and so broad. And I feel like you have to be like that because of your life. You, you're like a product of your life. Does that make sense?

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Absolutely, it makes sense. And I mean, you've explained it rather than I could have tried to explain to someone else. Why I am uh this person who, I see myself always uh, you know, there's this kind of. In Sufi Islam, there's a lot of talk about this journey of the river into the ocean. That is, you know, the ultimate thing, but it's also what we say, that is when you reach fulfillment as well and you reach that goal in life.

• 13:31Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  And as a river, I've, I've always seen myself as, as a force of water and I moisten the earth around me. And I will never see the harvest that grows after I move on. And I break the, the bricks and the stones that block me and that block everybody, my color of skin, my name, my accent, my fabric that I wear. So I have to be more than one kind of thing because it's not just that we don't have a seat on the table.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  There are multiple reasons why you don't have a seat on the table. I need, you know, a lot of people after Chef's Table told me, oh wow, you broke the glass ceiling. He was the first British chef on Chef's Table. But bill, underneath that is very nuanced. I'm layered. I have lots of other things that I am.

• 14:19Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  But one thing I felt very strongly and I would tell people that I, I am not standing in some glass ceiling with glass around me. I want to bring the edifice down. I want to break every door and every window that keeps our people like me. Not just women, men and women who are excluded from having a seat on the table, who are excluded. And for that, I had to use, dig deep inside who I am.

• 14:48Trevor Noah?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  So from my spirituality to my education, to being discriminated as a child and being made to feel unwanted, unloved. Uh surplus in a family.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  I clawed myself out of that to victory. And it's not that it's easy. I run a different race from a white person, a white man. I run a different race from a white woman. Because I, in my race, I carry cultural baggage, my choice. But I have to go through fire every time to prove that I'm good enough. But what happens is I come out glistening like gold.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  I know where I need to go and this is probably why it helps. That at different times, I can dig deep into something I learnt as a lawyer.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  My, you know, time in India, understanding the importance of solidarity between women. So it's not that there's one thing that I can lean on. I go through storms using different techniques because in the end I need to get to shore.

• 16:03Trevor Noah?

  My mom would respond to this by saying, amen. No, one hundred percent. This is like literally.

• 16:11Trevor Noah?

  Th- th- there are so many things you're saying that I feel like I've experienced or felt through many women in my life. Like, you know, my, my grandmother, my mom, et cetera. It's, it's, it's a powerful and beautiful message and it's a vibe, but I. You, you know, if, if, if I, if I could think of where I'd hope to get to in, in this conversation is. I'd love for people to see how you came to be. Like all, all the, all the, the pieces of the stained glass window that ended up making Asma Khan the way, the way we know you today. Because you, you, you throw it away so flippantly, but imagine you're sitting down with one of the most accomplished chefs in the world. Who casually then says, uh, my time as a lawyer.

• 16:56Trevor Noah?

  Then you're like, eh? Do, do you get what I'm saying?

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Also, don't forget the coffee machine.

• 17:00Trevor Noah?

  The coffee machine didn't work, but I don't know if that was an accolade, Jean. That was a, that was a.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  That, that's, that's.

• 17:05Trevor Noah?

  That's one of her trials and tribulations.

• 17:09Trevor Noah?

  One of the many things Asma has.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  I challenged by, yeah.

• 17:12Trevor Noah?

  Yes, one of the things, but like, but, but. Let's, let's go backwards through your life because I, I, I wanna understand how you got to this place. Because this place seems so obvious now, like many people's stories do. You know, if I said to people, Asma Khan has one of the most successful restaurants in the world, i- i- it's based in London. She has a kitchen that is staffed by women. She earns the same as everybody who works in her kitchen. People would just be like, oh yeah, well this makes sense because look at her. She's a force of nature. She's, yeah, but, but where did it all begin? So let, let's go to the beginning. Wh- where, where, where would you say is the, is the most formative moment that starts your life?

• 17:56Speaker 01

  I remember this so clearly. I remember.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  When my brother was born, who was three years older than me, so I was three.

• 18:05Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  And the, everybody came, because you know, then you don't have a kind of Facebook text saying, oh, this is my baby, just arrived. Uh, this was nineteen seventy-two and people came and didn't believe that I had a brother because it, you know, after the two girls, the boy was born, the heir to the family. Name. And I remember at that time being confused why everyone called me a liar because my mother did not celebrate. My parents did not light the house up or distribute sweets, which is a tradition in our culture. You know, when a boy is born, a lot of, a lot of sweets are given out.

• 18:40Trevor Noah?

  I didn't know that, okay.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. And often when a girl is born, nothing happens. No fireworks, no, no, no kind of celebration. Because it's like, it's almost like a death because the family has now got another burden. The girl is not so celebrated. I remember from then on that nobody believed me because nothing happened. And I think that that and the way that my sister stood by me really transformed things because we are very obsessed about color. And I was dark-skinned, uh, I was fat, but I loved cricket. I played on the streets with the street children.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  My parents ignored that. My father would come and ask me, did you get out? I hope you beat those boys, you know, I hope you did well. And. But would not say it openly. If he saw me on the street and drove past, he ignored me. So he did not have to acknowledge that he saw his daughter playing on the street, street cricket. But when people would tell me that I was fat and ugly in my extended family, and that nothing, you know, good would happen, that no one would marry me, which was like the biggest thing they can say. My sister, who everybody loved, my sister still bloody looks younger than me. She's a year and a half older than me. She's a rock star. She looked, she still looks like a model, beautiful girl, fair, long hair. She was the princess in the family.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  And everybody adored her, everybody loved her. I, I don't think many people loved me. And she would hold my hand in the darkness, away from everybody, and tell me, Asma, you're the warrior princess. When you speak, the earth will shake. One day, the world will know who you are. I believed her. I believed her because everybody who loved her thought she was great. But that person believed in me. And this is why, at a very young age, I realized one thing. If you speak up and you tell someone, in the darkness, you don't need to be brave to speak up. Say it in silence, do something.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  My sister, by telling me I was the warrior princess, today I am the warrior princess. But it's because of her. These are the transformation things that happened when I was very young. And I realized that my mother and father were not discriminating between me and my brother, between me and my sister, even though I know that behind my back, and sometimes in my hearing, I could hear people saying, what's gonna happen to her? She's a liability.

• 21:11Trevor Noah?

  That must have been so hard, though. Like, you're growing up in a world where,

• 21:16Trevor Noah?

  because when, you know, I think we take for granted how when you're a child, you're just a child. You're just being you.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  It's all you are.

• 21:22Trevor Noah?

  That's all you are, and that's all you've ever been.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 21:25Trevor Noah?

  You know, when you're an adult, you get to look back on yourself as a child.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 21:28Trevor Noah?

  And then try and make sense of these things. Think about your parents, think about your life. You try and reinterpret the experiences that you had. But I'm trying to imagine you as a child, listening to people talking about you as if you are, you, you know, like a, like a, like a factory reject in a family.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, and like a liability. And the thing is that I, it was, you know, both sets of grandparents and, and, you know, elderly aunts and things. So I was loved by some, but the authorities, you know, the big figures,

• 22:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  never kind of understood. It's still very raw. I, a few years ago, I wrote a book during, over Covid, called Amu, uh, you know, All The Recipes I Learned From My Mother. We went through the family archives. My grandfather's a photographer. I never remember seeing a photograph of me and my mother. But I thought, you know, maybe, you know, it never got developed.

• 22:26Trevor Noah?

  Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  We went through the entire archive, and I, I remember him saying, Asma, not you, because you'll spoil the picture.

• 22:35Trevor Noah?

  No.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  And there was no picture of my mother and me. But my mother went to a wedding. She was six months pregnant, and someone photographed her because, you know how they say in our culture, oh, you look like you're having a boy, you look like you're having a girl, depending on the shape of the stomach.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Oh, in South Africa, it's your size of your nose.

• 22:54Trevor Noah?

  He's, no, he's being serious. He is being serious.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, I love this.

• 22:57Trevor Noah?

  He is.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  His nose is wide. He's like, oh, it's a boy.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Oh, God. This is the funniest thing ever. No, we, we have this thing about shape of stomach. So the photographer took a picture of my mother, pregnant with me. So in the introduction, I used the picture of my pregnant mother, because I know it's her and me. In the womb, I am there. And at some point, the, the publisher was really lovely, and my, you know, book editor was saying, we can just do an image. I said, but that image didn't exist. Don't, don't do this, because I'll always know it's fake. I don't do that. I'll, I carry the scars. And it's not that the scars, with all the success, you know, that I've had, you know, I'm grateful for that.

• 23:43Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  With all the accolades.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  No one sees the scars. Everybody has met me when I became famous.

• 23:50Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  No one met me when I was nothing. But the scars, they still stay. And they hurt. They still hurt. So that picture of my mother and me, and when they put that book together, that's my favorite picture. My mother, you know, looking embarrassed, you know, with a, you know, all dressed up in her wedding with me in the womb. And that's when I was completely convinced about one thing. That's my original home. For all of us, the womb of our mother is our real home. Now, when people call each other immigrants, migrants, you know, you know, people, the day you leave your mother's womb, we're all migrants. And then after that, we're lost.

• 24:35Trevor Noah?

  Then you're out, you're on your own.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. We, we, then we are away. They are drift.

• 24:42Trevor Noah?

  It's funny how people use immigrant and migrant, but then, depending on where you're from, and the color of your skin, then they say expats.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 24:51Trevor Noah?

  Have you ever noticed that? Yeah, expat, because expats are immigrants. But, I mean, let's be honest, everyone wants to be an expat. Nobody wants to be an immigrant.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  And if you're planning to go somewhere else, you're a nomad.

• 25:01Trevor Noah?

  Ah, you're a nomad, digital nomad.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  I'm not here for long, guys.

• 25:04Trevor Noah?

  I'm a nomad.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  I'm a nomad.

• 25:06Trevor Noah?

  I'm a nomad. I'm a digital nomad. Are you an immigrant? Ah, ah, ah, ah. Please, please, please. I'm a nomad.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, and if you, if you're there for long enough.

• 25:16Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  And you're acceptable, you're naturalized.

• 25:19Trevor Noah?

  You're nat-, of course, of course. But it's only natural, my friend.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:22Trevor Noah?

  It's only natural. But it's, yeah, wow. You, you know, you know what's so important about what you're saying? Is, I think a lot of people

• 25:34Trevor Noah?

  will feel the wounds that they felt growing up, or experienced in their life as they were being formed. If they're lucky, they'll achieve a modicum of success, or they'll find themselves in a new place in life that doesn't look like where they came from.

• 25:52Trevor Noah?

  And then they feel guilty voicing that they still have pain or hurt, or, do you get what I'm saying?

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 25:58Trevor Noah?

  And then, but then what happens is they'll, they'll act out their pain, I find.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:02Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. So I, I think, I think in, in life, if you're hurt, or if you're in pain, or if you have suffered, or you, you know, you've gone through traumatic things when you were growing up. If you're unable to voice those things, I feel like you will act them out, whether you like it or not. And then people wonder why someone who's famous, or rich, or powerful, you're like, why is this person such an asshole? Why are they being like this? I, I think it's because they can't say their pain.

• 26:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're right. I think it's vocabulary. I think when you're younger, your vocabulary is acting out. That's all you can do. Babies, after they're born.

• 26:39Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  When they're, when they're hungry, they cry. When they can't sleep, they cry, you know? So I think as you get older, but I also think when you, there's something strange that happened to me. When I reached the age of what my dad was at the time that my parents divorced, I looked at their divorce differently. I looked at a man who wanted to do something else and end up doing another thing.

• 27:00Trevor Noah?

  That's interesting.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  I, I didn't look at a person who could, who didn't want responsibility. I looked at a guy who pushed away his happiness for so long, and took on responsibilities that they didn't want. And when he suddenly decided to stand up for himself, he had all of these people around him that needed him. And he chose not to be there because he wanted to put himself ahead. And your story so much reminds me of my aunt, because my, my, my dad's sister was the only girl in the family. And she had four brothers. And every time something would go wrong, their wives, our moms, would go tell her. And no one cared about her story.

• 27:36Trevor Noah?

  Oh.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  No one ever said, how's auntie doing? She would, she would make turns every time, because she used to sell vegetables. So she would knock off from the, from the, from the rank in town. Then she would make turns in every house to drop off a packet of something, onions, tomatoes. And she would sit around for a small chat with the kids. Then afterwards, she would sit around with the wives and ask, how's my brother be, is he behaving? Then she would, the third turn would be her going to speak to the said brother to say, but I think what you're doing is wrong. Then after, she would just cut a lonely figure, going to the next, because we lived almost in close proximity to each other. But no one ever asked my aunt how she was feeling and how she was doing. And now that you speak like this, I'm thinking.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  She was playing cricket with the boys and winning. And no one pulled her to the side and said, you're doing great and said it in public even.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I it's just the thing I the reason I speak and the reason why I'm not afraid. And we were discussing this before you joined uh uh the table is that I I am here to represent first women in their graves, the unloved, the unwanted, those that never got appreciated, who never were told that this kurma that you made was beautiful or that like your aunt, that you know, every time you came for vegetables, it gave something extra to my table. Or that there was this kindness in you asking me how I am, because you know, my husband didn't have time to ask me how I am.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  We don't say these things to the women. We also don't say it to men, but I think that women particularly, because we make it we make it look like effortless, people think it's valueless.

• 29:25Trevor Noah?

  Damn, because we make it look effortless.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, they think that it's valueless, because we don't, you know, I don't sit here and say, you know, I'm this I did for you because now you're going to have this extra dish and you know, I've I've taken half an hour out of my time. Instead of washing my hair, I'm sitting here talking to you. Women don't do this, especially women of that generation don't do it. So in that silent sacrifices that so many women have made,

• 29:56Speaker 01

  there is this hollowness in the storytelling. Every day, I live one day less, all of us do. I try to tell the story of myself, but I also try to tell the stories of all women. Because in that space.

• 30:15Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Where they never said anything, my voice echoes. Every time I come back to this, because I know the next dawn is not guaranteed to me. And I want to use, I want to be useful. When that time comes and I'm submerged in the ocean, I wanna look back and see greenery and moisture and that there is no barriers, that I managed to break it, even it meant with my body.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Wait, Asma.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  You you wanna be buried in the ocean?

• 30:49Speaker 01

  No, no, that I don't want to. I'm scared of water.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  I'm scared of water.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  Worried that because I'm not gonna visit you.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no. I'm I'm scared of water.

• 30:57Trevor Noah?

  Wait, why are you scared of water?

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Because I don't know how to swim.

• 31:00Trevor Noah?

  Oh, okay, that makes sense.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  I I grew up. Do you all know how to swim?

• 31:03Speaker 02

  I do.

• 31:04Trevor Noah?

  Yes, I can swim to save my life.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Okay, but did you learn late in life?

• 31:08Trevor Noah?

  I did, I did, yeah. I learned. So my mom, my mom tried to teach me how to swim by pushing me into a pool.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  Hey.

• 31:13Trevor Noah?

  And then all that happened was I I basically almost drowned and then someone had to come in and save me.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Wait, hold on.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Was this a home pool or a public pool?

• 31:26Trevor Noah?

  It was a home pool.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  So it was always there?

• 31:30Trevor Noah?

  No, no, not in my house, not in my house. So so we were at a we we went to a a prayer meeting, like you know, you'd move from house to house, right? So the church, you'd have prayer meetings. And each week you'd be at a different person's home.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  And she was like, today is the day.

• 31:42Trevor Noah?

  So we're at we're at a prayer meeting. It was at the Voss family, right? So at the Voss family's house. And we're all in the backyard.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  He's making up the name. It sounds like.

• 31:51Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no. I remember that. I remember that. It's such a specific thing to me.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 31:57Trevor Noah?

  And so we're in the backyard and everyone's having a good time. Now, I used to love swimming pools. I still do. But I couldn't swim. So what I would do is I'd get in the pool and then I would hold the edge.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:06Trevor Noah?

  And I would just go, I would just go around the side, go around the side, go around the side. That's all. And then when I get to the shallow end, I'd bounce.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 32:12Trevor Noah?

  Bounce, bounce, pretend I'm swimming.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 32:14Trevor Noah?

  I'll do this.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  It's good when you're a child. I still do it now.

• 32:16Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  So then what happened?

• 32:23Trevor Noah?

  So then I I was outside the pool, we're standing on the edge. I forget how this even happened. People are talking, talking about, I wish it was a drop kick. Then it was like talking, swimming, not swimming, whatever, whatever.

• 32:39Trevor Noah?

  And then someone said, someone said, Trevor, can you swim? And I said, no, I can't swim. He said, oh, how can you not swim? And said, I know, I need no story. Then he says, then I said, I haven't learned. Then he said, oh, learn. You don't need to learn. My dad just threw me in the pool and then I and then I swam. And then my mom laughed and then she pushed me in the pool. Cause she was like, oh, ah, I've been slacking as a parent. And then she pushed me into the pool and then I flew in. And then it was deep end. So I was down. And it's hard to explain to swimmers how hard it is when you're in water and you can't swim.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  It's happened to me, honey.

• 33:15Trevor Noah?

  Your body just doesn't know.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Point C, it doesn't exist.

• 33:18Trevor Noah?

  Bruh.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  You just go to the bottom.

• 33:19Trevor Noah?

  And you make the mistake of gasping. So you, and then and then water goes in, water goes, water goes in. And then I remember looking up, you can see, you can see up through the surface of the water. You're there, you're there, you're there. And then eventually Mr. Voss jumped in, clothing and everything, jumped straight in. And then he came and he fetched me. And then my mom was laughing hard. She thought it was, she genuinely thought it was the funniest thing ever. And then I was like, you.

• 33:47Trevor Noah?

  Kill me. Then she's like, why didn't you swim?

• 33:51Trevor Noah?

  That's not.

• 33:54Trevor Noah?

  And then um the guy who said my dad pushed me, he was like, that's not what I meant. I'm sorry.

• 34:01Trevor Noah?

  So so then I decided that I would learn how to swim for myself. And I I I just did it myself. It was actually my cousin who taught me. Uh, Bulele, my cousin. She's she's a good swimmer. And then she was like, okay, just do, we went through all the different strokes. You know, it was like breaststroke, freestyle. She's like, you got it. One of them has to work. Oh, so yeah. And then she was like, try this, try this, try this, try this. And then one I could like pick up. So I can swim to save my life.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  My learning to swim experience was more traumatic than yours, actually, and actually very dangerous.

• 34:33Trevor Noah?

  What did you do?

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Because we had just moved into this new neighborhood. And then there was a place where it was a dam almost. So whenever it would rain, the water would rise higher. Then everyone would go there after school. But the thing was, everyone would talk about it at school. So if you haven't been there, you're a loser. So the conversation would start about something, something, something, and it would end up with a dam.

• 34:54Trevor Noah?

  Always got to the dam.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  Always got to the dam. So one day after school, I was like, I have to see what this dam is all about. But I still remember, you know how fresh water smells differently from swimming pool water? And then we all went there after school. Shorts on, small T-shirt, because you know, after school, you play with your old clothes.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  That are not so fancy. I remember we went there, then we stood there, and then everyone jumped in because they'd been there before. Some people were swimming from branches, jumping in. And I remember to myself thinking, yo, if I don't go into this water,

• 35:26Speaker 02

  I can't show my face at school tomorrow.

• 35:27Trevor Noah?

  Chicken, bro.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Yes. But what no one tells you about a dam is it's gradually getting deep. So it's not just a hole. So I I remember the feeling of sand, river sand, under my feet and going and the smell and the dragonflies and the and the and the next thing you know, feet are not touching the ground anymore.

• 35:46Trevor Noah?

  It drops off suddenly.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  And then the advice starts.

• 35:51Speaker 02

  Just.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  It's it's the advice as the water hits the the ear, then alternating between the advice and the and the advice. And the advice and the advice. And then after a while, it's too far to go back, it's too far to go forward.

• 36:13Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  Then I decided to myself, this is not my day. I've got an exam next week. My mom wants me to wash the dishes because I left without washing dishes because I just dropped my school bag and I went home. I said, I'm not gonna die now. This is not how it's gonna end.

• 36:24Trevor Noah?

  Obligation pulled you out.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  Obligation and responsibility pull, because I thought if if I die, my mom would come fetch me. And she would embarrass me in front of all the spirits.

• 36:33Trevor Noah?

  You'd be in trouble.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  I thought, let me, there's nothing that I'm doing now that can save my life except for listening to this advice. And I listened to the advice and the coaching, kick, kick, palm, palm, palm, palm. And I kept on doing that. And the next thing you know, I was staying up.

• 36:50Trevor Noah?

  No ways.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. I was staying up, I was staying up.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  I'm not trying this.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  Confidence grew. And then I was out to the shallow side. And then I just remember being, you know, hugged by everyone and thinking.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  You're a hero.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  I I was a hero.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  I love this, the fact he didn't wanna die because he was just worried about what his mother would do.

• 37:07Trevor Noah?

  That's crazy, right? Just responsibility.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've gotten so many.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  It says something about African mothers too.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  I just thought she had powers to fetch me. She would come and fetch me.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  This is like.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  The next day.

• 37:18Trevor Noah?

  Hey, who said you can drown? Who said you can drown? Are you drowning? Who said you can die? Did I say you can die? Did I say you can die when I when I go home? Ah, mom, but I'm dead. Hey, hey.

• 37:36Trevor Noah?

  You think you're gonna die here without my permission? Go home. Did you wash the dishes?

• 37:40Speaker 02

  Oh, I didn't wash the dishes.

• 37:41Trevor Noah?

  Are you blo- are you bloating? Why you, who said you can bloat?

• 37:47Speaker 02

  Who rigamotus on my watch? Never.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, African mother is the Asian mothers too, same kind of.

• 37:54Trevor Noah?

  Same, same vibe.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Same, same vibe.

• 37:56Trevor Noah?

  So wait, so I mean, obviously, the most people don't understand your, your access to pools determines or bodies of water determines your ability to swim. So you were growing, where were you growing up?

• 38:06Speaker 01

  I was growing up in Calcutta and the thing is that, you know, in our tradition, we don't swim because you've got to wear a swimming costume. How, how do you swim? You can't go in shorts and a t-shirt, you know, like.

• 38:17Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  So, uh, it's not that it.

• 38:20Trevor Noah?

  Because, sorry, because it's revealing?

• 38:23Speaker 01

  It's revealing.

• 38:24Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay, got it.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  And also, it was just like a lot of strange men around. And so I never even thought that I had to learn how to swim because it was like things you don't do. I have cousins who swim and you know, like my niece swims and a lot of people swim now. But even at my time, in the eighties in Calcutta, you know, all, we had a swimming team in school.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  But because of the kind of heritage I came from, it was a bigger issue and a challenge.

• 38:51Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  And of all the battles that I was fighting, drowning in a dam was not something I was worried about. So I, I always, from a very young age, you know, I will not go to every battle I'm invited to. So I, you know.

• 39:08Trevor Noah?

  What a great.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  I, I will pick, I'll pick the battle that I know I'll win as well.

• 39:14Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  So why go in and swim in water and drown because I'm scared of water? So I picked the other battles that I had to fight. Like, you know, I was the first girl in my mother's entire, you know, my generation who went to college. Nobody went to college. I mean, the reason I went, I mean, I make it sound more heroic. Nobody married me because by eighteen, everybody got married. But at eighteen, nobody married me. So then I told my mom, I can just stay at home.

• 39:40Trevor Noah?

  So if you, so if you were married, education was not out of the question.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  At that age.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  At that age, you know, at eighteen, you got married and you went off. I mean, like my sister went on and studied after her marriage.

• 39:50Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  So some people did choose to do that, but at eighteen, you got married.

• 39:54Trevor Noah?

  And that was it.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  That was it. So everybody's marriage was arranged, uh, you know, and arranged marriage is different from forced marriage. Okay, I.

• 40:02Trevor Noah?

  Can you explain the difference?

• 40:02Speaker 02

  Top of marriage.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  That's that one.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  You've come to the right place.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. So now I need to explain arranged and forced marriage. Arranged marriage is a bit like being on Tinder, but all your family involved. So they all choose. So it's not your choice and everybody is deciding. So you marry and they look at things like, you know, compatibility, you know, this person, you know, likes certain things, went to the same education, you know, same school, same education, speaks the lang, same language, likes the same kind of stuff. And there are middle people, aunties, aunties who are a class act because they are interfering, prying.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  Meddling.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Meddling people, but they also arrange marriages because they will ask you things like, so tell me, what list music do you listen to? Do you smoke? Have you ever tried to smoke? So they are the ones who ask these questions and then they will carry news about you to other people. But because I was seen as trouble from a very young age, because people felt, even though I wasn't like defiant and doing crazy things, but everyone saw me as someone who

• 41:11Speaker 01

  wasn't broken by the system, that they had not overcome, that I was resilient. I think they could see it. I radiated that at a very young age. I did not, I was joyous and I, I loved, I play, loved playing the guitar. I wrote poetry. I played Shakespeare. I, you know, I had, I loved playing cricket and I did things that, you know, were unusual. I had a joy, but I had gratitude every day for me. I was grateful I lived. I was so grateful every sunrise, I would say, yeah, I have another day. I'm going to do something exciting today. So I think that this kind of signal to others that, you know, she may be trouble.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  So I come from a royal family, so ideally I should have married in a royal family.

• 42:00Trevor Noah?

  Wait, wait, wait. You can't just say that and move on.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, my, both my father, father's family, mother's family, both royal family.

• 42:06Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  And my parents.

• 42:09Trevor Noah?

  But, but, but help, help, help us understand because you know, as you know from South Africa, sometimes people will be from royal bloodline, but we mean like chiefs and clans and it doesn't mean that they live in a palace. So when you say royal family, what, what does that mean?

• 42:25Speaker 01

  Our palace, I should have lived in, but it's a crumbling edifice.

• 42:28Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  So we have a palace and we have a fortress.

• 42:30Trevor Noah?

  Got it.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Uh, but we're not like, you know, we don't go back generations of royalty. So maybe only two hundred years of, you know, become, becoming royal. Before that, we were thieves.

• 42:41Trevor Noah?

  Oh, isn't that, isn't that all royals?

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:44Trevor Noah?

  No, I'm being for real though.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 42:46Trevor Noah?

  Which royals just started as royals?

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So we.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  Let's not call that diamond.

• 42:57Trevor Noah?

  No, but, but let's be honest now. Which royals did not start as thieves? We're gonna, now we're gonna act like you just, you were just born and ordained a royal.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:05Trevor Noah?

  No, if you want to be a royal, you've got to steal enough.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:08Trevor Noah?

  For long enough.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:10Trevor Noah?

  That you become so powerful that you then.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  No one challenges you.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  You declare that you're a royal.

• 43:14Trevor Noah?

  And then your lineage starts to now.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So like, you know, our ancestors claimed that they were descended from the sun.

• 43:21Trevor Noah?

  There you go.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  And, you know, descend from sun and moon and, you know, basically, so but basically we are thugs. We used to loot caravans. The caravans going across the desert.

• 43:29Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  We looted caravans.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Part of your heritage.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So that's why we're thugs. And we then, uh, basically.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  I prefer mercenaries.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a separate thing as well. But we were not that. We, uh, we stole, we just stole, uh, no, didn't take money to. And essentially then we were made royals and quietened down and given land, a lot of land. And we became, we were very rich after that. But they would have wanted me to marry in that same kind of, I don't want to use the word lightly, but it's class. They wanted me to marry in that same kind of level of, you know, of the other families, but you know, my sister had got married to or other cousins. That ain't happening with me because everybody who is a feudal and has a feudal son, I would beat at cricket. So, and I would probably beat at boxing too. I would beat at everything and.

• 44:21Trevor Noah?

  It sounds like you were fierce at cricket. The way you talk about how much you played cricket.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  I was so embarrassed because recently I met a, met in a random place. This guy was like, you know, I was your neighbor. I used to play cricket with you. And then suddenly, my bad luck, you know, there are times when the room gets quiet. He said, and you hit me with a cricket bat. And then suddenly I was like, oh my God, I remember him. I remember hitting him with a cricket bat.

• 44:43Trevor Noah?

  You remember him?

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:44Trevor Noah?

  Wait, we hit him on, hit him on purpose or?

• 44:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Why do you don't accidentally hit people with cricket bats?

• 44:49Trevor Noah?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:51Trevor Noah?

  I, I'm giving the benefit of the doubt.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no. It was.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  The person who was pushed into a pool. Yes, you should know intention versus mistakes.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I, I did hit him, uh, because he was cheating and.

• 45:04Trevor Noah?

  How was he cheating?

• 45:05Speaker 01

  He told me I was out.

• 45:06Trevor Noah?

  Oh.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  And I wasn't out. And we didn't have, because nobody wants to be an empire.

• 45:10Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, nobody wants to be an empire.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Uh, it's a kind of, it's mob rule. They all declare that you're out. But when the, when the bowler says you're out, then kind of too many people were saying that I was out. I was the only girl in the whole gang.

• 45:23Trevor Noah?

  But did, did he, how did he, because I want to know.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  Why did you hit him then?

• 45:25Trevor Noah?

  Which?

• 45:26Speaker 01

  I hit him because I was not out. No, also I, also the bat was mine. I took the bat home.

• 45:31Trevor Noah?

  Damn, Asma was out here running these cricket streets.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:35Trevor Noah?

  So did you, did you play in those? So when I went to India, I saw like huge fields where there's just.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  No, we didn't play in the.

• 45:42Trevor Noah?

  There's like a hundred cricket games happening at the same time.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  And that's, that's the great, this is, this is our religion. Cricket is a obsession in India. No, we played on the street and then we had someone in the street stopping cars and then we would all clear out. So we played just outside our house, but on the street.

• 45:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  And then because in the eighties, we had a Marxist government running Bengal, so there were very frequent strikes. You know, there was a lot of labor unrest at that time. So then we would go on to the main street because there were no cars. And because mobs are burning cars that were going around, we knew no car was on the street. Then we played on a big road. And then we could have like a lot of space.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  Cause you're lords.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Otherwise we had, we used to just play on a narrow road outside my house.

• 46:25Trevor Noah?

  What was your forte, bowling or batting?

• 46:27Speaker 01

  Bowling.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  Bowling, I can tell.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Bowling.

• 46:29Trevor Noah?

  Why did you assume bowling?

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Fierce.

• 46:31Trevor Noah?

  Oh, okay.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  I was to bowl, but the thing is that, yeah, so I was so embarrassed and everybody turned around. And I was just died of embarrassment because I was so apologetic to him. I apologized like, you know, forty, fifty years ago, I hit him. And I told him I was very sorry. No, I don't think so hard. He did cry, but it wasn't that hard. It was more, more the humiliation.

• 46:52Trevor Noah?

  You can tell how much you've changed. You, you, you've gone the opposite way because you go, the guy says, you hit me with a cricket bat. And then you're like, I apologize, I apologize. I feel like in that situation, you go, someone goes, you hit me with a cricket bat and you go, do you want me to do it again?

• 47:08Trevor Noah?

  Shut up. Do you want me to do it again?

• 47:11Trevor Noah?

  Bringing this up in forty years later. Do you want me to do it again?

• 47:15Speaker 01

  No, that was very embarrassing. And because I couldn't recognize him. He kept saying, can you recognize me? Do you recognize me? And you know how this is.

• 47:21Trevor Noah?

  That means you hit him hard. If he remembers forty years later, you, you did a good, you did a good one.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I, no, I couldn't. I was too embarrassed. I said, no, I can't.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  Didn't you remember at the beginning?

• 47:33Speaker 01

  No, I didn't remember. I, you know, people change in forty years. I might recognize him. But then he told me, but you hit me with a bat. Now I'm immediately who he was. I knew his name. I knew the match. I knew exactly where we were.

• 47:44Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  And I remember hitting him. Yeah. I'm not proud of this. I'm very embarrassed that I hit people when I was.

• 47:51Trevor Noah?

  I'm very proud.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  That's how. Problem is when you, when you're very young, it, and you play street cricket. These things happen, but they're not very frequent. So I have to say.

• 48:01Trevor Noah?

  I think, I think we need more of those things. You know, we, we, we're talking to Jonathan Haidt on the podcast a while ago, but like, in general, Eugene and I talk about this. I talk about it with my friends. I think there's a shortage of that in the world today. And I don't mean it in like an old man, like in my day, you're used to. No, I think it, I think it was great that we used to live in a world where kids would go outside, have their own conflicts, have their own resolutions, have their own stories, have, but also, you define your own world without your parents.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:30Trevor Noah?

  Do you, do you get what I'm saying? You define your own world without an authority figure that's looming over you. I think now we, we're like growing a generation of people who are always looking to something and not, not just doing this.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:43Trevor Noah?

  Just what, what is this conversation? What is this disagreement? What, what is this lesson that you're learning? You're swimming. That's something that's formed you as Eugene.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 48:52Trevor Noah?

  You know, whether you, whether you like it or not. And I, I, I always wonder what would happen to people when their whole lives have been defined by the moments that they had with their parents, because they never had moments alone, essentially.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:02Trevor Noah?

  Like, I, I love that, I love that kids used to do that. I, I wish more kids would do that. Go outside, get hit with a cricket bat.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Very different world. And the thing is, you can see this when the moment there is a crisis. And it's so much worse after COVID. You know, I run a restaurant, you know, I have forty one staff.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  The moment there's a crisis, the fear and the panic, there is no attempt, like, you know, you know, advice that, you know, use your arms, your legs, get out. Because the thing is that when you have been in a difficult situation and you overcome, there is a memory, it's in your DNA, you now remember.

• 49:41Trevor Noah?

  It alters your DNA.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  It, that you did it, that you got out of it. And whenever I've had terrible things happen to me and the success is a, it's a veneer that hides behind

• 49:57Speaker 01

  a lot of battles that I'm, I still have to fight.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  Which no one else has to, who's in my position. But I have to. I worry about this younger generation for whom, you know, challenge is something that is so different from what we faced, you know?

• 50:17Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  It's not that drowning moment. It's not that panic. It's not that. And you worry and you, and I've spent a lot of times with young people now, telling them that you are the future leaders. You must believe in yourself. If you do not believe in yourself, no one will believe in you. And as a leader, you must be willing to go out first. When you go into battle, you carry that sword. And maybe it's because I come from this ancient warrior tribe. But I remember this as a child, always, my father would always say, you know, you've got to stand up, you've got to believe. Because most of the battle is won in your head.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  Because otherwise, you're lost. If you have to, if you don't back yourself,

• 51:10Speaker 01

  no one will back you.

• 51:11Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. And why should they?

• 51:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. But there's a whole generation now who doesn't think that this is a thing. That, you know, that you back yourself. And it's, I, I worry, I worry a lot, but I'm also optimistic because I hope that they grow a backbone, they grow resilience in their souls. And they stand up for justice and right and equality.

• 51:35Trevor Noah?

  Don't press anything. We've got more. What now? After this? Everybody has that oddly specific thing that they're curious about. Maybe it's restoring old watches. Maybe it's Japanese ceramic making. Maybe it's watching someone explain why one bridge in a remote area of Norway is secretly better than all the other bridges in the world. YouTube always has exactly what you're looking for, even when you didn't know you were looking for it. With YouTube Premium, those deep dives feel even smoother. You get ad-free viewing, but you also get background play when you need your hands free. And you get offline downloads so you can keep watching wherever you happen to be, even if you happen to be off the grid.

• 52:19Trevor Noah?

  It's everything you already love about YouTube, just somehow even better. Yeah. One of my favorite YouTube Premium features is smart downloads. Because how many times have you gone somewhere and realized, ah, I forgot to download anything? And now you're on the way to the airport and you're like, download, download, download, download. You're on the plane, download, download, download, download. There's no wifi. I wish I downloaded. Now, all of those things that you were gonna watch are, are just on the internet. Smart downloads basically thinks ahead for you. It automatically downloads recommended videos based on what you like to watch. So even when you forget to prepare, YouTube Premium didn't. I love it. It's like packing for a trip and discovering somebody already remember the thing you always leave at home. It's always the underwear.

• 53:03Trevor Noah?

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• 53:45Trevor Noah?

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• 54:27Trevor Noah?

  until you find the right T-shirt. Ooh, then suddenly you're talking about the cut, the fit, the weight, the way it falls on your body. Then you're like, no, no, no, you don't understand. Look at the sleeve. And that's what I've really enjoyed about Quince. One of my favorite things is their pima cotton luxe touch T-shirts. And it's become one of those pieces I keep reaching for. The cotton has this really smooth, premium feel to it. The fit is great. And it just lays really nicely. And I think that's what you sometimes take for granted with simple clothes. When they're done really well, they become the foundation of an entire outfit. You can throw on a jacket, a sweater, whatever you want, but everything works because you started with the right thing.

• 55:08Trevor Noah?

  That's what I like about Quince. It feels premium without feeling like you're trying too hard. It's effortless. So find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty-five day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. Hello over there. Oh. And if Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was What Now with Trevor Noah. It's the best way to support the show.

• 55:49Trevor Noah?

  I feel like young people today, like the younger generation,

• 55:53Trevor Noah?

  they may have been shielded on an interpersonal level a little bit more. But I think they're facing like a more systemic issue than we were in a way. And I could be wrong about this. But, but I find, I, I think it like Gen Z and, and that young generation, I think they were the first ones, for instance, to sort of break the internet and how we see it. If you, if you look at how they use Instagram and how older people use Instagram, they were like, we, we don't care about the artifice. We're not gonna try and make this fake. We're not gonna try and make it beautiful. We're not gonna try and invent a world that doesn't exist. We'll show you the messy. We'll show you the gritty. This was the picture. This was the, the realest moment that existed.

• 56:30Trevor Noah?

  Like, look at the kids now booing AI.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:33Trevor Noah?

  You know, all these commencement speeches that are taking place? And you've got these CEOs and everything coming to a college and being like, let me tell you how your life will turn. And then as soon as they mention AI.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:43Trevor Noah?

  These kids start booing them. Hmm. To me, that's amazing because I I don't know about you, but I feel like our generation wouldn't have booed that the A I institutional thing.

• 56:56Trevor Noah?

  But we were dealing with like interpersonal scuffles and family and life and friends, you know what I mean?

• 57:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:01Trevor Noah?

  We were almost dealing with like the the the um the micro.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 57:05Trevor Noah?

  And they're dealing with the macro, I feel like. And so maybe they'll be, I don't know, I don't wanna use the the we use the word weaker, but maybe they'll be a little less resilient than we are in some interpersonal instances. But I think on a societal level, the younger generation is is is coming through with a fierceness that I wish we had sometimes, to be honest.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  I also think um us not, I'll speak for our generation growing up the way we did. Our parents are not around because they couldn't be around.

• 57:33Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 57:34Speaker 02

  So that's that's one thing. And what I've noticed is how we behaved was totally influenced by what we had. So if your parent goes to work, then at the end of the month in thirty days, they get a salary. That salary gets to do whatever needs to be done so that life can go on. You, I understood from a very early age that soon time will come for me to find a job.

• 57:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 57:59Speaker 02

  And be that person. So every moment after school was a good time with my friends. Cause I knew it wasn't promised. It wasn't, I didn't see any other twenty five year olds having a good time with us at the dam. So I knew that when you get older, you're gonna have to get a certain way, get a job, have responsibility, stay in the back room of your house until you meet someone and then afford a house of your own. So there was always that moment of, I have to enjoy this. I have to play soccer after school. I have to go play with my friends. We have to go hunt for birds. We have to go learn how to swim. We have to share one B M X bicycle amongst the ten of us and one soccer ball. So the other one gets responsibility with their Christmas monies. You know, when the other one gets a B M X, the other one gets a ball, the other one gets a this, the other one.

• 58:41Speaker 02

  So we had this communal, we were bonded by our trauma because we saw what it did to our parents. And it happens especially when you look at pictures, when you think my mom was thirty five with three kids at that time.

• 58:54Trevor Noah?

  It's crazy.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  And she had already been working for this long.

• 58:56Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 58:57Speaker 02

  And then waking up at this time and earning this much. And then I go, what excuse do I have? When a flight is delayed, when this happens, when that happens. So I get to look at life like that. And I was fortunate enough from an early age that I would wake up in the morning and go, let's get it started. I I'd never struggle waking up. I never struggled getting ready for school because I knew that as soon as you leave, the good times begin. I hated sleeping because I was like, ah, now we have to end the good times.

• 59:25Trevor Noah?

  The good times have come to an end.

• 59:26Speaker 02

  The good times have come to an end.

• 59:27Trevor Noah?

  Wh- wh- but where did, I I I wanna understand like how your journey leads to food because, and forgive me if I'm wrong here.

• 59:36Trevor Noah?

  The girl who's out playing cricket and hitting people with a bat.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 59:40Trevor Noah?

  And writing poetry and playing guitar. And in none of these stories are you mentioning food. And yet, sitting here with you at this table, your name is more synonymous with food than it is with cricket or with assault or with guitar or with poetry.

• 59:56Speaker 02

  Cleverly.

• 59:59Trevor Noah?

  So so I wanna understand like wh- where where does that happen? You're growing up as this young girl in Calcutta, India. You you're forging your own path, but where where does food come in?

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  I love to eat. When I was growing up in India, I had always presumed that I would marry a prince. And I would be some princess in some palace and I'd have lots of cooks and be spoiled. It wasn't something that excited me. It's not really something I wanted to do, but I kind of presumed. So I didn't know how to cook. Because girls didn't cook really, I mean, in our family, because especially my house, because my mother had a catering business. So we had more cooks than everybody else. So, you know, it was it was mad. Our house was like constantly full of food and and.

• 1:00:42Trevor Noah?

  Ju- just to cut you off there. So help me understand. I I don't know how, you know, sometimes we we'll um simplify India or make it seem like it's like one place everywhere.

• 1:00:53Trevor Noah?

  There there were some parts of India that I went to where people said, most people sort of weren't cooking. They were just getting the food from place. Is that is that true? How does that work?

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  So, I mean, the thing is that there is, I always find it challenging when people think India as like a kind of a homogeneous.

• 1:01:10Trevor Noah?

  That's what I, that's what I mean, yeah.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  And it's never like that. And there are huge differences from the north to the south. But also, for food wise, you know, there's wheat growing areas where people have roti, there are rice growing areas. Wheat can grow in drier li- soil.

• 1:01:24Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  And for rice, you need a lot of water. Rice grows in water.

• 1:01:28Trevor Noah?

  Uh huh.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  Uh, and so there's there's loads of differences and we are a very, even three villages away in India. You know, the the Bhaghar, which is the tempering of dal, is done differently.

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  So we are, we're not a society where people are all together.

• 1:01:44Trevor Noah?

  Okay, got it.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  There's huge differences in people. And in in my household, my father and my mother never ate the same food. My father came from the north. If he saw a fish and if he saw eye of fish, he would just like almost pass out. He found, and my mother loved fish. Cause she she grew up, was born near the ocean and the rivers. And my dad was landlocked, never saw fish when he was growing up. So there's huge differences with my parents, but because I grew up in Calcutta, which is the food capital of India.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  A best kind of food, you know, it was where, you know, so many cultures, you know, were there. Uh, you know, the food there is incredible. I didn't learn how to cook because I didn't have to.

• 1:02:26Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  When my marriage was arranged uh with my husband, who was teaching at Cambridge University through an aunt, and my poor husband was like, you know, oh, my God, I don't think I wanna do it. I convinced him overnight.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  To cook?

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  No, to marry me. I I told him, I said, you know, you walk away from this. It's the biggest mistake of your life. You have no idea what I'm capable of. I am gonna bring so much joy in your life.

• 1:02:51Trevor Noah?

  Where is this happening?

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I convinced my husband. And yeah, it didn't happen. Poor guy. He he's an innocent man. He's still married to me. He requires a medal, you know? He he believed in the story and he's, you know, very.

• 1:03:03Trevor Noah?

  How old are you when this is happening?

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  So I I was twenty one, twenty two.

• 1:03:07Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  And I realized this is my one chance to marry an intelligent guy because I'd asked my parents.

• 1:03:13Trevor Noah?

  Wait, so so is this, this is also arranged? So the Tinder family had gotten together?

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  Found a man.

• 1:03:17Speaker 02

  That's why you're my friend.

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  Get down to the cost.

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So they had, so they had, they found this person.

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  They lied to him and they brought him to Calcutta under some pretext, which is not to see a girl. Cause he would never have come. He would never have come because, you know, my husband was not into all this arranged marriage stuff. He was he was teaching in Oxford and then he was teaching at Cambridge, you know, this kind of ivory tar academic.

• 1:03:41Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Professor in economics.

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  Tread jacket.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  So, yeah, yeah, a tread jacket, absolutely, you know.

• 1:03:45Speaker 02

  A mustache.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  And si- yeah, and beard and cycling with, you know, uh, and looking like Batman in his black down going.

• 1:03:52Trevor Noah?

  Ding ding.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he was that guy. And so, and also, on paper, I I am feudal. I come from royalty.

• 1:04:02Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  So I'm everything that he's against politically.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  So politically, he is, so he he's left of center, you know, works with, you know, works on poverty, on corruption, on, you know, on, you know, failing states, all of that. So he's.

• 1:04:19Trevor Noah?

  Not trying to end up with some princess.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  No, no, absolutely not. Absolutely not. I realized, oh, wow, because I told my mother, please, I want to marry an intelligent person. You might find any intelligent man, I will marry him. So they found this guy. But I realized I have one evening to convince him. And I told him this. I said, you know, look at me and don't see the princess in me because I am, you know, I am fun, I do this, I can do that. I didn't tell him I could cook, but I did tell him I don't know how to cook. But then, this was much later after he'd agreed to marry me.

• 1:04:51Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  Uh, he told me, oh, I don't believe in gender roles. I'll cook. I know how to cook. You don't worry. You just come and, you know, enjoy your life the last three months. Then I went into this kind of princess kind of mode where I had this grand wedding, which I planned, you know, everything, including all the food. Yeah, so it was, it was so good that I was managed to, I managed to convince him to marry me. And I, the relief of all these aunts, somebody agreed to marry usma. And all the aunts that we didn't want to come to the wedding came, just to make sure that they watched me getting married. My mother was like, you know, why is everybody saying yes to the wedding? I say, because they're coming to make sure it happens.

• 1:05:27Trevor Noah?

  Witness, yeah.

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  To witness this absolutely incredible experience of seeing me getting married. Yeah, and I got married. And it was very exciting and I didn't know how to cook. Came to Cambridge, ate the really bad food that Mustak made, shockingly bad food.

• 1:05:43Trevor Noah?

  But he said he was good.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  No, I didn't say he was good. He just knew how to cook. That's what he told me.

• 1:05:46Trevor Noah?

  Knew how to cook, there's a difference.

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:48Trevor Noah?

  It's the same way when you told me you know how to cook. I was like, oh, boy, here we go. Cause Eugene did this for me. Eugene was like, he was like, oh, why why don't I, I can cook your your favorite dish or whatever. Cause I was trying to, so I love um pig trotters.

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:00Trevor Noah?

  Right? Generally, any, any like.

• 1:06:02Speaker 02

  You can't call them hoof. You can't call them pig trotters.

• 1:06:04Trevor Noah?

  Okay, any hoof.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  Okay. Whatever, trotter or trotter.

• 1:06:09Trevor Noah?

  Any hoof, any, you know what I mean?

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we have paaya, Nehari.

• 1:06:12Trevor Noah?

  Is that what it's, yeah, okay.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  Nehari, yeah.

• 1:06:13Trevor Noah?

  Right, so pig, cow, you name it, just like anything with the hoof. I'm in, I'm in. The gelatinous, I love gelatinous food, you know? So you can't really find much of it, especially like Hunanese, I think that's how you pronounce the cuisine in in South Africa. So Eugene one day says to me, he goes, yo, I why don't I, I can cook that for you? Then I was like, shame, my friend, he's really, this is like a lovely gesture, but completely unnecessary.

• 1:06:42Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean? And then he was like, he's like, I was like, what do you mean? Then Eugene said, oh, I cook. Then I went, ah, I understand what he means. He means that he will put food together on a stove, heat it up, and then ingest it. Now, many people can cook.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:07:01Trevor Noah?

  Most people shouldn't cook.

• 1:07:04Trevor Noah?

  Do you understand what I'm saying?

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I've met many people who can cook.

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:08Trevor Noah?

  I've met many people who say, you should come over, I I will cook.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:07:11Trevor Noah?

  And then when you go there, you go, I pray this never happens again. I pray this, this thing you've done to me should never be done to another person. If I could call the Hague, I would.

• 1:07:25Trevor Noah?

  Because of what, in fact, I'm shocked that you spent time doing this. The fact that you said we'll be busy for the next few hours and then this is what you made.

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 1:07:34Trevor Noah?

  This, so when people tell me they can cook, I, I take it as a, so I understand what, but he, he can actually like make food that is delicious.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:42Trevor Noah?

  But I understand what you're saying. He said he can cook.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  He can cook and.

• 1:07:46Trevor Noah?

  Yes, and that's what he did. He cooked.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 1:07:48Trevor Noah?

  The food was no longer raw, is what it means. That's all it means.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  It was cooked, but that's when I really realized that I could not change the weather or where I'd moved to.

• 1:07:59Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  And I come from Bengal where the trees are lush and I moved to Cambridge in January and all the trees had lost their leaves. I'm that generation where we didn't have internet, obviously, you know, I predate all of that. And because of the government that we had in West Bengal, we didn't see a lot of films from abroad. Uh, so you didn't see a lot of Western films. I saw Love Story and I remember crying, Ryan O'Neal, oh my god, so gorgeous. And then I saw Snow and you know that.

• 1:08:26Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  But how, how do you go to an encyclopedia in a library to see pictures? That's, that's, I'm that generation. So I was a shock, you know, I, I felt, and then there was this bad food at home, then I went out, it was bloody freezing. And all the bark in the tree was raw. And I felt this was me, that the tree would never have a spring. I would never have a spring.

• 1:08:47Trevor Noah?

  Oh wow.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  And it was this kind of, I was so lost and I yearned for home. And I realized that the one thing I could do to change things, I couldn't even talk to my parents because it's no internet, no mobile, no thing. And I realized that I had to cook because in the aromas, in that kitchen, I would have felt the presence of my mother. Because I would have felt she'd come next to me. And it was, food became then not, uh, not something I ate, but it became everything, my identity, my

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  culture, my religion, my, everything, my name. And so I came to start cooking not out of a sense of, uh,

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  sorry, I, you know, my mom is wonderful, but I, I, I, I realize how lucky I am. Every day she's lives there and she cooks for me. And now she's kind of not remembering things too well, that she still manages to cook for me. It's a privilege and an honor. But, you know, thirty odd years ago, I cooked and I felt as the aromas of the spices and everything and I'd, that I was connecting not just to my mother, but to the, my ancestors, to the matriarchs who had gone. I was now connected through food. So for me, food is not about, you know, yes, I love eating and I enjoy cooking. But food for me is about identity. It's about power. It's about language.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  And so much of the challenges that we face today, we have not used food as one of the tools to talk about justice.

• 1:10:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. Oh, that's interesting.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  And, you know, there are, you know, there's things like that I will not use. I hesitate to use, like poppy seeds in my, in Bengal, poppy seeds is used a lot.

• 1:10:51Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  But because I did my first degree in history, I know why they're using poppy seeds. They're using poppy seeds because the British forced the farmers on my land to grow poppy to get an entire population in China addicted to opium so that they could get tea for free, literally for nothing and export it. Their desire for tea, they used farmers, my brothers, on my land to grow, and the problem is that when you grow, and they controlled the price, it was a cash crop. They controlled the price, they had a whole department controlling the price of poppy. The farmer had nothing to, no money left to buy food. So his wife, the farmer's wife,

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  poppy seeds are hard, crushed them, soaked it and crushed it so it fill the belly of the children. So they ate, they added poppy seeds to whatever little they had. I refused to use poppy seeds. So if food is not just about my identity, food is also about speaking about injustice. And the fact that we don't talk about these things, it's almost like, you know, why should we talk about it? No, I want to talk about slavery. I want to talk about colonialism. I think that British children in school should be taught about the empire. Yes, learn about the Tudor history and all of this, very good. And, but you need to know.

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  So when you push a child, a brown-skinned, dark-skinned child and say, go back home, you need to know why that person is there on the land, why they, you know, they were invited as guests after the war, so many families that descended, I.

• 1:12:32Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, know why they're there in the first place.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  Why are they here? Don't, the problem is they don't understand. They don't understand. The wealth of Britain was built on the blood of my people. And I see so much of the food, the fact the spices were traded. And it's not just, you know, the Indian, East India Company, the Dutch East India Company.

• 1:12:57Trevor Noah?

  Oh yes, we're well, we're well familiar with it.

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  And the atrocities. So I think that food should be a lesson in history and justice. And that is, I first came to food out of just loneliness. I missed my home. I missed my parents. I missed being that child and being free of responsibility in this ivory tower, in this university. I was abandoned and left alone and I struggled and, you know, my husband's a nice guy, but you know, he's an academic. And a bad cook. And, and you know, and he's a, he's a very, very below average cook. And, and, and, you know, and he like.

• 1:13:43Trevor Noah?

  Asma still got that cricket bat out there, bro. It's just metaphorical now. That cricket bat is ready any time, bro.

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  And you know, and he would spend the whole night writing and listening to opera. And I thought opera was the worst thing possible. I'd never heard opera in my life.

• 1:13:56Trevor Noah?

  Really an academic.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And it was like, you know, I'm dead. I want to listen to, you know, I want to listen to Bryan Adams, I want to listen to Madonna, you know, I was like in the eighties kind of pop music.

• 1:14:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:06Speaker 01

  Oh my god, I had to wait for him to go to a lecture so I could listen to pop music. And it was a kind of crazy life. But because I understood that, wow, people don't get justice, they don't understand whose water is it, whose land is it? You know, the trees that grow on either side of India and Pakistan.

• 1:14:27Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  Whose water is it being nourished by? You know, I think that's so important to understand, the roots go so deep down. Borders are there, but it, you know, even just a tree that grows, you know, where is the nourishment really coming from? And I, I've, I've always been interested in justice because, I mean, and that's why I did law and I went on to do a PhD. Because I think that it's important to understand and to be unafraid to challenge authority.

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  Because with knowledge, the reason why there's so much racism and so easy to ignite, you know, hatred.

• 1:15:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  Is ignorance. If people understood, you know, why is this, you know, Jamaican person sitting next to me in my class? I'm going to tell this person, you know, that, you know, go back home.

• 1:15:17Trevor Noah?

  Go back.

• 1:15:17Speaker 01

  I'm going to tell the South Asian child that your food smells, you know, your mom smells. Did you know that the wealth was built on spices that is the, the base of that curry that that child has eaten? If you don't understand all of this, you're going to be ignorant and you will easily be assuad by people telling you random things, or you've got to hate them. And it's, you know, the fact that, you know, an element in my skin inside has made me a shade darker. How am I a threat to you? I bring with me the vibrant culture, the color, the music, the spices. I bring life.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  You know, and yet you want to hate me because of the way I look, because of my skin tone. I pity you. I want to sit with you. I want to break bread with you. I want to tell you about my people. If you get up from that table, having eaten with me and still want to hate my people, I forgive you because that's my culture.

• 1:16:18Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  I will let you go, but first I must be able to tell you the stories. This is why, you know, in the Quran, the Torah, the Bible, there's always this thing about breaking bread.

• 1:16:28Trevor Noah?

  Always.

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  But for me, that is so important. It's not about peace. It's that shared moment. When I break bread with you and you, we have had a shared moment. We've all had our different journeys coming to this table. But when we eat the same thing, we talk about what connects us. You might tell me about the bread you ate or, you know, you tell me about something that you ate. And then we all realize there is more that connects us than divides us. Food is the greatest way to connect people. And as an immigrant, as a Muslim, living in England, I built a successful restaurant and I always say, I could only have done it in London where people are open-hearted. I managed to kind of build a business, an immigrant business, with an all-immigrant female kitchen.

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  And we have been embraced. I don't know many other cities where I could have done it. I haven't tried it anywhere else, but food has been used for too long as a, as, as if we become consumers.

• 1:17:28Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  And leaving religion out of it, you know, and completely leaving religion out of it, we no longer say grace. When we see food, we take our phone and take a picture. And if it's a nice picture, we post it on Instagram, we send it to our friends. It's become a tool of, of how successful you are. You know, I'm in this really posh place. I'm eating this fancy stuff. Or even if you're on street food, you know, because you've had the ability to travel to Mali or some exotic.

• 1:17:54Trevor Noah?

  It's a signifier.

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  It's just, it tells you who, the food is, is part of that storytelling, that, you know, I'm not just in this cool place. This is what I'm eating. And we've become consumers. We see it as our right. The fact that eating is a privilege,

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  a privilege that not everybody has, not in the past, even today, that hunger is in our midst.

• 1:18:16Speaker 01

  So unlike a lot of other chefs where they use food to show off, to impress people.

• 1:18:22Trevor Noah?

  To make art.

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm no artist, but I am the storyteller you need in your life.

• 1:18:28Trevor Noah?

  Oh damn, I love that.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  So this is the thing, I never see myself, you know, and I think it's so important because this is, everyone can relate to that beautiful meal. And you know, in our culture, not anymore now, kids are sitting on tablets and watching stuff. You know, you see, and I don't remember, of course, I was too small, but I remember seeing other children being made to sit on the lap of the mat and fed by hand.

• 1:18:52Trevor Noah?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  And the touch of the, of, on the lips of the rice.

• 1:18:55Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  Wow. And you can't replicate this as an adult, but I want people to understand that food is spiritual. Food is healing. It's the most powerful language of love. And even if someone turns around and says, you know, oh, you know, you're all fuddy duddy and this is all, I don't care. I want to be emotional. I have the right to be emotional and I have the right to use food as part of that emotional language.

• 1:19:31Trevor Noah?

  Don't go anywhere because we've got more What Now after this.

• 1:19:37Trevor Noah?

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• 1:20:11Trevor Noah?

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• 1:20:56Trevor Noah?

  If therapy's been sitting in the back of your mind, Rula is a pretty simple way to take that first step. So turn off the talk track that's keeping you from progress and head to rula.com. That's R U L A dot com to find a therapist the easy way.

• 1:21:13Speaker 03

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• 1:21:49Trevor Noah?

  Well, people might say that to you, but I would challenge anyone to think of their favorite meals and disassociate them from a memory.

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:00Trevor Noah?

  There's, there's nothing, there's nothing more powerful than biting something, drinking something, tasting something, and immediately being taken back to a moment, a memory, a person, an experience, a time, a place. You, you, you can't, you can't, the, the other, this was one of my favorite moments because I'll remember it. I, I, I don't think she will, but um, one of my best friend's daughters, she's now, I guess, you know, in the twenty, eighteen months or something, somewhere that, you know, baby ages, this or whatever. So they um, were eating, were eating Thai food together. So it's myself and it's him and it's his two girls, right? Twins, really young.

• 1:22:43Trevor Noah?

  And all they wanted to eat was the rice. So they keep going, more. That's, they, they only got like ten words maybe now, more. So I put rice on the table, we eat, we eat, more, put more rice on the table. They don't eat the curry or anything else that, that comes with the, with the food. But then on the, on like one corner of the rice, some of the spicy sauce had like touched the rice. So Cora takes the rice, she puts it in her mouth. And then like, you know, when you, you can see something that has never happened is happening now. So she first like, she glitches. She glitches. And then she like opens her mouth to try and take it out, but there's nothing there anymore.

• 1:23:28Trevor Noah?

  And she looks, and then she looks at us, and then she looks at her dad and she's like, and then you know when the spice is like warming up inside the mouth, inside the mouth, inside the mouth?

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  Slow release.

• 1:23:37Trevor Noah?

  Yo, bruh, the way she cried. But it was, it was like a funny cry because she wasn't crying like somebody was hurting her. She was crying out of confusion. And literally I said to him, I was like, you do realize, I was like, this, obviously she stopped crying because it wasn't the worst thing in the world. But I was like, this is a memory that comes from this, like this moment. It's, it's, I'm, I'm like you and he'll tell you, when it comes to food, I'm exactly the same as you. Because things happen around food. You know, friendships are made, you, stories are shared, hearts are opened. There's like a.

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  He ignored me when the truth has came out.

• 1:24:15Trevor Noah?

  Ah, my man, my man. I did the, how grateful was I to you?

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, you were.

• 1:24:21Trevor Noah?

  I sent this guy pictures later on that night of the, of like, man, like you don't even understand. Because when, when somebody prepares food for you, and, and that's one of the biggest reasons I um, I'm so sad that we have food delivery services. I understand they've made life convenient. Yeah, I understand it.

• 1:24:41Speaker 01

  You say this all the time.

• 1:24:42Trevor Noah?

  But I think we take for granted and we, we haven't yet studied what we lose when you don't hear the food being prepared, you don't see the food being prepared. You also, most importantly, do not see who is preparing your food.

• 1:24:57Speaker 01

  That is so important.

• 1:24:58Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 1:24:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:59Trevor Noah?

  You don't see who is preparing your food. And to your point, if we live in a world where we are separated from the labor that is providing anything for us, how can we then appreciate said labor? You know?

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:25:15Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. How do we, how do we even begin to, and, and I know some people might be like, oh, that's a, that's a, you know, to, to reduce it to something. But I think of somebody like Mohamed Salah in, in Liverpool, right? Mohamed Salah demonstrably changed people's attitudes towards Muslims in and around Liverpool and I would argue in England.

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  Right, yes.

• 1:25:38Trevor Noah?

  Just by being himself and doing his thing. But would the effect have been the same if you didn't see him, you just heard about the goals being scored, but you didn't know who scored them? That someone just scored goals for Liverpool.

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:54Trevor Noah?

  And got assists for Liverpool. It wouldn't be the same. There's something powerful in seeing the person.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:59Trevor Noah?

  Prepare the food. Who is this person? Oh, who are those people in the kitchen? Who is in my kitchen? Who's, that thing is so magical. And I think it creates a gratitude in us that we, we've taken for granted.

• 1:26:10Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. And I've, you know, I haven't now, I'm just moving locations to a, a bigger site in London.

• 1:26:18Trevor Noah?

  Oh, congratulations.

• 1:26:19Speaker 01

  Thank you. It's stressful, but it has an open kitchen. And the thing with open kitchens in, in London, especially central London, because of the cost of rent, all kitchens are in the basement. You don't see.

• 1:26:32Trevor Noah?

  You don't see the people.

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  You don't see the people. They're where the bathrooms are usually in the basement.

• 1:26:36Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:26:37Speaker 01

  And it doesn't make sense because that's the money space, you know, massive open kitchen. But for me, the honor comes from that. I have two grandmothers, I've got three mothers. I've got a kitchen of twelve women who are cooking and singing in rhythm. And so we now moved to a bigger open kitchen. I've always, you know, I love Kingle Court where I was right now. But I've had to move because, you know, it was just getting too small for us. And I found this amazing site and it's in a, it's just off Piccadilly Circus. And these things matter because this is my flag in the ground. For all those women and all those men who cook hidden behind walls.

• 1:27:14Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:15Speaker 01

  I have opened it up. Watch us. We are cooking not as a show, we're not trying to impress you, but we want to remind you that someone is laboring for your food. And even just, you know, I do a lot of work with farmers and I've always felt that, you know, the way chefs look at ingredients is their God-given right.

• 1:27:35Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:35Speaker 01

  And anyone who comes to my restaurant will never get okra. I do not want a jet lag okra on my table. Because it was flown from Africa or Asia or in a plane. I do not want. So I only serve, you know, some stuff comes from Europe because of British weather, you have no choice. And a lot of it is British. But you know, I make alu gopin muthar. I make really traditional Indian stuff, no fusion stuff.

• 1:27:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:59Speaker 01

  But I use ingredients close by. Because I think that if this whole thing of hospitality, the customer's always right. No, the customer is wrong if they want to eat out of season.

• 1:28:08Trevor Noah?

  No, do you, do you know that that phrase, by the way, this is one of my, my great joys in life. He'll, he'll tell you about this. I love, more than most things in the world.

• 1:28:19Trevor Noah?

  Digging into the history of, yeah, the anthropology of phrases.

• 1:28:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:28:24Trevor Noah?

  The customer's always right. Do you know that that's not the phrase?

• 1:28:27Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:28:28Trevor Noah?

  That is not the full phrase.

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm gonna gonna muscle listen now.

• 1:28:31Trevor Noah?

  No, really. So we've grown up, I grew up thinking that, right? I remember, I think my mom said it the first, we hear it everywhere. The customer's always right. That's what they'd say. The customer's always right. And we believe it means that if a person is buying or doing something, then they are right. And they must be catered to one hundred percent. No. The full phrase is not the customer's always right. The the phrase is, it's, I'll I'll I'll read it out to you so I get it proper, but it's basically the customer's always right in matters of taste, but when it comes to, I'll I'll read it to you.

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  Oh, my god.

• 1:29:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah. Basically, the full phrase means this idiot doesn't know anything. They they're right when it comes to like what they wanna choose for themselves, but it doesn't mean that they're right. Um, no, no, no, I'll I'll read you the full one.

• 1:29:13Speaker 01

  I have no idea.

• 1:29:14Trevor Noah?

  I promise you, um.

• 1:29:16Speaker 01

  So how did you dig this up?

• 1:29:18Trevor Noah?

  I just love it. Every time I hear a phrase that doesn't make sense to me, because I started, so, okay, the first one was, um, blood is thicker than water. I fought with this my whole life, right? Because I remember like my mom would, you would talk about struggles with her family. And I would go, but mom, you you know, family is the most important thing. Blood is thicker than water. You you have to. And then I would meet people who struggled with their families, people who.

• 1:29:41Speaker 01

  Who can cut them off.

• 1:29:42Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, people who had families that were, you know, running the spectrum, everything from abusive all the way through to just dismissive, let's say. But people realized that they were not of their family, right? And what would society always say to us?

• 1:29:56Speaker 01

  Blood is thicker than water.

• 1:29:57Trevor Noah?

  Hey, blood is thicker than water. You you go and you make up with your family. Blood is thicker than water. Don't, you your family, you you can't choose your family, it's the only family. And they'd always say blood's thicker than water. And then one day I discovered the full phrase, and it is the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

• 1:30:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:18Trevor Noah?

  That's the full phrase. The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

• 1:30:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:24Trevor Noah?

  It means the exact opposite. When they say blood is thicker than water, which they shortened and then people misunderstood.

• 1:30:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:31Trevor Noah?

  What they mean is, the blood that you make in a, the blood pact.

• 1:30:34Speaker 01

  In a bond, yeah.

• 1:30:35Trevor Noah?

  With friendship or with chosen family is more important than the water in the womb. You didn't choose this person, they might not have chosen you, you don't choose the people who surround them. No, that's not as important. It's not as important as who you choose.

• 1:30:51Speaker 01

  The idiots who have used it and then.

• 1:30:54Trevor Noah?

  We are.

• 1:30:55Speaker 01

  Mutated it to.

• 1:30:55Trevor Noah?

  No, because we we they shorten it. They just shorten it, shorten it, shorten it.

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  Shorter and shorter.

• 1:31:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I'll I'll read you, so that the, I think it actually came funny enough from Selfridges, if I remember correctly.

• 1:31:09Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it was it was like a full, you know, and it just, it it morphed over time. Oh, yeah, yeah, here it was. So it was, all the person said was, the customer's always right in matters of taste. And that was it. But it was in matters of taste.

• 1:31:27Speaker 01

  But we left it at the customer?

• 1:31:29Trevor Noah?

  Is always right. They're not.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  Now I'm wondering what cashes came from. This is so interesting because

• 1:31:37Speaker 01

  I had, I do have difficult people, uh, from my own community, my, you know, South Asian, especially men. Uh, someone asked me that, can you take the the the price of the dal off the menu? And so they, so my manager came, I said, we're taking the dal off because he didn't like it. I said, no, but he ate it. I'm gonna go and ask. This customer is always right, kind of situation happened. So I walked up to him and I said, you know, uh, did you not like the dal? Because you ate it and you wanna take it off. He said, it doesn't taste like the dal my mother made. And I was like, yeah, but your mother's not working in my kitchen. I said, sorry. So I was like, you know, so I I I always tell.

• 1:32:17Trevor Noah?

  Yo, Asma, you are busy kicking that Michelin star away, day by day.

• 1:32:22Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no. No, no. That's, it's, I I never aspired for a Michelin star. I oh, I, because Michelin is so, it's the whole basis is excluding people like me. Because they they're looking for a standard, which is so French, which is so white, which is so much about alcohol pairing. It is about, you know, uh, the appearance. If I was given a one inch food on a ten inch plate, that this is Michelin standard, and I have something drizzled and dropped, and there's a poof and a puff, and if I need to eat so much edible grass and edible flowers, I'd go graze in a field. I don't want it on my plate.

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  And I don't wanna pay, sit for two hours getting one inch food at a time, after the third one inch food is, I wouldn't even know what I'm eating.

• 1:33:13Trevor Noah?

  I I always look at that stand and I'm thinking that was the biggest food colonization scam that has ever been perpetrated. People want to travel for so long for familiarity. They wanted to eat what they know everywhere they went. How crazy is that? Then that became the standard of what good food is? Again, that that one was an interesting one, is like, when you look at the, I love that you, essentially, if I if I heard you. The subtext of what you're saying is like, we take for granted how political food is. And not political as in like, who did you vote for, not vote for, no. It tells a very complicated story of the people that came before it. You know what I mean? There's no food that does not contain a story.

• 1:33:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:33:56Trevor Noah?

  Who moved, who was forced to move, how were they forced to move, what did they do to survive?

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  Were they forced to grow?

• 1:34:02Trevor Noah?

  It's all in the food, right? The same thing goes for those quantities of food. So if you if you look at old, um, you know, like history, you know, and and like, we only have images, obviously there are no photos. But the stories that were told, what was the way you displayed your wealth? Through massive amounts of food, right? The richest would eat gluttonous amounts of food.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:27Trevor Noah?

  They would have banquets that would go on for days.

• 1:34:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:34:30Trevor Noah?

  A pig with an apple in its mouth. And the way you would show that you were rich is by eating more food than you needed to eat. Getting big, throwing it up, by the way.

• 1:34:40Speaker 01

  Come back again.

• 1:34:41Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, they'd go, they'd throw up, they'd come back and eat some more. And so this is happening all throughout, like, England and France and all of these places. But this is like how the rich live, because the peasants can't have as much food. Then what happens? We discover this thing called farming and industrial farming, and we we create this new way of of of mass producing food, right? What does it do to the price of food? It brings it down. What does it now mean for the poor people? They can also eat more. And then the rich people went, I don't want to be the same as, but they also have a full plate and I have a full, we all the same now? I don't want that. And so now, the true measure of wealth.

• 1:35:20Speaker 01

  Is how little you eat.

• 1:35:21Trevor Noah?

  Was to show how much you could pay for how little you could get. And so it became this thing of like, oh.

• 1:35:27Speaker 01

  That's the best explanation I've heard of it.

• 1:35:29Trevor Noah?

  It literally became that. And so it it became a, it's like, poor people have, uh, a plate full of food. And so the way you would show how classy you are was that you had, you had so little, it was just a tiny little amount and, oh, I I graze and I nibble and, and that that, that became the new signifier of class and power and wealth. And poor people had lots of food and like, you know what I mean? And it's it's actually crazy how that thing goes back and forth.

• 1:35:58Speaker 01

  It is, it's so fascinating what you've just said, because it deeply concerns me and also, uh, in India, we've, you know, for us, food, there's rice, there's roti, this thing. Now, all Indian fine dining, the ones that are Michelin star. They serve food that I don't recognize.

• 1:36:15Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:16Speaker 01

  And the fact that it's gone into this one inch stuff with no rice, no bread, no nothing.

• 1:36:20Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:36:20Speaker 01

  Uh, it's unrecognizable and and they put caviar and they've put, you know, truffle oil, which is like the worst thing in the universe, in any case.

• 1:36:29Trevor Noah?

  Thank you, thank you.

• 1:36:32Speaker 01

  Everything. And, oh, no, no, absolutely overrated, beyond belief. Uh, and I think French food is also overrated.

• 1:36:39Trevor Noah?

  Damn, Asma, shots fired.

• 1:36:42Speaker 01

  No, because, you know, so much butter and cream, you know, wow, you know, I put so much butter and cream in my shoe. It might taste nice, but it is, uh, it it just is, you know, and no offense, man, you know, and it's a great cuisine. I'm sure that, you know, this brigade system, all of that, they have a great history, and I'm not insulting any French cuisine. Please, can I have that caveat? Like.

• 1:37:03Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:03Speaker 01

  If you please, yeah, I I love French men and I love French cuisine. Sorry if I said that, but it's true. It's true.

• 1:37:09Trevor Noah?

  I love it with the French men as well. There's nothing to do with the men. There's nothing to do with the men. And Asma was like, uh, I'm I'm sorry about the, I love French men, and I love the food as well. How? We wouldn't say nothing about the men. And Asma just threw that in out of nowhere.

• 1:37:25Speaker 01

  You know, there is one thing, I did a law degree. So, you know, this is that you cover yourself in every area.

• 1:37:30Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay, so this is you now.

• 1:37:32Speaker 01

  So this is me building defense.

• 1:37:34Trevor Noah?

  Okay, got it, got it, got it, got it.

• 1:37:35Speaker 01

  You're building up the case.

• 1:37:36Trevor Noah?

  For possible deniability.

• 1:37:37Speaker 01

  So in case I I I I get into trouble, let me try everything, you know, one time. Oh, I have to say I like French women as well.

• 1:37:45Trevor Noah?

  These are all the clauses. Okay, these are clauses, I see.

• 1:37:48Speaker 01

  But I mean, yes, it, I think it's over. I think the problem is the fact that very few people say this and, you know, I I'm I want to say this, that there's a lot of racism when it comes to what is elevated cuisine.

• 1:38:01Trevor Noah?

  Of course.

• 1:38:02Speaker 01

  And the fact that French, Italian even, and when it comes to Asian, now you have, you know, Korean and and Japanese food is seen as elevated. But so much of our cuisine, you know, and especially when you look at Africa and you look at large swathes of of in in South Asia as well, you know, Middle East, it's seen as cheap and cheerful.

• 1:38:22Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:23Speaker 01

  Our food is all about wholesome, cheerful food. This fact that we are not seen as sophisticated, I remember someone telling me, Asma, no one's gonna pay a hundred thirty nine pounds to come for your biryani. We sold out within minutes. And I said, no, this is my price tag. I want to end this monopoly of this tattooed, you know, aggressive, testosterone-driven madman who's in a stainless steel empire beating up people allowed to beat up this, yes, shouting and screaming. In this tormented soul has produced this dish, I'll get indigestion, please. I don't wanna eat it.

• 1:39:04Speaker 01

  And I just feel that, you know, why is it that we are, you know, we, our food heritage in Africa, in everywhere, goes back, you know, centuries. We grew food. You know, this is the cradle of civilization. We actually, you know, so much of what we eat today is because of what happened in our lands. Um nourished in our lands, our soil. Please don't dismiss us. Do not walk over the souls of our ancestors and see that our food is not sophisticated. Today, the world eats because of us, because of our farmers. And in the dust that flies are the roof or the soul of these amazing men and women who grew crops.

• 1:39:48Speaker 01

  No one is telling their story. And this is what bothers me, that, you know, we are not seen. Our food is not seen as sophisticated. Immigrant food in in too many places is seen as, you know, ethnic food. We are bracketed in, yeah, and you know, be cheap, be spicy, you know, and so in England, you have people who say, oh, you know. This is a hangover, uh, you know, cure. We go for a vindaloo. People go to these, you know, what they call curry houses. And have beer and are aggressive and just drink a lot and eat a lot. Please stop, because.

• 1:40:23Trevor Noah?

  The desecration.

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  Yes, it is, it is. And the problem is no one is saying it. And if it means that someone doesn't want to come to my restaurant because they find my politics uncomfortable.

• 1:40:32Trevor Noah?

  Let them not come.

• 1:40:33Speaker 01

  Exactly. The king came to my restaurant and he was amazing. He was amazing. And I think that if the king of England can come to your restaurant. Come into your kitchen and pack biryani for, you know, refugee families that were sitting outside. He was packing biryani for himself, but also for the refugee families. This is the great equalizer.

• 1:40:54Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:54Speaker 01

  From one pot. Food is very powerful. We should be unafraid. But the problem is that in this desire to succeed. You will not find chefs talking about these things, not talking about power and equality. And you have this fringe of these people who I'm also uncomfortable with, talking about, you know, uh, the environment and sustainability. At a huge price tag. So this particular dish, the moisture in that was the rainforest from whatever. It dropped palm leaf and this this milk came and the moon was full and the cow was happy and they sang a song. And they massaged the cow and then did yoga.

• 1:41:32Trevor Noah?

  The cow's cholesterol.

• 1:41:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So this also like drives me mad because again, you are twisting food into some kind of, uh, you know. You're separating it out.

• 1:41:43Trevor Noah?

  Well, essentially what's happening, you're right, is, you you know, I I always fall back on on on the phrase, it was a beautiful one that I I I read once. I think it was actually a British author. She said, um, um, she said, I I can't wait for the world to get over. Race so that we can realize we're all dealing with class. And fundamentally, that's all this is, right? It is, it is a way for people to define how much their class is superior to somebody else's. And and it doesn't matter how they do it. So to your point with quote unquote ethnic food, wh- wh- why is it ethnic? So then where is the center then?

• 1:42:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:20Trevor Noah?

  Where where is the the normal if that's the ethnic? The second thing is, like, the food itself. I find it interesting, even when you're talking about it, that people make it seem like those foods. Are not a default at all. They are being, they are the things you'd eat when you're going off the beaten path. Yeah.

• 1:42:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, adventurous.

• 1:42:41Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, adventurous. Oh, yeah, no, no, I.

• 1:42:43Speaker 01

  Off the beaten track.

• 1:42:44Trevor Noah?

  Oh, I couldn't. Then it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Adventurous is eating food that has no spice. That's adventurous. When I see people that eat food with no flavor, I'm like, wow, you're truly, you're you're adventurous. How how do you eat flu? It has no flavor, bro. The the food that we like, I think people take for granted how some of these things. Are used to define even what we're supposed to aspire to.

• 1:43:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:09Trevor Noah?

  Right? So to your point, you know how many kids, who, I mean, adults now, but how many people would talk about when they were kids? Korean, Indian, uh, you you name it. They had distinct cuisines and they were embarrassed their whole lives as kids.

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:43:23Trevor Noah?

  Embarrassed, they're, my best friend in school when I was growing up, Thiesan Pille, hated the fact that his mom gave him curry every single day.

• 1:43:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:31Trevor Noah?

  To take in in a sandwich.

• 1:43:33Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:43:33Trevor Noah?

  We became friends mostly because of this. We swapped our curry. Like, I gave him the money that my mom would give me for food. He'd give me his curry sandwiches. Every day when I would eat it, I was like, bro, I don't understand how you don't think this is the greatest food ever. But most of it boiled down to the fact that he felt like it was like less than.

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:53Trevor Noah?

  Because the other kids were eating burgers and hot dogs and all the things you could buy.

• 1:43:58Speaker 01

  Cheese sandwiches.

• 1:43:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. And then he had this curry sandwich that came in this little box and.

• 1:44:03Speaker 01

  The smell would obviously.

• 1:44:05Trevor Noah?

  Exactly, exactly. But but it's interesting how the, it's interesting how all of that. Becomes a signifier of your place in society and in the world. It's like, oh.

• 1:44:15Speaker 01

  I I think we were able to measure, growing up in the township, we were able to measure time of the day. We were able to measure what day of the week it was, based on what food there was.

• 1:44:26Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, definitely, yeah.

• 1:44:28Speaker 01

  Sunday had its own smell and flavor. After work five, six.

• 1:44:32Trevor Noah?

  Sunday.

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:44:33Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:33Speaker 01

  After work five, six, you'd be hard pressed to find any house in the township. In this cupboard that didn't have a box of curry, curry powder.

• 1:44:43Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:44:44Speaker 01

  So there was this famous brand called Raja. There was just curry powder. So the staples in every township home, onion.

• 1:44:52Speaker 01

  Tomatoes.

• 1:44:52Trevor Noah?

  You know this.

• 1:44:53Speaker 01

  Cabbage on a good day, spinach. But potatoes is a must.

• 1:44:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, potatoes is a staple.

• 1:44:59Speaker 01

  But the elevator was always just a pinch of that curry powder. That box would last the whole month.

• 1:45:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:06Speaker 01

  But it just elevated the whole dish. And you'd know when your mom is home, when you were playing in the streets, when you could just smell.

• 1:45:12Trevor Noah?

  You'd smell it everywhere. You'd smell it in the whole neighborhood.

• 1:45:14Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:45:15Trevor Noah?

  There was a, there was a fragrance that it, it, I love that you say that. It was, it was, it was, it was a, it was a. It was almost like a siren's call to come home. Home existed.

• 1:45:25Speaker 01

  Was a dinner bell.

• 1:45:25Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. Actually, this is something I've always wanted to know. I'm confused by this. So when I was in India, I would say curry. And then people were like, what are you talking about?

• 1:45:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:34Trevor Noah?

  Not really. So they go like, what do you love? And I'd be like, oh, I love curry. And they'd be like, what, what do you, what do you, what are you talking about? And then like once I said, like, even when I was there, I was like, naan. And the guy said, which naan? And I was like, none of that. None, none. And he's like, and then the, one guy said to me that like naan is bread.

• 1:45:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:45:53Trevor Noah?

  And I was like, yes, I want some naan bread. And then he said, no, you you're saying, and then he's, and then he, it was so, so cute the way he said it to me. He's like, he says. Says Trevor, he says, do you understand right now, you're saying bread, bread?

• 1:46:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:46:05Trevor Noah?

  Then I was like, what do you mean? He's like, you basically came to me and you said, I want bread, bread. And I was like, I I don't understand.

• 1:46:11Speaker 01

  I love the Indian accent in there.

• 1:46:12Trevor Noah?

  He's like, cause he he said it so like, he's like, yo.

• 1:46:15Speaker 01

  As a matter of fact.

• 1:46:16Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:17Trevor Noah?

  So, okay, help us understand. All of us who want to be initiated into this world, help us understand. So what is curry?

• 1:46:25Speaker 01

  It's not a, it's not, I didn't never heard of the word till I came to England. First time someone told me, do you, do you, do you know how to make curry? I was like, I don't know. I don't, I've never heard of it. It's an English word that the British used, that they morphed from, probably from curry, which is. A kind of, you know, South Indian kind of sauce, spicy sauce. We don't know. Every dish has a name.

• 1:46:51Speaker 01

  Curry is not a name of anything. I never heard of it. And first time I heard of it was in nineteen ninety two. I've heard the word curry. I've never heard of it before. And it's really interesting because it's almost like. They need to dumb it down to the lowest common denominator by calling it one thing. And the fact that they actually think there is.

• 1:47:18Trevor Noah?

  It's complexity as well.

• 1:47:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:47:19Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  Also, the fact that they think a country the size of India has something called Indian cuisine. Let an Indian try and say there's a European cuisine, or that I'm I'm in America, there's an American cuisine, you know. Putting the North and and and South America together.

• 1:47:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:38Speaker 01

  We are not that. But the problem is, they take away from us our layering, our identity. Our accent, the fabric that we wear, the thing that makes us different. By literally making our, by painting us all in one corner in the same shade.

• 1:48:00Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:48:00Speaker 01

  It's easier for them to deal with us. Curry is a problematic word. And, you know, I recently did a show where it was Secrets of the Curry Kitchen. And I was like, I don't want the word curry. But they were saying that people will not understand that it's about Indian food. And eventually, I gave in. I said, fine, you know, I'd rather people understood. And the first thing I said, the moment the camera comes on, I'm gonna say, there is no word like curry. They said, say it. So every, literally every episode, I said, there is nothing called curry, but I'm gonna show you how to make korma. I'm gonna show you how to make chalferies. I'm gonna show you how to make things.

• 1:48:31Trevor Noah?

  So the thing that we are calling, so when we say like, when people are like, I love butter chicken curry and I love vindaloo curry and I, that that's wrong.

• 1:48:39Speaker 01

  It's absolutely wrong.

• 1:48:40Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:48:40Speaker 01

  It's like, you know, I like spaghetti pasta and I love, it's it's a generic word that is added on. It has no meaning at all. There is no dish that doesn't have a name. And there are things that, you know, like in, you know, random things, like, you know, you will say, you know, zira alu, zira is cumin, alu. Alu is potato. So sometimes you might call something by the combination of things that are in there.

• 1:49:06Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:49:07Speaker 01

  And if you don't have a a name, because it's it's such an ordinary, everyday dish.

• 1:49:10Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:49:11Speaker 01

  Uh, but no, we have names for everything.

• 1:49:14Trevor Noah?

  So it's like saying rice and beans in that way. You you could say rice and beans because that's what it is. Yeah, just two, two things that are simple.

• 1:49:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So so we do have a lot of that as well. We have simple words like, you know, that we combine because they're, they talk about the two main ingredients. But I think that this is again to do with the fact that they have not, you know, I say this to a lot of people. I say, I will not let you eat my food unless you sit down and understand who I am. My music, my poetry, the rhythm, you cannot take away, you know, my fabric. My culture, my music, my architecture, my everything.

• 1:49:53Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:54Speaker 01

  And then dismiss me. I won't let you have my food then. Because you cannot appropriate my culture by. Dumbing down my food and taking the the easiest thing for you is to accept my food. You cannot have my food unless you have me. You need to understand. The problem is that so many cultures, uh. I mean, in England and in a lot of other countries as well, this is what they find easiest to take. But are they interested in hearing about your tribe? Are they interested in hearing about your faith? Or? Our poets or the books that excite us. You know, what is it that we wear in certain festivals? What keeps us up at night?

• 1:50:37Speaker 01

  No, they take our food because it's so easy and they walk away. There is no respect and where there is no respect on the table, I will not serve.

• 1:50:48Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:49Speaker 01

  I will not.

• 1:50:50Trevor Noah?

  Cause I feel like sometimes in our quest to be accepted, we become party to our own exclusion.

• 1:50:55Speaker 01

  Hmm, yeah.

• 1:50:57Trevor Noah?

  You know?

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  Yes, and I think that it's hard because when your bread and butter and forty one families.

• 1:51:02Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:03Speaker 01

  That I work with my team are dependent on our success.

• 1:51:09Speaker 01

  I have to be careful.

• 1:51:11Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:51:12Speaker 01

  But I take it to the very edge of where I can be.

• 1:51:15Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:51:16Speaker 01

  And I know everything I'm saying now, people will listen. You're hugely popular and I'm very grateful to be here speaking with you all because it allows me to reach out to an audience. In my Muslim name, in my accented voice, the fact that I tell the story of women and our food. You know, people should come and watch an open kitchen. There's no anger, no one is screaming and shouting.

• 1:51:40Trevor Noah?

  It's not the thing that we see in T V all the time.

• 1:51:42Speaker 01

  No, no, no. And the problem is that television is worshiping and all these crazy manic men who are not being able to deal with the pressure in the kitchen, I can send them to an ashram in India, in the Himalayas. If you, if you can't deal with pressure, go away. Do not, do not traumatize young people because we are losing.

• 1:52:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, you're not wrong.

• 1:52:06Speaker 01

  We're losing so many people, young men and women, who leave hospitality because some crazy person cannot deal with the pressure. Why do, do you ever hear of a C E O of a company going out slapping their secretary or someone else in there on the board? No, and who does, who are these chefs? Powerful people picking on their playground police.

• 1:52:25Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:26Speaker 01

  Tell them to go slap the owner or the head sommelier or this.

• 1:52:30Trevor Noah?

  The investors.

• 1:52:31Speaker 01

  Investors.

• 1:52:31Trevor Noah?

  Or the landlord.

• 1:52:32Speaker 01

  No, no. Who do they burn with hot spoons? Who do they bite? I've seen bite marks on women who've been bitten by, by them and the way that they slapped, you know, and our skin is dark. You really need to hit hard for us to show bruise.

• 1:52:49Speaker 01

  How are they being allowed? In no other profession, and I'm, I'm saying this not because I'm just, I'm a lawyer, but in no other profession and no other space with this level of assault. Physical, sexually allowed as allowed in the kitchen. If it was outside the kitchen, they would be in jail.

• 1:53:06Trevor Noah?

  In full display.

• 1:53:08Speaker 01

  In, but we are allowing this because we allow the excuse that this is pressure.

• 1:53:12Trevor Noah?

  It's even glorified.

• 1:53:13Speaker 01

  You, it is glorified, this is seen like they're these tormented people. And I, I feel that it's almost as if the men who cook today do not want to be reminded of the women who cook for them. Because like in England, I'm, I'm, I don't know what it's like inside, but like school meals were served by older women.

• 1:53:31Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, lunch ladies.

• 1:53:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, lunch ladies, exactly. Your memories are your grandmother, your mother, lunch ladies.

• 1:53:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:38Speaker 01

  Now that you're an artist, you will become this macho kind of crazy man. Who is so, you know, radiate testosterone because you've made cooking into a combat sport.

• 1:53:51Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:52Speaker 01

  So that it is so far away from the spiritual rhythm of the spices as they're crushed in our homeland.

• 1:54:01Trevor Noah?

  I even think the instrument that is used to, to, to, to symbolize cooking. The big, the knife, so combative, you're right. It's, I think it's a man that is, why not the, the spoon or the ladle?

• 1:54:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, come to my kitchen, you'll see that the only knife we have is a very small tomato knife. Because every household had one sharp knife and in my kitchen, we have one sharp knife and it moves between people.

• 1:54:29Trevor Noah?

  We all had one sharp knife, remember?

• 1:54:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:32Trevor Noah?

  There's one sharp knife in everyone's house in the township.

• 1:54:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and in my kitchen, I have one sharp knife. I don't have fancy knives. I got very excited, I went and bought some Japanese knives, we had to take women to A and E after that because they'd cut their fingers.

• 1:54:48Speaker 01

  We don't know because we're used to bloody working with blunt knives. But the whole thing is that why has it become so competitive? Why has it become about aggression and show? And that you are taking this ingredient and you are imposing yourself on it.

• 1:55:06Trevor Noah?

  Can I tell you why I think? I think it goes back to something that you said literally at the beginning of this conversation. It is because if you make it seem like it is combative and if you make it feel like it is pain and if you make it just like look like the, the most gritty and difficult task. Then people are more likely to appreciate it. Whereas the women who, as you said, when we first started, they make it look effortless. They make it seem as if it didn't take their time, as if the planning wasn't meticulous. They make it feel as if it was a foregone conclusion, you're less likely to appreciate it. And so funny enough, even just, if I'm just guessing in a way.

• 1:55:52Trevor Noah?

  When us Makana or any other woman, our grandmothers, whoever they were, when they would cook. And it would just be, when I think of like my grand and how much food she would cook every single Sunday for everyone in the family, we all had those, that story. There's not one, one time where I can remember her like barking like Gordon Ramsay, like screaming at people. Get me my bloody, where's my spinach, you little shit, why? But the amount of food that was cooked for people and the, and the quality and the consistency of that food.

• 1:56:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:25Trevor Noah?

  Do you get what I'm saying? Like, we're not talking about burnt bottoms, we're not talking about undercooked anything, but I'm.

• 1:56:30Speaker 01

  Using only four plates.

• 1:56:31Trevor Noah?

  Yo, the, and the stove itself, there was nothing fancy, there was no, you know what I mean, a coal stove.

• 1:56:39Trevor Noah?

  But if you think about it, beyond like her family and beyond that world, the appreciation isn't known. Everyone's like, everyone will go like, oh yeah, grandmother, but grandmothers know how to cook. Do you get what I'm saying?

• 1:56:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:50Trevor Noah?

  But when you punch walls and slap people and scream and come and wipe a plate with your, you know what I mean, and, and turn the plate, you know, they love doing that thing, you turn the plate, uh, turn the plate, then, then it makes it feel like, oh. I mean, this, oh.

• 1:57:05Speaker 01

  Effort.

• 1:57:06Trevor Noah?

  The effort, have you eaten there, have you, oh, we're lucky that we got in.

• 1:57:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:10Trevor Noah?

  It's so hard to prepare that, that one carrot in the middle of the plate.

• 1:57:14Speaker 01

  Even the words gastronomy.

• 1:57:15Trevor Noah?

  Oh, I mean, I actually think that's, that's a lot of what it is.

• 1:57:19Speaker 01

  This is so true, what you're saying. And, and then the added insult is that often I hear chefs being interviewed. And they say, who's the best chef? And they say, my mom or my grandmom.

• 1:57:32Trevor Noah?

  All of them.

• 1:57:33Speaker 01

  Show me a mom and grandmom who's in your kitchen.

• 1:57:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:36Speaker 01

  They are not there, there's also ageism.

• 1:57:39Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:57:39Speaker 01

  You know, and if you told me now to go chase a deer in a forest, deer will have gone to another continent by the time I even go near it. But you asked me to cook with very few ingredients and this is the simplicity of our thing. I will cook you a meal you will never forget. But the problem is that the world will judge me, will look at my body shape, will look at my age, will look at my gray hair. And decide, she's not creative, she's not dynamic, she's not this muscular, tattooed, pierced monster who's screaming.

• 1:58:16Speaker 01

  When was that ever something that was required to make a beautiful meal?

• 1:58:19Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:58:20Speaker 01

  Our grandmothers, my grandmother's slight and small and, you know, you come into my kitchen, you'll see, you know, we've got women who are not even five feet. They're small, they're bright, they're full of spark.

• 1:58:32Trevor Noah?

  They love to cook.

• 1:58:33Speaker 01

  They love to cook and there's a joy and they smile. But I, I, I feel so sad because we have, and also I must blame the media as well.

• 1:58:44Trevor Noah?

  Oh, definitely.

• 1:58:45Speaker 01

  The media, television, you know, all kinds of media worship this kind of irrational, erratic. Unkind behavior. Unkind behavior and the thing is that what bothers me is the physical, sexual abuse that's happening. And we are allowing this to happen, it's shameful because the, it's, I am ashamed of hospitality. I'm ashamed of our industry that we have not stood up for our women. We, it's not just women, it is men too. It is the, you know, empathetic men, men who are of different sexuality. The way that young, because often in, in England, you'll find young kids who are struggling in school be sent off to, you know, vocational training.

• 1:59:27Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:59:27Speaker 01

  They often learn cooking because it doesn't require you to read and write too much. They come in at sixteen, then they're called the most aggressive things. They are reminded, they're reminded about all the struggles that they had.

• 1:59:40Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:59:41Speaker 01

  How are you powerful when you cannot embrace the weak? When you cannot actually show them hope? For me, a leader is someone who tells someone who's gone in afraid and broken, who has been bullied in school and comes in. Boy or a girl, it doesn't matter. You take them into this world, your secret world of cooking and you show them how spice works. And use the food to speak to them about hope and love. Our, our industry is all about, you know, pushing each, each other down. And, you know, this kind of very fake, uh, uh, service.

• 2:00:23Speaker 01

  Where service and hospitality is all about, you know, impressing people, making them feel good. But when there are tears behind the wall in your kitchen, who are you actually looking after? We don't look after your own. So then if the guest leaves and thinks that this is great, give you a five star review, Michelin gives you a star, Michelin might give you three stars. What is that star worth? When you have broken the soul of someone in your kitchen and we are allowing this every day and we have not been able to protect our own.

• 2:00:54Trevor Noah?

  I often think, you know, to, to the point you, you're making about the media. I often think it, it's, it's quite an indictment.

• 2:01:05Trevor Noah?

  That, you know, and I'll use Hollywood as a shortcut for it because it's just one of the media spaces that has informed how we live. That Hollywood has been really lazy at finding ways to glamorize things that seem

• 2:01:23Trevor Noah?

  as if they contain no glamour. And, and what I mean is this is like, if you think about how many industries Hollywood has taught us about and how they've shaped how people see them. You can't help but think that it now becomes a case of like the tail wagging the dog.

• 2:01:44Trevor Noah?

  I'm yet to meet a policeman who didn't see police in a movie or on TV and think that that's what policing is. You know, simple example, we all at some point in our lives watched a TV show where there were police. Where the one cop wanted the law to be done so badly that they slammed someone's head on a table or they smashed them against the wall. And the story tells us that they are the good person.

• 2:02:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:08Trevor Noah?

  Because they're willing to break the law to save the law.

• 2:02:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:12Trevor Noah?

  And you're just like, wait, no, but if you, what are you doing? But the way it's portrayed to us, like, that's the way you do it. At some point, it's like, you know, turn off the cameras. I'll get this guy to talk.

• 2:02:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:23Trevor Noah?

  And we at home like, yeah, turn off the cameras, screw their civil liberties, eh, get them to talk, you know? And and then they do the same thing with like the military. They go like, this is how you do it. You go to that country and those people are savages and you you shoot them all. And we're like, yeah, shoot them all. We we do this with everything.

• 2:02:40Speaker 01

  There's no just war.

• 2:02:41Trevor Noah?

  The same thing that we do with the cooking or with the chefs is like, it's these stories of like, the only way you can make this food is if you're pained, if you're struggling, even artists. It's interesting how we forget that the image that we give out. That inspires people to become this thing becomes how they define who they're gonna be in it.

• 2:03:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:01Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 2:03:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, and and so when when I was approached by Chef's Table, I was so shocked. Because till then, I was like, you know, oh, these are like the world's best chefs and they're like, you know, serious artists, you know, with gold leaf and caviar.

• 2:03:15Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:16Speaker 01

  And then when I realized that this is not a hoax, first I thought it was a hoax. And then I realized it's real. I told them, don't script me. Please don't script me.

• 2:03:25Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:03:26Speaker 01

  This is that's, I'm not scripted at all. I told the story of my people. I spoke about my mother crying when I was born. As a second daughter, the lamenting on my birth. I spoke about inequality and justice. And I was so happy. They just sat there, let me say it. I didn't need to tell them that, you know, my food is this exquisite and I do this and I'm so tormented and I have all these things. I didn't need to. I cooked biryani and I opened the biryani and I fed people and that's what it is. But I think that the problem is that, you know, when you, media is looking for those kind of. It's like, you know, self fulfilling prophecy, you know, you're this, you're that, yeah.

• 2:04:09Speaker 01

  And there's so many of us, you know, I'm not just the only one. There are many people who have really interesting stories, who understand justice. But where are they? No one is telling their story. They don't get the opportunity to talk about what makes them special. And their food's special. And then you have, we are flooded by all these crazy wacko men. Who are going on beating people and we all think they're great because they're abusive. And.

• 2:04:38Speaker 01

  It really worries me because the problem is, and I don't want to be hypocritical, I'll tell you one thing, I don't have a daughter. If my daughter wanted to work in a commercial kitchen, I wouldn't let her go.

• 2:04:46Trevor Noah?

  Wow. Because of what you know?

• 2:04:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. I would, I would be awake and I would check her all the time to see, has she got injuries? Is she being bruised? Is she being bullied?

• 2:04:55Trevor Noah?

  It's funny you say that. Throughout our conversation, I was looking at your arms and you have no scars, you have no burn marks. Because I know this female chef who had like scars and burn marks all over her hands, all the way up to her elbow. And she said. That's the only way you get respect in these commercial kitchens is if you have these marks and these cuts on your finger. Means you've done the time and you've put in the time and you've done the work. And our grandmothers didn't have that. You don't have that.

• 2:05:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, if if if one of our grandmothers burned themselves, all the other aunties would say, how could you do it? You'd be looked down upon for getting punched. Don't, you know, that's a sign of incompetence. You are so right. And the whole point is that. You, the whole culture in a kitchen is so violent. It is so horrible. And I actually took on Michelin. I, there was proved allegation, it has to be proved allegation. Again, I'm a lawyer backing myself up.

• 2:05:49Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, the lawyer.

• 2:05:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've been backing myself up. It proved allegation where abuse happened in a kitchen which has a Michelin star. I asked Michelin, take the star off.

• 2:05:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:58Speaker 01

  They didn't reply to me for a long time. I kept asking them. Then they got back to me with some kind of, you know, answer saying, oh, that's not, that's not what we do.

• 2:06:07Speaker 01

  But you do. You recognize and you give a kind of accolade to that kitchen and that chef. But they have been brutal. They have been proved to have abused someone in the kitchen. Why can you not take off the star? But they will not. And the problem is that when the entire industry, you know, is based on this. That, no, we will not speak up. We will keep silent because I, I've never wanted to be. I am on the fringe of this all male Mayfair club. Mostly white people who are in this exclusive club, like you have them in Britain, where women come in.

• 2:06:49Speaker 01

  I mean, now, of course, the law has changed because the law says, women are members as well. But in hospitality, women are just guests who you sign in. You know, the clubs that we have, you sign a woman and you bring her in.

• 2:07:01Trevor Noah?

  Someone has to vouch for you.

• 2:07:03Speaker 01

  Someone has to vouch for you. And if you now look at all the successful women, I've always said this, whenever there have been proved allegations of abuse. In a kitchen, not a single Michelin star female chef has spoken up. If you Google and you will see, it's just me.

• 2:07:18Trevor Noah?

  The vouch stops there.

• 2:07:20Speaker 01

  It's just me. I write full page articles about allegations, including some very prominent male chefs. Who said, you know, we don't want to hire women because when they get pregnant, they cannot pick up pots. I was like, wow. To say this, I, and every female chef who is seen as a leader of this industry, who has a Michelin star. The silence is deafening. Why are you silent? And this is our problem. And I have said it repeatedly. And not even once has any of these women approached me privately saying.

• 2:07:51Trevor Noah?

  On the side.

• 2:07:52Speaker 01

  That, you know, I also agree with you, but because, you know, these are my friends, I I don't say. They haven't even approached me personally. That's how broken we are. That women see themselves as chefs first and women, fine, you can see yourself as, you know, queen of, you know, whatever. You can be who you, you can imagine yourself to be whatever you want. But I also see you as a female. I see you as a female leader. There's a woman in your team who might be getting bullied. Your silence tells her, shh, keep quiet. Because to progress, you stay silent. You you follow, conform to the system.

• 2:08:31Trevor Noah?

  Become an accomplice.

• 2:08:32Speaker 01

  I could not breathe, I could not live. If I had to stay silent and allow abuse in front of me. For my success, my success would hurt me more than anything else. And I don't understand. I guess it's a personality thing, but you know, I do not understand how they are still silent. Nobody else is speaking up. I'm one of the only females who's speaking up in the industry. And. Very, you know, not so long ago, a male chef was asked this in a press conference publicly. That, you know, what do you think of someone like Asma, who says, you know, that male chef? He said, tell her to come into a real kitchen and work with men. Tell her to come.

• 2:09:16Trevor Noah?

  He said this?

• 2:09:17Speaker 01

  When I challenged him, he said it was his, as English is not his first language. Uh, I was like.

• 2:09:24Trevor Noah?

  Done Frenchman.

• 2:09:27Speaker 01

  I was saying, English is also not my first language. But I would not say something like that. It's not about English.

• 2:09:35Trevor Noah?

  Wow, what a cop out.

• 2:09:37Speaker 01

  Yes. But.

• 2:09:38Trevor Noah?

  Eugene, I challenge you to come work in a real kitchen. What's that, Trevor? And me, no, no.

• 2:09:46Trevor Noah?

  E C U C, eh, no Eugene. I don't speak, eh, my first language is coward.

• 2:09:55Speaker 01

  That's true. So it's, uh, but despite how tough it is, I. I'm so optimistic. Maybe she's not born yet, but the legacy I'm leaving.

• 2:10:10Speaker 01

  And that girl that's not born yet, she will know my name. I will be dead and I will be dust. She will know there was someone like me who created a space that was free for women. And I want her to know. I want her to know my name. I want her to know that I walk in thorns and I go through fire. Because one day she will be free. And she will be without fear. And I, that is what. Excites me that I will be able to push back and clear the pathway and through.

• 2:10:50Speaker 01

  Just the water that I ski myself, that I leave everything moistened and fresh. And the harvest will grow and there will be women and men who will be free of fear. I I believe this will happen. I may not see it.

• 2:11:08Trevor Noah?

  You won't see it.

• 2:11:09Speaker 01

  But I feel that there will be a day when there is no fear in the kitchen. And this is what drives me and I feel everything in my life has led me to this place.

• 2:11:22Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 2:11:22Speaker 01

  Where I fight for those who I will never see. And I speak for those who I don't know. But what a privilege it is and what an honor to be able to do this. This excites me more than everything else because I, you know, all my friends who were in law school with me, who were really bad, are super rich now, you know, have fancy cars, live in St. John's Wood and all of this. And I think, you know, I may want to be poor my whole life and I think I will be. But I know that, you know, legacy is more important than everything else. You know, if you are a CEO or CFO of a company, your name is on a door with the with the title.

• 2:12:06Speaker 01

  But when you die, all your things are put in a box and given away after a respectable, you know, gap, someone else's name is put there. What is your legacy? I know one thing, that when I die, I will live on forever. Because I did something for women in industry, in kitchens, that no one else has done so far. And I asked my father that, you know, when I die, do not bury me inside the fortress and the palace, bury me on the street so that everyone can walk past and I want them to ask who is she? I want the world to know this story because I want them to know that you could succeed. You could be kind, you could be graceful, you could be, you know,

• 2:12:52Speaker 01

  caring about the community. And I'm very successful. I want people to know you can be successful without being scared.

• 2:13:00Trevor Noah?

  No, that's why you're here. And that's, that's, I mean, when I, when I told the team, when I was like, we really got to get Asma on, they were like, some people were like, who is Asma? Some people were like, oh, from chef's table. I was like, no, no, no. Forget all the things you know. You just, you just have to meet this person. And so I'm glad, I'm glad you came and joined us today. This was amazing. Thank you.

• 2:13:20Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. Thank you very much.

• 2:13:21Trevor Noah?

  Now, I mean, we have to, we have to go and eat the food now.

• 2:13:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:13:25Trevor Noah?

  I don't think I've ever been this hungry.

• 2:13:27Speaker 01

  You have to come and women cooking magical. You've got to come.

• 2:13:31Trevor Noah?

  No, I mean, that we know. That you can't even like.

• 2:13:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:34Trevor Noah?

  But just like now.

• 2:13:37Speaker 01

  Lambi ndota.

• 2:13:40Speaker 01

  My stove apparently.

• 2:13:43Trevor Noah?

  Eugene, download the app, Eugene. Download that app, Eugene. Let's get going. Asma Khan, thank you so much.

• 2:13:50Speaker 01

  You're welcome. Thank you so much.

• 2:13:51Trevor Noah?

  This was lovely. Thank you very much.

• 2:13:55Trevor Noah?

  What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Day Zero Productions in partnership with Sirius XM. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin and Jess Hackel. Rebecca Chain is our producer. Our development researcher is Marcia Robiu. Music mixing and mastering by Hannes Brown. Random other stuff by Ryan Parduth. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next week for another episode of What Now.

• 2:14:28Speaker 03

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