Years ago, before I even launched my first book, I launched my recipes on a CD at a time when our computers did not even have CD-ROM drives. My website sanjeevkapoor. com was up and running when large media houses did not have their own websites. My motto even today is to dream big and only then will the dream turn into a reality.
I see so many young, talented people not reach the heights that they could have because they are scared of taking a different path and choose to stick with the old, the tried, and the tested.
When I finished graduation and had to make a career choice, I decided to do a degree in architecture. I was a young, overconfident boy then and only applied for a seat at a nearby college, believing that they would definitely give me a seat. To my horror, I did not cut it in the first attempt and my name was put on the college’s waiting list. A close friend then introduced me to the idea of a hotel management degree and even though I had no interest in it—in my head, a chef was a mere cook then and not the glamorous being he is looked as today—I decided to appear for an interview for a lark. To my surprise, I cleared the interview and days later, I got a call from the architecture college as well saying a seat was now available for me there! It was a friend’s father who finally helped me decide on following the hotel management degree. ‘It is better to excel in a mediocre field than be mediocre in an excellent field,’ he told me.
At the end of my three-year course when it was time for placements for the management training programme at the government-run ITDC hotel, the selection panel suggested that I follow a career in kitchen management instead of absorbing me for a hotel management placement. I was furious and accused them of discriminating against me because I came without ‘connections’. The senior most member of the selection panel managed to convince me that I would have a place in hotel management if I so wanted. He told me that I was very good with the kitchen and food side of the business and told me to go home and think about it before I made my choice. By the time I went back to him the next day, my mind was clear and I had decided to take his suggestion and adopt the kitchen and food space as my career. Looking back, I like to think that I made the right decision. I truly believe that if you have the guts to stand out in a crowd, the chances of your standing out in life are much higher.
Kriti, you have your mind set on being a professional runner and have been following that passion for years now. Sometimes I am worried about you because this is a career that will be fraught with hurdles, one in which the chances of success are way limited than other spheres, simply because of the way sports is perceived in our country. But having followed my own dreams without heeding popular opinion and without always looking at the practical side of things, I want you to pursue your dream till the very end. Become the best runner that this country has produced.
Years ago, when I quit my job as Executive Chef at the Centaur hotel in Mumbai, your mother and I had no house of our own and had less than a lakh between us. But I quit because I was convinced I was meant for better things in life. I was working for nearly eighteen hours a day and was getting nowhere fast. I was looking at master chefs who had taken twenty years of slogging to get to that post and I was determined to not go down that route. Luckily, my tryst with television took off around that time and that too because I managed to convince the bosses at Zee TV that their food show would have much more potential if they called it ‘Khana Khazana’ instead of ‘Sreeman Baawarchi.’ I used my management education and my marketing skills to convince them and by the end of it, they were so sold on my idea and my ease with television as a medium, that I became the face of the by-now longest-running food program on television in India. What worked for me is the fact that I was a good teacher and I decided to use the show to teach viewers what they wanted to know instead of simply having me show off my skills. If they failed in their kitchen with my recipes, I would fail too and so I began with simple recipes such as the humble lassi that would make them succeed. That simple formula clicked and made me a household name in Indian homes and ever since then, my strategy has been to never set up my team for failure by giving them responsibilities that they are not equipped to handle.
My dear Rachita, my father taught me the value of knowledge. He was a banker and he spent the better part of his day at work but he continuously surprised us with the span of his knowledge on everything. He was on the lending side of the business and would say that if he did not know everything about the borrower’s business, his bank would run the risk of losing its money. When you study something,
