I have a memory as a child
of a steam train, the Darjeeling Express,
that runs through the foothills of the Himalayas.
It makes all this huffing and puffing noise.
As it went up higher into the mountains,
you leave the heat and absolute crazy humidity of Calcutta.
The relief of the air being so cool...
Absolutely spectacular.
I remember, as a child, putting my head out of the window.
I would call my name out,
and the entire mountain would echo my name back to me.
That was my moment of freedom, of liberation.
I controlled where my life was going.
I knew, one day, everybody would know my name.
The Indian dining scene in London
is like no other anywhere else in the world.
The British have this incredible and insatiable affection for Indian food.
As a result, there are thousands of Indian restaurants
at all different levels.
But that doesn't mean there isn't space for anything new.
Darjeeling Express challenges pretty much every preconceived notion
that people have of traditional Indian restaurants.
Are we ready to serve?
Unh huh. The rice is hot.
Okay, fine, yeah.
Asma explores the entire gamut of various different influences.
Her cuisine ranges from Calcutta street food
to the royal court influence that comes from her family.
What's really beautiful is that it is not put together in a formulaic way.
It is about saying, "This is the stuff that I really love.
These are the dishes and this is the menu that I want everybody to try."
And I think that is a beautiful thing.
Most paneers are made with lots of cream,
but my mother used to always make it like this, so...
In Bengal, we use tons and tons of kalonji, so it's a bit unusual.
When you go to Darjeeling Express,
Asma will tell you the history of every dish
and how it relates to perhaps her family or the historical side of India,
but also the emotional connection
that she and the people who cook in her kitchen
have with the food that she makes.
Asma Khan assembled this amazing kitchen,
a kitchen entirely staffed by women.
Women who had, previous to working with her,
never worked in a professional kitchen before.
I don't know who would do that, but then I met Asma,
and I realized who would do that.
Two brown rice? Isn't that a bit boring?
I'm not saying anything, but just...
We're pretending to try to be healthy, though.
- This you should have with white rice. - Okay.
Enjoy life, my dear.
Yeah.
She's incredibly passionate, inspired and inspirational.
Asma could tell me trees were pink and planted upside down,
and I'd probably believe anything Asma told me,
because she is so charming.
Please don't be polite. Don't wait for everyone else to eat.
And why are you waiting?
For me to come and pass the plate?
I'll get you your chutney.
I think the world is big enough for everybody.
People are people.
There are no divisions in my kitchen or in my restaurant.
We always say, "The guest is an incarnation of God."
I want people to feel that they are valued.
They will be looked after as if they've gone to a relative's house.
I'm cooking food from my home, from meals I've had in my family.
I tell them the stories of the dishes.
I'm taking their hand and taking them along.
My aim is for you to leave feeling like someone had embraced you.
That's how food should be.
I get happiness from seeing people's eyes when they eat the food I've cooked.
That feeling, when you can light up someone's soul
with something you prepared,
that is a privilege and an honor.
When I started cooking,
I wanted people to have something that reminded them
of really, really exciting, happy times.
Big celebrations, big family weddings.
You never forget your first biryani.
The biryani that I make is called the dum biryani,
and dum is basically steam.
The whole process is layering.
At the very bottom, the meat,
spices, saffron-infused milk.
Potatoes go on top.
The rice goes above the potatoes.
And we seal it with dough.
And it's gone. You cannot see it.
You don't know what's happening.
What holds that biryani together is faith.
So many things can go wrong with your biryani.
Changes with the quality of rice, the age of rice,
the amount of time it's had in the spicing.
Even with 25 years of cooking professionally,
I get butterflies in my stomach.
When we're ready to serve,
we mix it.
That's when this amazing, beautiful aroma comes up.
You smell the history, the spice trade.
And when the rice is served, every grain is perfect.
A lot of things that Asma does is about feeding people lots of food,
and a biryani is that ultimate dish.
It is an expression of her generosity.
That is what makes Asma's biryani quite special.
If you had to eat one thing at Darjeeling Express,
in my mind, it's got to be the biryani.
- A desi mango... - Is a generic mango?
Or is it actually a variety?
It is the original mango of this area,
but, you see, Dasheri is not very popular.
- It doesn't travel well. - Hmm.
Centuries ago, my father's family were nomadic warriors.
We would go in and fight with whoever could afford us.
Eventually, we left the desert and settled down in India.
We acquired orchards, we grew roots.
I remember you, as a child, you used to be put on the floor,
- and you were just given the seed. - I've heard this story.
And chomp, chomp, chomp, you used to eat it.
And you used to sit and watch me eat it, yeah.
When I was very young, the mango orchard was always the place
we would go to with my father.
My father loves to talk about the fact that, in the 19th century,
at the Great British Exhibition,
the family mangoes were declared as the best mango in the world.
The same soil has three varieties of mangos.
Yeah, the Langra and the Dasheri and the Chaunsa.
- Langra is the best. - I disagree. I prefer the Chaunsa.
On this, we'll forever, forever disagree.
We used to have these long conversations.
He would cut open three or four varieties.
"What do you taste?"
He wanted to explain to us
the differences of flavors, acidity, sweetness, texture.
Each mango is individually unique.
I think his thing was that we must understand
this gift from the soil.
One day, he took me to my family ancestral fortress,
and he took me up to one of the towers,
and he pointed out the slums that were below.
He said, "It's an accident of birth.
You could have been there, or you could have been here."
And he told me, "Use your life to make a difference...
because being in a position of privilege, you have a duty
to lift others up."
That kind of education, it left a deep impact on me.
In India, when a girl is born,
there's no celebration and no fireworks.
It's that moment of darkness in a family.
And when you're unlucky enough to have another girl,
it is not like a life, but almost like a death.
My mother cried at my birth.
I was born a second daughter.
We have an archaic tradition of dowry.
Families have to have this grand Indian wedding.
They gift jewelry. They buy a flat for the husband.
It can wipe them out financially.
A girl is a burden.
Before I was born, my mother would constantly be told,
"I hope this one is going to be a boy."
And no, lo and behold, it was me.
I remember so well, people pointing to me and saying, "That's it?"
I saw that disappointment in their eyes.
I used to feel sad for my mother.
And I used to feel angry.
Why am I just "it"?
I want to erase that moment when they told her it was a girl.
I can't wipe those tears, but what I can do
is bring pride into my mother's eyes,
become this amazing thing,
leave a mark,
a mark so deep that no one cares that I was a second daughter.
- I think you're putting too much. - No, Asma, I'm telling you...
I promise you, you're gonna love what I'm doing.
- Show me and explain everything to me. - My favorite blush-on in the world.
Oh, this is very pink. I'm not gonna put it.
No, Asma, it's gonna blend into your face.
Amna, nothing will blend in.
- I promise you, two dots. - I'll look like a joker.
- One, two, okay? - Two dots on both sides.
You remember getting dressed up when we were little?
- Yeah, I hated it. - I know.
- And you tortured me. - I know, but it was all for a good reason.
- Don't make me nervous, okay? - I'm... If you're nervous, I'll do it.
- Okay, then, do it. - Okay, tell me, no?
- Yeah. - I'll do myself.
As a child, I was a real tomboy,
running wild, climbing trees, falling off.
My father would find me on the street playing cricket.
I used to be dragged home.
I think I was trying to be a boy for my mother.
And I had this awesome reputation of being the wild child,
you know, really out of control.
They couldn't find a boy to marry me,
'cause whoever they approached, they were like, "Oh, no, no, not her."
Ow, ow, ow.
- I'm taking this off. I wanna... - It's beautiful. It's regal.
- Doesn't matter. - It makes you look like a princess.
I am a princess. I don't have to wear all this to show I'm a princess.
It's stuck in my hair.
So, my parents had to let me go to college.
That is when everything changed.
I met the most suitable boy I could have married.
An academic, a gold medalist from Oxford University.
An innocent man who walked in having no idea what I was.
I really liked him, and I wanted to marry someone
who respected me for my intellect.
And we got married and I moved to London.
It was a big deal. My parents, they were very proud.
My father really liked Mushtaq.
Everyone thought this was just ideal for me.
I was ready to go and live this beautiful life.
Living in England, I wanted to do something useful.
I always just wanted to be taken seriously.
I have always done things that would make my parents proud of me.
So I decided to study law.
I did the law degree, and I went straight into the PhD program.
My father loved calling me Dr. Asma.
This is how it's supposed to be.
You're supposed to have this great life,
and you're in this foreign land, which is very exciting.
But over time, I had this kind of constant feeling of "something's not right."
My husband was teaching all the time, and I had no friends.
There was this kind of vast emptiness in me.
I felt that all the time.
I spoke to my parents once a week on a three-minute call.
I spent most of my time telling my parents I'm okay,
and I put the phone down,
and it was a lump so big for all the things I couldn't say.
I was very lonely.
Okay, so just do one.
I had left my home, my family.
I saw so many people who would smile at me,
but I couldn't relate to anything or to anyone.
It was a kind of strange, isolated existence.
One day, when I was cycling,
I went a little further than I normally do,
and I passed this house.
I could smell someone was making paratha.
That smell that you get when you burn butter,
that beautiful smell,
that was the smell from home.
It was my entire childhood.
I wanted to have the courage to ring the bell,
but, instead, I cried.
I felt so helpless
and so angry with myself.
I didn't know how to make paratha. I didn't know how to make anything.
I knew I had to go home.
When I came back to India,
I had to tell my mother that I am just dying.
I was deeply unhappy.
I was just drifting.
My mother said, "You're crying because you're hungry.
Hungry for food that tasted like home."
She said, "I'm going to teach you how to cook."
In the Indian tradition, there are these iconic dishes
that people have carried through generations.
For so many South-Asian women,
their signature dishes means honor and respect.
Women in my family built up these reputations for certain dishes.
And that recipe, they never part with, not even to their own daughter.
My mom and all my aunts and my grandmother,
they must have seen the huge emptiness in my soul.
Everybody understood. Everybody rallied around me.
"Let's get the lists out. Let's start teaching you."
I stood next to them.
I watched. I listened to what they were telling me,
and I absorbed everything.
Give me that.
The smells and the aromas and the actions,
there's a rhythm to it.
It's that beat that hits you here, and you hear it again and again.
And then in the end, it all becomes this beautiful, almost magical song.
So, I inherited this fabulous legacy of guarded signature dishes.
It is embedded in my soul.
I went back home to the UK a different person.
I started cooking.
Oh, my God, my husband was flat on the ground, he was so shocked.
I love this. You can try every kind of vinegar.
At that time, there was a school opposite my house.
I saw some South-Asian women.
Many of them were working as nannies, as housekeepers,
with families that were European.
Strangers in a foreign land.
They were in the same position as me.
Cheers! Thank you.
I told them, "Come and have tea with me."
I had learned how to make seriously good chai.
When they came to my house, we made friends.
I started cooking for them.
It felt so wonderful.
We felt like we were back in India.
And then slowly, they started coming more often.
Everything changed.
I ended up with a group who I would consider now my sisters.
This was the best part of my life.
Having the ability to cook was, for me, the huge transformation.
How I felt about life, where I lived, myself...
Now, this feels like home.
I had a neighbor who told me that he went to a supper club.
He described an underground restaurant.
I thought that was so cool.
My whole life, I've wanted to do something illegal.
So, he was like, "No, it's not illegal.
It's just that you call people to your house,
and you feed them, and they pay you."
And I thought, "This sounds like something I can do."
When I talked about my supper club to my friends,
they were like, "We'd like to help prepare the meal."
There were three, four of us in the kitchen.
They did all the prep. I cooked the food.
It was very small in the beginning.
My children would wander off into their rooms.
And luckily my husband was traveling a lot.
He was not really aware at that time that I was doing it.
Maybe I lied a bit and didn't tell him.
I started getting a lot of pressure from people.
Like, "I'd really like to bring my boss," and, "I wanna bring my partner."
And it grew in number.
People would put stuff up on social media.
People wrote blogs about it. Strangers would write to me saying,
"I've seen these pictures. I'd really like to come."
And slowly, I had a following of people.
I was basically having huge parties.
Twenty-five to thirty people, grand banquet.
Random strangers are sitting around and eating the food,
and then in the end everyone was friends.
I always saw supper clubs
as a bridge between my culture and me and someone else.
And feeding them was that bridge to get to them.
Yeah. Make sure that it's round, yeah.
That will be fine.
- Okay... - That had too many cracks.
Don't try and force those issues, because you can't.
Very good. Just like... Yeah, yeah.
Now, turn it.
I continued doing supper clubs at my home.
Those were brilliant cooking days.
I cooked all night, I cooked all day,
and I loved it. This was my calling.
The supper clubs became an issue when my children got a little older.
They didn't complain to me, they complained to my dad.
My father, who's a really mild-tempered person,
just said, "This is unacceptable."
My parents were not impressed.
I had not even considered the kids' feelings.
He said, "You've gotta shut the supper clubs."
I was quite stunned.
I asked my family how they felt.
My husband tolerated it. Angry, but silent.
But my kids hated it.
They told me this was horrible that there were people in the house,
and it was so chaotic, and it was not a nice way to live.
I was ashamed.
I had not seen things from their perspective.
In my own excitement and joy of cooking,
I had forgotten that my children also have equal rights in that house.
This was something that I felt was so wrong,
that had been done to girls in our families.
That girls were not asked their opinion.
No pleasure I was getting was worth making my kids unhappy.
And I promised them that I will stop.
And I stopped.
It was painful to stop something that had given me a direction.
When I first told my family
that this was what I really wanted to do,
the common response was silence.
The silence says everything.
The silence was major disapproval.
I was the first female PhD in my family.
Most of my cousins never even went to college.
They thought, "You're in London. You have a law degree. You wanna cook?"
I think that everyone was just like, you know, "Why?"
Because it made me happy.
And now, I wasn't alone.
In my community, South-Asian women, we are hidden behind a wall.
It is an anonymous, faceless, nameless existence.
I saw in these women...
that fire, the desire...
the joy.
We all were on that same journey together.
I knew I just had to find a way.
I had to find an alternative.
I ventured at a couple of people
and I unexpectedly met someone who told me, "Your food is really good.
Why don't you go to Soho and do a pop-up in my husband's pub?"
I decided to go.
We were doing a series of food pop-ups with kitchen residencies.
Asma presented me with a puchka, which I've never had before,
a little Calcuttan street snack.
I was immediately taken by it, and I knew that there's something there.
I really had doubts.
The first time I saw the pub kitchen, I was so shocked,
because I didn't even know what half the things were.
I'd never seen a big fryer like that. I could fry myself in it.
It was all a bit scary. Everything was intimidating.
The first few days, it was chaotic.
I went into the kitchen and it was...
it was like an explosion had gone in there.
It was a bit of a disaster.
She was used to making a family-style supper club.
So it was a big change for them.
All of us were home cooks.
We had absolutely no clue, were scrambling around like mad.
Sometimes we ran out of food.
The guests were really genuinely angry.
It was very embarrassing.
I felt that I was letting everyone down.
A lot of people said I should get a professional chef.
I couldn't do it.
I didn't want these women to feel
that their effort had been taken for granted.
If you stand at the edge of the mountain
and you think you're going to fly, you will.
You will only fall if you think you're going to fall.
Losing was not an option.
I go into every battle to win.
I didn't know how I was gonna do it, so I winged it.
I started talking to customers.
I spent a lot of time apologizing.
And when food ran out, I used to write "I owe you" vouchers.
"Free Tangra prawn for next time. I owe you."
We all learned at the same time.
We learned how to multitask and get the food out.
This was a different kind of training.
People were starting to take notice of her food.
We were starting to get busier.
You could see them grow as a team.
The bond within that kitchen was very strong.
Then we get Fay Maschler from the Evening Standard.
She'd come in on her 70th birthday.
I mentioned to Asma, "Look, Fay's here. This is a big thing."
Asma, in her usual way, went straight up to Fay and started talking.
I was a little concerned this could be a bit too much.
A week later, Fay's article came out.
It was... spectacular.
From there, it exploded.
There were queues of people.
It changed everything.
One night, we had a very, very busy service.
We managed to feed a lot of people.
One of my women turned around and told me,
"We're just like professional chefs.
We're doing the same thing."
There was just silence in the group.
We all realized, "Yes, we're just like them."
People were watching us...
and we were in control.
So, I closed my eyes and I imagined myself flying.
I am very, very lucky.
The meal on my table is not dependent on my income alone.
But all these women, they're supporting families back home.
So, when I opened Darjeeling Express,
I didn't let any of them resign from their positions.
The first few months were hard.
Everybody was still working somewhere else.
Over time, one by one,
they started cutting back on their nanny shifts,
giving their notices.
When the last person quit their job and joined us full-time,
that was my moment when I put the flag in the sand.
The people who were working so hard in the restaurant,
they had come home.
When the restaurant happened, I selected everything.
From the color of the tile to the blue on the walls, even the plants.
I wanted to have an open kitchen because I wanted people to see
the hands that cooked the food,
just celebrate the soul of my kitchen.
Now, people are walking up to my women, ignoring me,
and saying, "Thank you very much. That was a great meal."
I was watching these women, so blasé...
"You're very welcome. So glad you liked the meal."
They've taken ownership of the kitchen.
This restaurant is theirs, as much as mine.
The Darjeeling Express is an oasis for women.
I've watched these women grow...
...stand tall...
...be proud...
This is what happens to women when other women stand by them.
Okay, and put the yellow one here also.
Okay, and the other yellow one over there in the joint.
Yeah.
My mother stood by me.
She taught me how to cook.
I wanted to do things that would make her hold her head up high.
Because I know that it was hard for her when I was born.
And now she's very, very proud of me.
She tells the whole world, the whole world...
Yet, I still feel I want to do something more.
I've had a chance to start a charity.
The aim of this charity is to celebrate the birth of second daughters.
We pay for a party.
We pay for sweets...
and fireworks.
It's a loud proclamation.
It says something.
If you think that you are unwanted, that you are not equal...
that you won't be allowed.
You can do anything.