From bottle washer to head cook!

April 9, 2007 on 3:40 pm | In News - English |

 

 

   Anoothi Vishal / New Delhi April 08, 2007  

 

Madhu Goud Yaskhi, the only NRI MP in the current Lok Sabha, on cuisine from his home state.

What makes a well-settled professional making his millions in Manhattan want to come back to India; to a Naxal-affected district and jump into the chaos that we call electoral politics? Madhu Goud Yaskhi is the only NRI MP in the present Lok Sabha.

He represents Nizamabad (a constituency that not many wanted to touch), but behind the hectic jetsetting Delhi-Hyderabad-boondocks-and-back lifestyle, almost incessant phone conversations and the Indian politico’s trademark garb, there exists a fairly normal, harried working man we can all identify with.

A lawyer by profession, Yaskhi has one of the biggest firms specialising in corporate immigration in the US and even though he is now based in India, he maintains a virtual office, working through nights very often to meet deadlines.

On the day we catch him, however, it is politics that engrosses him. He is just back from a SAARC meet, is trying to catch fellow MP Jaya Prada on the phone — it’s apparently her birthday — but is good humoured enough to cook us a typical meal because we’ve learnt that while in the US, he ran a Hyderabadi restaurant, among other things.

“Bhagara pulao is what traditional wedding feasts would have; biryani was rich man’s food,” he tells me, then gives out a recipe, and another one for an innovative chicken curry (using buttermilk instead of the traditional “heavier” yoghurt) to go along with it, not to mention a quick one for khubani ka meetha (stewed apricots).

Almost as soon as we will have finished the meal, he would have to run to catch a flight to his hometown. There’s a meeting to attend, followed by dinner on a boat on the Hussain Sagar Lake, though Yaskhi has to be back in Delhi the next day! He is happy about the dinner but sad “because I won’t go home” to a doctor wife and two kids.

“I started off washing the dishes,” Yaskhi smiles. Not professionally but as a student sharing an apartment with two others in the US. The other two would cook, Yaskhi would clear up. Slowly, he picked up enough to assemble a sandwich.

But it was only once he started working that he picked up many more recipes, out of necessity, from his mother and sisters, but some also his own innovations — a quick dal makhni, a quicker spinach with cream cheese.

Finally, he started a restaurant — not too originally called Masala — since “at that time there were few Indian ones and these were run by Bangladeshis. The food was nothing like what you’d get in Hyderabad or Delhi.” Yaskhi’s restaurant, on the other hand, served several kinds of biryani, haleem and curries.

Today, Masala has been sold off. The NRI has returned. Because despite the thriving practice, it was not enough. After all, “how many millions can you make, how many more houses can you buy?” Food is another matter!