Michelin Star Chef Suvir Saran On Pride, Romance, Relationships

Photo: @suvirsaran

Suvir Saran is the author of three celebrated cookbooks: Indian Home Cooking, American Masala, and Masala Farm. His recipes have been featured in Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many more. He has served as a judge on Iron Chef and Next Iron Chef on the Food Network. In spring 2011, Saran was a break-out star on Bravo’s Top Chef Masters. He got a Michelin star while at New York’s Devi, a first for Indian cuisine. Here he talks about romance: 

By Suvir Saran

Hindsight can make our past years seem perfect at times; it can also fill us with regret. Is hindsight something to gloat about, or is it a tool that ought to keep us honest and smarter in our everyday choices? This is a question I wrestle with and whose answer I find elusive and not as perfect as the clarity of hindsight itself. I do have regrets as I look back at some youthful decisions, but never have I felt more certain of the value I’ve gained from the four long-term relationships I’ve had in the last 33 years of my life. Even in hindsight, there is nothing I would change about them. I might have felt caged and cloistered, even suffocated and lost at times, but as I look back at the moments I experienced while in a relationship, I mostly find smiles and joy as I reflect upon those times, and the richness they added to my life.

My first relationship that was even remotely a semblance of what a couple have between them started when I was barely 19 years old and lasted for 2 years. This was my first romance, and it filled and fulfilled my life in ways I had only ever imagined until then. My lover was a much older man, whose friends joked that he was cradle snatching. I would retort by saying I was gravedigging. Age didn’t matter, as we were both smitten and madly in love. For him I was the most exotic thing he could have found, and for me, he was the first love that wasn’t just my imagination and fantasies, but all flesh and blood, smiling, reacting, connecting and appreciating me, as I was him. This made the sail thrilling and adventurous, even when tumultuous and challenging. It was the ending that broke me, but I remember being grateful to my lover for having me move for him from India to New York City, a place which I quickly realized was home for my soul. This first love, which I had hoped would also be my last, had failed, had me crushed, but in hindsight, was everything it should have been. Most importantly, it opened my world and made me a Manhattanite.

My second relationship was with a Greek god, literally and figuratively. I met him at Monster the bar by Stonewall in Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village. The man staring at me was everything he should be as defined by a very narrow approach to beauty. His eyes and their soulful gaze in mine had me melting even before he approached me. Soon we were headed to his home in Astoria, a first trip to that then quaint neighborhood of Queens, New York. Little did I know that Stephanos was indeed a Greek American and that the neighborhood I was headed to would become a “hood” giving comforting haven to artists today.

We were enamored by the physicality of the other, impressed by the authenticity and integrity we each brought in our person, and loved how we were both deeply connected to our ancestral roots. Within a week or so we had moved in together, adopted a cockatiel, and started cooking and having parties. There was so much connecting us, but it wasn’t long before we realized there was also something missing, which kept us from consummating the relationship. We were too decent to destroy what we had and too smart to not address the issue at hand, and so, Stephanos helped me move to another apartment in Long Island City. In the space of less than a year, I had healed from the wounds of the breakup with my first love and gotten to live with a man who loved and adored me, respected and appreciated me, and came into my life to give me confidence in myself. He taught me that there was a tomorrow and many more rich days after that for me to live, love and grow.

The third relationship started very quickly after this. I was attending a fundraiser for Gay Pride at the LGBTQ Center in Manhattan. There I found a man who looked like a cross between Kevin Costner and Stephanos, my Greek god, recent ex, and good friend and confidant. I was smitten, his friends connected us, and soon we were dating. Just as soon, we started cohabiting. Everything happened very fast. My lover was a dozen years older, much wiser and very accomplished. He helped create and sustain many community-minded organizations. My work kept me busy during the days; my cooking kept our kitchen producing yummy foods that would bring countless numbers to our table, and we raised much money for charity. Our home became a hub for the queer community. Our annual holiday party would draw scores of people to dine at our home, to eat fare cooked by me with help from my lover and bring them a sense of celebration that seemed to us unmatched anywhere in the Manhattan of those days.

My lover was an ivy-league-educated genius, and I was an artist who had big dreams and was only beginning his life. Our relationship challenged both of us greatly. We worked hard on it, but when we parted after seven years, there was discord. Thankfully, today we meet and chat, share notes back and forth, and

enquire about family and friends. This is the depth and foundation of our union that has me looking back at what was a tough and challenging time with gratitude and pride. This relationship helped make me who I am and gave me a wide array of talents to cull from when lost for what to do and what to offer others who are as lost as I was when I entered this relationship. Those moments of feeling small even as I was doing things big, and visionary were moments that made me forever strong and formed a backbone that would keep me rallying ahead in life no matter what the challenge.

My next relationship started when I was bottoming out in the last one. Life presented me with a charming, tall blond man with blue eyes, who was a bundle of effervescence and boundless hope. A Midwesterner, his was a confidence and gentility that was based on having made his life for himself, despite all the odds presented to him by family and circumstance. Genius and masterful with words, color, design and decoration, it was his soft heart and brave soul that captured my attention. He was four years younger, and we fell in love at first date. He saved me from myself and showed me the path out of a relationship that was done and needed to be given rest. We moved in together, set up six homes on two continents and traveled the world, creating opportunities and discoveries for one another that brought us both joy. Our relationship was certainly the envy of many, and most were in awe of our life.

Lover number four had me in his camp and happily so. The two of us and our families grew closer with each year and every holiday that we celebrated together. My travels took me far and wide and had number four caring for our home and our two- and four-legged family, as well as the humans that we called family and friends. Idyllic was our home and our shared life. That we separated twenty years into our relationship was entirely my own doing. Scars from my past, my staid early years as a gay man without any avenue to discover and come of age, my innocence and my poor judgment – these got the better of me and took us to a dark place where it was best to separate and save what respect we could still have for the other and give one another a new lease on life. That he is happily in love and making home with his new lover gives me comfort and has me crying tears of happiness and soulful fulfilment.

Almost 52 and single for the longest stretch ever in my life, I look back at relationships past and find hope and comfort in the idea of finding another. Of course, being in one can be akin to having a bird in a cage. A caged bird does sing, and when given love and nourishing, affectionate care, also connects with us in ways free birds don’t. In the same way, a relationship, when good and great, is everything one can wish for and more. Do I miss being a caged bird? I would lie if I said I was happy being part of the single scene, ready to party, be a serial dater, and have multiple choices. Thrilling and exciting is the life of a single man, but I am caged by the shackles of my imagination and heart, of my experience and my desires – they have tasted the nectar that is true love, and they are craving for more of this brand of birdcage.

Single and ready to mingle, with gorgeous men throwing themselves at me, and me at them, I sometimes find myself fleetingly excited and on a high, but even before such a relationship can be consummated, I am already wanting something else. Men my age, older, and younger, have all come calling at the altar that is my singledom. But I am craving another flavor, another fruit, one that comes with the shackles of committed love and the rich tapestry that is a working and living, thriving and bursting-at-the-seams, full-fledged relationship. I have hope, and I have dreams, I have songs I shall still sing when in that cage. It is hindsight – hindsight that values what I’ve had but keeps me honest and smarter in my everyday choices – that tells me I am not wrong to be chasing that dream. (ANI)