NEW YORK (TIP): Indian American Michelin-star celebrity chef Vikas Khanna, who has won all round praise for distributing over 17 million meals to coronavirus hit in 135 Indian cities, has set the twitter ablaze with a classy repartee to a TV anchor.
“My sense of hunger came from New York!” the Amritsar, Punjab-born celebrity chef who has cooked for the Obamas among others told an uppity BBC anchor, referring to his struggling days in the Big Apple.
‘Well done, chef!’ responded twitteratti to his epic reply to a BBC TV anchor who had patronizingly suggested that “Khanna would understand hunger as he does not come from a rich family.”
“In India, you were not from a rich family. So your sense of hunger must have come from there,” asked the anchor.
“NO, I am from Amritsar, everyone gets fed there in the langars (community kitchens). My sense of hunger came from New York!” responded Khanna.
In a 79- second video clip shared by Twitter user Harpreet, the anchor asks Khanna, “You’ve cooked for the Obamas, you’ve been on the TV show with Gordon Ramsay. But it wasn’t always that way, was it? You’re not from a rich family. So, I dare say, you understand how precarious it can be in India.”
“No,” responded Khanna, “I understand, but my sense of hunger didn’t come from India so much because I was born and raised in Amritsar.”
“We have a huge community kitchen where everyone gets fed. The entire city can feed there,” he said. ‘But my sense of hunger came from New York when I was struggling here from the very bottom.”
The video has gone viral with over 520,000 views and hundreds of comments on Instagram and over 38,000 likes and nearly 15,000 retweets on Twitter.
“@TheVikasKhanna does it again, slaying so gently and with such ease n humility,” tweeted Vinita Nigam. “The best swords do not leave a mark or spill a drop even as they do their work !!”
“Absolute gold from Chef Vikas. These Britishers are still in colonial hungover. Well done Chef, very well done,” wrote another tweeter.
“Well done Vikas Khanna !! It takes a very large heart to be as generous as a Sikh and Amritsar is beloved for all,” tweeted Venkatesh Iyengar.
“I’m a South Indian by janm (birth), a Maharashtrian by karm (work), a Sikh by aatma (soul) and above all an Indian who’s proud of all the above!
That’s the befitting reply to @BBCWorld for their biased reporting and peddling anti India agenda across the globe,” wrote Krishan Kumar. “Thanks to @The VikasKhanna for upholding Indian Values.”
Khanna was in the news last week for providing meals and other essential supplies to over 5,000 families of Mumbai’s legendary Dabbawalas and television support staff through a distribution drive called “Utsav”.
The Mumbai event on Friday marked Khanna’s FeedIndia movement launched in April crossing the 17 million meals mark.
“Life – Who knew that the BIGGEST event of my life (2.25 Million Meals) will be organized from 7,000+ Miles away,” tweeted Khanna before the event.
“The story of DabbaWallas is very emotional to me and I feel honored to support their families during these times,” he wrote. “TV Support Staff is the reason that I connected through this medium to Billions Worldwide. I feel their families are my lifelines.”