london is a melting—pot city. you see it on the streets, you see it in the restaurants. there is an almost overwhelming variety of international cuisine on offer here. the brits have a particularly ardent and long love affair with south asian food, and my guest today is the renowned indian—born chef asma khan, who is also a pioneer. she created the first all—female, high—end indian restaurant in the world. she says she was born to set the world on fire. how does that work in a professional kitchen? asma khan, welcome to hardtalk. thank you very much.

well, it is a great pleasure to be in your restaurant. i just wonder if the young asma, say, teenage asma, could see you now — with your own restaurant, a bit of a food guru in the united kingdom, a social activist as well — would she believe it could be possible? no, because the way that girls were brought up in a family like mine, and the way i felt my position in the family and the clan was, i didn't dare to imagine. i dreamt of it. i used to dream of my name in lights, i used to dream that mountains were calling out my name. i would never, ever say it. but somewhere deep in my heart, i always wanted to do something. i wanted everyone to understand that there is justice, that it's not fair that girls are treated this way. but that it would take this route? i didn't know.

yeah, and ijust wonder whether at that time, you invested your passion and your desire to change the world in food. i mean, was food very important to you growing up? yes, but not to cook. just to eat. iwas... but, you know, everyone needs, every family needs one who eats, and i was that person. so you loved food? i loved food, but i didn't know how to cook. but is that because you were from a posh family? i mean, a somewhat aristocratic indian family and, therefore, i'm guessing you had lots of servants. yes, i had lots of servants. and also, my mother had a food business, so we had more than an average kitchen. we had several cooks. the food was unbelievable. my mother had a, you know, would do all kinds of food. she did incredible biryanis. and she was, you know, she used to run this empire, with catering all over calcutta. and your commitment to, actually, notjust eating, but doing the cooking really only began when you'd taken

yourself off to england. you'd gone with your husband, who had an academic post in the uk. and you've been very candid about how lonely, how isolated, how depressed you felt in this new country, and you suddenly realised that one way to fill that hole in your life was to actually fill it with the cooking and the food, the flavour, the culture of the food from your homeland. yes. uh... 30 years ago, a very different world. we've all forgotten. now, you know, you can skype your dog in delhi, but at that time, you made these phone calls. you were timing it to be exactly three minutes. it was very expensive to fly. you couldn't call home easily. half the time, the phones didn't work because of flooding in calcutta. there were no mobile phones. you didn't see the face

of your parents. my father wrote to me. i always kept one letter unopened, so that when things got really tough... mm. ..i would open that letter. that is the level of loneliness. and for all of us who've been through that, it's kind of, you know, we just... it's that ugly time in our lives. we've forgotten about the isolation. it was tough. so i think all of this backstory is important because what you have ultimately chosen to do is commit to being a professional cook with only women. and, actually, it seems only women from a south asian background who you can relate to, who many of them are so—called second daughters, as you were... yes. ..who were, from the very beginning of their lives, told that opportunity was limited, that there was little hope invested in them. yes. so would you say that your entire career has sort of been a defiant message about how you will not accept the constraints put upon you and other women? yes, because from a very

young age, i was told... my parents, you know, after the initial disappointment of my mother when i was born and social pressure and everything, my parents loved me a lot, but i was always made to feel unwanted, unloved, by the extended family. as i was growing up, you were constantly made to feel that you were the extra, the unwanted. um, but it was harder, for one thing, that i wasn't pretty, i wasn't fair, i wasn't thin, i didn't fit in with the princess look of the rest of my family. that is a double whammy — to be the girl, but to be the unattractive girl, was hard. and one of the things that has stood by me my whole life is my beautiful sister, who everybody adored. she still bloody looks ten years younger than me. beautiful, beautiful. but i remember when people were not being nice to me, amna would hold my hand from back and just tell me, "you are the warrior princess.

"the world will shake, they will know your name." that's a game—changer. the person who everybody worshipped and adored told me — the dark—skinned, fat little girl — that i was going to make a difference. and this is why i realised at a very young age that collectives matter, that solidarity matters, that you've got to reach out to those that do not have a voice, whose voices you can amplify. find the hungry, find the needy and look and heal them because, to me, that transformed me. i grew in strength and i understood, i will be, one day, a name everyone will know. i am the warrior princess. and this change—maker that you wanted to be, you very deliberately set out to, as you say, form a collective with other women who were finding life difficult in the uk. yes.

south asian women, who were working as nannies, as cleaners, and you persuaded them... yes. ..to join you in the kitchen, a professional kitchen. and the irony, i guess, is that there's no way that that would have ever happened in india. you wouldn't have worked with these women because they were from a very different background and caste from you. where would i have met them, for one? india has stratas, you know, it's completely... the society has stratas. where would i have met these kinds of women? i would not have met them. this is the great thing about london, that on the street, we met. we met in the school, the schoolyard. and this is the great leveller. when i took them in the first time, i rememberthey didn't want to sit on my sofa, so we all sat on the floor. so i said, "if you're not going to sit on the sofa with me, "we'll sit on the floor and we'll have chai." and... but decades after you met them, they're still with you. they still work, many of them, here, at the darjeeling kitchen. yes.

do they regard you as the boss? no. i think that they all regard me as someone extra in the kitchen, causing trouble. no, but honestly, no, there isn't a boss. one of the big things is, i get paid the same as them... ..so everyone in my kitchen is on the same pay rate. really? what, do you mean even the dishwashers and the...? oh, yeah. i get paid the same as the dishwasher, the person who washes the dishes. mm. yes. tell me about the meaning of the food. you talk a lot about the soul that you put into your food, and i'm just wondering, really, what you mean by that. how can food be a vehicle for what's deepest inside you? absolutely, it is. just imagine, your touch, your sensibilities, your time. that is invaluable. the most... the most expensive ingredient you put in a dish when you cook is yourself, what you are putting into that dish. i think somehow, along the way,

in both of the east and the west, we've lost the sacredness of cooking and, we have become consumers. and this really upsets me because i know i've been to places where i've seen what hunger does, and i cannot understand how we eat with this indifference, how we waste food, how we don't have a respect for farmers, for ingredients, for produce that comes from the land. so much hard work goes in there. but one constant theme is your commitment to doing this with other women, and you seem to suggest that there's something different about the way women cook and their relationship with food. explain. for one, if you look at the cvs of all the high—profile indian male chefs in the east or the west, they are identical. they went to culinary school and then they were trained

in five—star hotels in india. boys don't come into kitchens. patriarchy runs really deep. it's very unusual to see or meet a male chef, a professional male chef, who can say that they were taught, they learned cooking because they hung around the kitchen with their mothers and grandmothers. mm. and, yes, there are of course exceptions, but women and girls cook together. and that's the biggest difference, that girls hung around in the kitchen. men have been cooking as a profession, and there is that big difference because emotion is disconnected. you know, you say, "i'm less impressed by these top chefs "who cook in a professional space, with every kind of "gadget and with loads of assistants. "i am not looking to cook to impress. "i'm not like a michelin—star chef, with their foams "and their edible flowers. "i am cooking to heal you." i mean, all of that sounds

a little bit like you're trying to make a point. some might say that you even have a bit of a chip on your shoulder about these high—profile, male celebrity chefs. not at all. the world is big enough for everybody. and, you know, good for them that they managed to make this into a different kind of cuisine. what they present are dissected sometimes to look so french, and to not... i am brown—skinned. my food is brown. we don't try and hide our food in edible flowers. it's not a chip on my shoulder. it's really trying to articulate that there is a difference between how women and men cook. there's a difference between home—cooked food and restaurant food. just the whole word — indian food. india is massive when it comes to different culinary traditions. look at just the north and south. so, let's get back to the way you've had to navigate the restaurant business. we've already talked about the male celebrity chefs

who suck up so much sort of publicity, get so much attention within the sort of professional cooking world. you've entered that world yourself. how difficult has it been to navigate that world of high—end restaurants? it is difficult, but it's not impossible to navigate through any profession where you're on the fringe. i am on the fringe of hospitality. a lot of hospitality in this country is like an all—male mayfair club, where women can turn up, but they're not life members. and i recognise the fact that i also run a very different style of food kitchen, and i don't compare myself to anyone. also, because my race is so different. i don't run the same race as a white man. i don't run the same race as a white woman. i have to go through hurdles.

i have to go through fire. i've come out glistening out of that and i won. well, you've come out fighting. yes. and you've made some enemies inside the world of sort of top—end cooking and chefs. marco pierre white is one. he, in 2019, talked about the fact that, in his opinion, female chefs were much more emotional than male chefs. he pointed out that they lacked the strength for key tasks like lifting heavy pans, and his conclusion was that that's why there are far fewer top women chefs internationally than men. you responded by saying, "like a three—day—old fish, "these comments of his reek of patriarchy, "and there is no place in kitchen, in the kitchen, "for rotting fish or chefs with these attitudes." do you like making enemies? no, but there was no reply to that comment by me, by him.

so all of them have stayed silent. i will not stay silent. i will always call it out. i mean, and i have called out a lot of, you know, mainly male chefs, who have said inappropriate things. yeah, you've... to be honest, you've made a lot of accusations. you've talked about the endemic misogyny, sexism. you even talk about violence. you say you've spoken to many... yes. ..women working in top kitchens, who have told you that they have been abused. the sad thing is that we are in an industry where we're supposed to be hospitable. we are a service industry, and the fact that we are not even having this discussion. i'lljust give you an example — when there have been proved allegations of misogyny, of violence, of sexism, of racism, every female michelin—star chef has kept quiet. this is a real problem. maybe because it's not their experience. it's not their experience, but you can speak up.

the problem is, to expect the victims to change things is hard because that victim is most likely very low down in the pyramid, and we are expecting young girls and boys to speak up to change things. when you are in a position of power and you are secure, it is our moral duty to speak up. this is the industry that i love, that i'm part of, that i make my money from, that i've published books and, you know, i'm speaking to you, then this is an industry that i should care about. the selfishness of only worrying that this is not my problem because i am not being physically attacked, my daughter is not being physically attacked, is so wrong. but it sounds like an industry that, at times, you've considered leaving. just looking back at 2022. i know it was a tough time for you after covid... yes. ..and you said then, quote, "i am running on empty." you said, "i'm going to lose my restaurant lease soon. "other sites are being blocked to me by an old boys�* club.

"it's very hard," you said, "in your 50s "to keep pushing yourself this hard." yeah. are you close to giving up? not at all. i mean, that was a really hard time. it was also quite shocking that, uh, the kind of manoeuvring of vested interest to kind of... and also, landlords asking me, very openly, like, "do you have a business partner? do you have "venture capitalist money?" they were asking who the suit was in my life. hmm. in india, if i went somewhere and said, you know, "i want this lease" or whatever, they'd ask me my father's name, they'd ask me my husband's name, where my brother is, you know, where i live, my caste, my name. but i thought you said to me that london was so much better, so much easier to make... it is better, but when it comes to money, i% of vc money goes to women. the number of women who look like me, who would get venture capitalist money, is zero.

literally zero. it would be so low, it would not even register. it is very hard. it's hard for a female founder. i also must speak about ageism, because i started at a5, and the whole idea that, you know, young people would be able to raise money because they're creative and techie. anyone who understands cricket knows there's a second innings. this is my second innings. ha! i will hit every ball out of the park. i'm not coming back to bat again. the fact that my capability, my...my commitment is being questioned — because i'm in my 50s — by people, you would not do this to a man. you would not question his ability. this is not thejungle, you know. yes, you know, i may not be as fast as a younger person catching the prey, but i don't think that's what hospitality is about. you're also, now, it seems, taking your message overseas. you're an ambassador for the world food programme. i know you've worked with a particular community of yazidi women in iraq who were survivors of being kidnapped and held hostage by so—called islamic state.

i'm just wondering what on earth you think you, as a cook, a food writer, somebody who has made a name for themselves in a high—end restaurant environment, what can you offer these people? i offer hope. i offer hope that you will overcome, that irrespective of what's happening... abba, my father, would always tell me — very deeply sufi man — that in the darkness, be that bird who sings before dawn comes out. and as a child, he would take me to the roof and show me the first rays of light coming through. and he used to tell me, "night is never endless, beta". beta is daughter, child. that it will always... day will always follow night. i have been through... i have fallen more times than i can imagine, but i'm very inspired by this whole... you know, my whole life, i...

there's a poem, you know, where rabindranath tagore says, "go out into the storm "and light your ribs with the light, "with the thunder and lightning, "so you light the path for others." i have always been driven by that. so i will go to spaces where there is hunger, where there's deprivation, where there isn't hope, because i understand... i mean, having talked to these women, do you...do you sense that you can encourage, inspire, make a difference for them? yes. i've been to refugee camps where i've met long—term refugees in, uh, injordan. most recent refugees i've worked with, syrian refugees in lebanon, as part of the world food programme. i've sat with families, i've travelled extensively in these areas. and the one thing that i've taken away from this, i spoke to a nine—year—old syrian refugee and asked him, "what are you going to do when you grow up?" he said, "i'm going to be an architect. i'm going to go back "and build my grandfather's house. but i'm also "going to build houses that bombs can't destroy. "

and his eyes were bright. and he's nine, and he's, you know, going to school, of sorts. mm. a world food programme school, just down the road. the thing that... it is that whole thing that refugees, right now, are a flickering flame. if you hold your hand there, the flame will steady, and then they will go on and do great things in their lives. the kind of...kind of venomous, uh, conversations that you have around refugees is unacceptable. unacceptable. they are hungry, they are in difficult places, they are uprooted. and the fact that we cannot find it in our heart to reach out, to donate. i mean, the world food programme is really struggling financially... yeah. ..because of, you know, the number of, the donations are very low. government is not supporting them as much. and i have seen on the ground what a little bit of money, the difference it can make. it is... you know, hunger is not a weapon of war. hunger should not be used to siege people. you cannot do this.

before we end, i want to take you back to where we began — being a second daughter in india, and how that filled you with a sense that you had to prove yourself to change the world, because second daughters aren't expected to do that. yeah. in the many decades since your birth, do you think things have changed? i'm just wondering, if you went back to india today — or you go back every year — is it different now? no. it isn't different. it's more subtle and there's more sophistication, the language used is less harsh, but there's still colourism, there's still gender bias. the birth of boys is celebrated. the birth of girls is still. . . is still lamented. uh, and the biggest problem is that girls, in a balance sheet for a family, the girls are the ones that cost money because of dowry. and the honour of the family is...hinges on a girl, never the boy. so these things haven't changed. we still... the girl will not inherit

the farm or the family house, and marriages break because there's no son. the heir is always the boy. you describe yourself on social media as, quote, "an immigrant and a proud londoner" but you've also said that you believe you may well go back to your...the land of your birth before you die. yes. will you go to india, set up a restaurant like this and cook, or is that not going to be possible for you? i don't think i'd go back home and cook, but at some point, i will go back to my land. i want to go back and work with women, encourage them to set up restaurants, cafes, to actually have a restaurant like this, but run by others. i want to use my life experience to go in and help my women, because i think that... but do you think... sorry, but do you think india will accept you, asma khan, outspoken, a fighter, a rebel, a muslim? is that india going to embrace

you, if you go home for good? i embrace india, i'm indian, so it doesn't matter who doesn't want to accept me. that's their problem, not mine. i mean, for generations, the dust that flies from the old bazaars of delhi is the ruh, the soul of my ancestors. for generations, we are there. who tells me i don't belong? i belong because that is my land. there's a big difference between what others will say to you. it is... i am absolutely indifferent to how others see. i will... i write my own story. i'm the captain of my ship. nobody else gets into my ship and tells me i don't belong. anywhere and everywhere, i am free to go, and i feel i have the right. everybody has the right to be who they want to be. you cannot live because someone else is telling you and puts you, that you belong here. you put them in a box. don't allow anyone else

to write your story or put you in a box. asma khan, we have to end there, but thank you very much forjoining me on hardtalk. thank you. hello there. sunday brought a volatile mix of weather across the uk — sunny skies one minute, thunder clouds the next, ominous—looking skies across lincolnshire through sunday afternoon. most of those showers are actually easing away and we've got clearing skies and that's going to allow those temperatures to fall away. so a chilly start to monday morning, but lots of sunshine around. however, this cloud will arrive later on in the morning. it's going to bring some rain, some of it heavy, across south west england.

the cloud gradually drifting its way steadily north into south wales and the midlands. but further north of that, we keep the sunshine for much of the day. there will be a scattering of showers and some of these slow—moving, because the winds will remain light, and it's still a disappointingly cool story across the far north of scotland — only 12 or 13 degrees. highest values, perhaps close to the borders, of 19 degrees. a few isolated showers into northern ireland and northern england, but mostly bright skies, sunny spells coming through. so there's our showery rain, just pushing into wales in the midlands and south east england by the end of the afternoon, so that means there's a risk of further showers to come for wimbledon, i'm afraid, for monday, maybe some thunderstorms to come for tuesday as well. the thunderstorms tuck in behind this low pressure as it continues to move its way further north during the early hours of tuesday morning. so we will start off with cloud and some heavy bursts of rain during the early hours of tuesday. and by the morning rush hour, it'll be sitting

across northern england, north wales. so cloudier skies, perhaps, close to the scottish borders. not quite as cold a start on tuesday morning. so we've got that rain to continue to drift its way northwards on tuesday, should stay largely dry for much of scotland through the day, and then behind it, a southerly wind dragging in slightly more humid air, which could trigger off a few thundery downpours as we go through the afternoon. top temperatures, around 21 degrees across england and wales, perhaps. we're looking at around 16—18 further north. that low pressure will continue to slowly ease away, and then as we go later into the week, desperately trying to build in, is this high. there is still a level of uncertainty as to whether that will do so, but hopefully as we move towards friday and into the weekend, the weather story mightjust quieten down just a touch.

live from london, this is bbc news. jubilation among the left in france as the far—right national rally party falls short of winning france's parliamentary election. the new prime minister's whistle—stop tour of the uk's nations. today, he's

in northern ireland. benjamin netanyahu insists any ceasefire deal in gaza must allow israel to resume fighting afterwards, until its objectives are met. hello, i'm sally bundock. very warm welcome the programme. —— a very warm welcome to the programme. we begin in france where voters are waking up to the news of a surprise outcome in the parliamentary elections. we now know the final result — a coalition of left—wing parties have won most seats in the high stakes snap election. president macron�*s centrists came second, with the far—right national rally third. its leaderjordan bardella said the left�*s electoral arrangement appeared to have thrown france into the hands of the hard—left. the left—wing new popular front has won 182 seats in total. le pen's national rally have 143 mps, in third place behind