UNAPOLOGETICALLY SOUTH

Chef Vijaya Kumar, who won the James Beard award in New York, says it signifies not just a personal triumph, but also a cultural shift

- BY LAKSHMI SUBRAMANIAN

On June 18, when C. Vijaya Kumar called his mother Kaathammal from New York to share his happiness on winning an award, she replied “oh! Appidiya?” (Oh! Is it?), without much enthusiasm. But the next day when a flex banner of him was put up in the heart of her hometown—Samudirapatti in Tamil Nadu’s Dindigul district—Kaathammal understood that her son had done something big, and she asked around to find out what it was. People told her he had won an Oscar. “We congratulate C. Vijaya Kumar, the son of Chinnazhagu Ambalam and Kaathammal for winning the James Beard (Oscar like) award for the first time from India and for bringing fame to our Samudirapatti village,” read the banner. The next day, Kumar called his mother again and this time, she was brimming with excitement.

“My parents thought I will become an engineer or doctor,” says Kumar over Zoom from his restaurant Semma, the only Michelin-starred Indian restaurant in New York City. “My mother thought being a chef was just another job to make money. But now she has understood that this is more than being a doctor or an engineer.”