Going through this eminently readable memoir by Padma Lakshmi has been a delightful experience.  The title 'Love, Loss And What we Ate' is quite apt in that it is a candidly given account of her life a dislocated immigrant to the United States in the 70s, to a very successful modeling career in Europe, and after that a complete reinvention as a renowned host of a multiple award winning food show on television.  In between all of this, she falls in love more than a couple of times, and then suffers the terrible loss of someone who meant so much in her life.  You get the impression that one thing that has always stood her in good stead is food and finding ever so novel ways of cooking them in fact, you can say that in almost all the important events in her life, food is somehow there as a reference point.  There is startling honesty in the pages.  Her heady romance, marriage and painful divorce with author Salman Rushdie have been handled with a lot of aplomb and self-possession.  I am completely taken in by the refreshing candor displayed when she either talks about her intimately personal nature of her medical condition or the paternity of her baby daughter.  I mean what beautiful woman would publicly discuss her horribly painful periods caused by this gynecological condition known as endometriosis, from which thousands of women suffer in silence out of their cultural conditioning, ignorance, embarrassment or all three combined.

  By successfully dealing with this illness, she has become an advocate to bring much needed awareness to this issue which is the very basis of womanhood.  The thing is, when you like somebody from a distance, you want to know the various facets of their life, and in that sense the book did not disappoint me.  It's been quite an appetizing joyride through the world of Padma Lakshmi.