Love, Loss, and What We Ate: Book Blog Post 2

Reading Love, Loss, and What We Ate was challenging for me. Not challenging because Pradma Lakshmi doesn’t have an interesting story, nor because she struggles telling it. Her viewpoints on relationships and life struggles were challenging for me to read about because they made me uncomfortable. Her relationship with vulnerability is vastly different than my own. I could never write a book with such transparency detailing my interpersonal struggles.

At times, I admired Lakshmi’s perspectives and felt excited by some of her experiences as a model overseas in Europe. The modeling route she followed throughout her twenties, struggling to stay afloat yet seeing the world, is vastly different than what I plan on doing. I know I will likely work a typical 9-5 and do far less exciting things than getting to know the cheese man in Paris or learning Italian in Italy. Yet her story does not make me jealous. At times I pitied her because of these experiences. Being constantly judged as a model in a foreign country would make me uncomfortable. Lakshmi certainly is willing to put up with much more uncertainty than I am, and as a result she experienced the world in such a way that few get to do.

Lakshmi’s relationship with Teddy Forstmann, detailed in the second half of the memoir, struck me as odd and is an entanglement I would never want to be a part of. Her differences from him were massive. Political and religious affiliations aside, I think the age and maturity differences were fascinating - I don’t think being in a relationship with a Catholic Republican is as big of a deal as being in a relationship with someone who lacks the same adventurous spirit. Her take on it is interesting:

At first, his stubbornness frustrated me. I wanted to share my love of food, my conviction that food could be - no, was - an adventure, with him. But I grew to love that about him. He made no pretense about his food preferences. And when you hang around ramen obsessives and fried chicken fanatics, as I happily do, someone who has no great interest in food can actually be a refreshing presence, a reminder of how much else there is to experience. As he’d gentry chide me, “I know Picasso, you know pasta.”

Differences in food taste seem to be a metaphor towards differences in life perspectives. She clearly is adventurous, and likes to try new things. As a younger person, she wanted to experience new things. Yet Forstmann seemed to be the opposite from her in that way. He was content with what he had already experienced. For me, that would’ve been a deal breaker.

Lakshmi’s vulnerability about her feelings towards Forstmann’s death amplified the way I, as a reader, differ from her. While undoubtedly I would feel the same pain, I would have a much harder time writing about it than she does so eloquently.

I ached for him now, for his “dashing man” smell, for his booming voice as he called out to me as I primped in front of the mirror: “Hurry up now, Junior, we haven’t got all day.” Indeed, we hadn’t had enough time at all.

The way Lakshmi is able to take the nickname he gave her and one of his catchphrases and put it into a tribute is heartbreaking. As a reader I feel her pain when she says they “hadn’t had enough time at all.” And I know that I would not be able to capture my own emotions in such a way. So while I feel different and at times alienated by the vulnerability of her emotional descriptions, her words are impactful and make me consider my own emotions in a way that I rarely do.