Lakshmi reveals shocking secret in memoir.
By Sreekanth A. Nair
Padma Lakshmi, the well-known host of ‘Top Chef’ and author, in her new memoir ‘Love, Loss and What We Ate’ revealed that she was sexually abused during childhood.
Lakshmi said that her step father’s relative had molested her for a long time when she was seven years old.
Lakshmi shared a bed with a relative of her then stepfather. She describes it as “a state of affairs that, to people like us, who were used to living far too many to an apartment in India, seemed relatively normal.”
“One night, I woke up to his hand in my underpants. He took my hand and placed it inside his briefs. I don’t know how many times it happened before since I suspect I slept through some incidents,” she wrote.
At that time, she lived in an apartment in Queens, New York with her mother.
“There was a space between my headboard, the bed and the wall where I’d occasionally toss pink pistachio shells. Once I peed in the space, defiling the place where I’d been defiled,” she wrote.
Later her mother realized that there was something that troubled her daughter. But it ultimately ended up in sending her to India which had long lasting effects.
“It’s not something I think about that much anymore, but it was the catalyst for a lot of things,” she said. “It was the catalyst for my mother’s divorce, for me going to India. It was the catalyst for me being different about my body and just less open in the world. It was a loss of innocence in a way. What happened to me was not even that bad compared to what happens to many young girls and boys. But it was something that happened. I didn’t want to dwell on it.”
Recalling the helplessness of a young girl, Lakshmi said, “Once you take a girl’s innocence, you can never get it back.”
Lakshmi also said that there wouldn’t be anyone to talk about the struggles of women if people like she didn’t talk.
“I wanted to talk about it because if women like me don’t talk about it, who will. I think of all those girls who I pass on the street who are in elementary school. I think about my daughter’s classmates or my daughter. It happens more than we think.”