Page 43 - UpperCrust e-Magazine Third Quarter 2024

AMRITA RAICHAND | COVER STORY
AMRIT A RAICHAND | C O VER S T OR Y

would cut fruits and feed us, then give us
a chavanni to go buy sweets. And Pabboji
would educate us about Partition and tell us
amazing food stories as well. Achar making
was her favourite pastime. She always said,
when cooking food, taste at every stage.
Also, Pabboji’s other nugget was, ‘Feed your
husband well, it is the only way of keeping
him happy.’ My mummy followed that
advice! And I do too, so I guess Rahul must
be a happy man!” says a beaming Amrita.
From the days when her mother baked
dollhouse cakes for her, Amrita had gotten
into the act, too. She loved being in the
kitchen. She cooked her first surprise meal
for her mum when she was eight; aloo bhurji
and tamatar chutney. She had her neighbour
come in and help her light the stove. This was
in Jamshedpur, where she was born and grew
up, while her mum worked at Tisco, where
her dad had worked, too.
Says Amrita, “Look, the beauty of cooking
is always in its simplicity, is something I have
learnt. Whenever I am in doubt and want to
double check my mum’s recipes I just call up
one of my three maasis who live in Dhanbad,
Patna and Hazaribagh. The signature dish at
our house was saag gosht.”
Amrita went to school at Mount Carmel
in Dhanbad, going on to do her 11th and
12th at Lawrence School in Sanawar, the
snowy hills of Himachal Pradesh. Then
for ‘a better life’ they all came to Bombay
where Amrita went to St. Xavier’s and did a
double major in Economics and Commerce.
An enthusiastic kid, Amrita pursued extra-
curricular activities with a passion. Dramatics,
dance, Kathak and also Bharatnatyam, which
she practised for 16 years. Her two brothers,
Rajesh and Deepak, bright boys, had already
got good jobs in wealth management and
investment banking. Soon, in 1996 Amrita
was ‘spotted’ by OBM, the big ad agency
and got a break in modelling. She was the
face for Whirlpool for years. Pepsodent, Clinic,
Dabur, Ponds, Colgate, Nivea were among the
100 brands she represented over a decade.
There was only one condition that was put
forth by her responsible and caring brothers.
No Bollywood and no TV serials. But that
embargo came only after she had essayed Jungli Maas is served
roles in Yash Chopra’s, Humko Ishq ne Mara

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