A few years ago, whenever someone on my social media said something like, ‘Arre, he’s always here, how do you imagine him cooking?’ I would get into a heated debate with that person.
But in the last few years, I have made peace with the fact that being an influencer and being a restaurant chef are separate professions and I’m living two lives that combine both my passions. I’m a chef who uses his chef-ness to be an influencer. Cooking is fun. So is being an influencer. Both food and content are things I can share with others. It’s a natural progression. If you are simply trying to be an influencer without capabilities, people will doubt your competence.
I felt the pressure to run my own physical kitchen because of self-doubt created by questions on social media. While it did hurt my ego as a trained chef to have to prove it to the world,
I started Goila Butter Chicken so that people could taste my food in real life and not just via video recipes.
If you let self-doubts remain, they start to influence your creations. This happened to me a year before the pandemic. I felt completely burnt out. I was lucky then to have people defend me or ask me to not engage with those who posted negative comments.
Now, I let go of negative comments because I realise the people who post them don’t understand the perspective of my journey and profession. Age has shown me that it’s not the title that matters but what I’m doing with it.
There will always be people who find something negative to say. That’s the price popular artists pay for sharing their work on social media.
Saransh Goila is a chef, entrepreneur and social media star, whose butter chicken is as big a hit IRL as are his videos online.
(As told to Karishma Kuenzang)
From HT Brunch, October 10, 2021
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