The Story Behind the Food
Chef Sanjai’s cooking is rooted in lived tradition, Ayurvedic wisdom, and years of nourishing students, families, and seekers through food. His cuisine brings together taste, balance, season, digestion, and joy, so that food becomes more than a meal. It becomes care, memory, and medicine.
Over time, through his teaching, retreat cooking, and shared work with Acharya Shunya and Vedika Global, Sanjai has shaped a distinctive approach to sacred nourishment that is practical, warm, and deeply human.
Below, Chef Sanjai shares his journey in his own words.
My Mother
My Guru
My passion for cooking began at a young age. Even as a child, I could guess what was cooking, just by the aroma! You see, my mother was an exceptionally great cook. She cooked every meal with devotional attention. I would be blown away by the dishes cooked by my mother, overflowing with the flavors of cardamom, saffron, turmeric and other rich and fragrant spices. I would hurry back from school, knowing a simple but divine meal awaited me and my younger brother and sister. We kids would all laugh and chat as we ate our after-school meal, and our mother would look on with satisfaction, knowing in her heart that every single ingredient from her recipes, was going to transform into a blessing!
My tryst with food continued as I grew older and my mother saw my fascination with the cooking process. She gradually asked me to accompany her to the vibrant and colorful local farmer’s market and showed me how to choose the freshest vegetables by looking, touching and smelling them. I learnt to use my intuition and also select, mix, roast and grind spices to perfection. I even stirred her magical pots once in a while, from which would emanate delicious aromas and she would smile and share a secret tip.
As I hung out in the kitchen with her (after my homework) I recognized a certain happiness or shall I say contentment in my heart. I did not know then that my mother’s kitchen, her recipes and the magical flavors to everything she touched, were becoming part of my Chef-DNA!
Lucknow
The City that shaped ME
Lucknow, the city of my youth, shaped my palate and my imagination. A cultural and artistic hub in northern India, Lucknow is renowned for its signature Awadhi cuisine, where Persian influences slowly mingled with the native Hindu and Vedic food traditions of the region. What emerged was a cuisine of refinement, fragrance, depth, and subtlety.
As a young man, I often wandered through Lucknow’s hidden alleys and byways, tasting snacks from street vendors cooking beneath trees and visiting small family-run food stalls where recipes had been preserved for generations. I would speak with the cooks, ask questions, and listen to their food histories. In time, they came to know me as the young lad with endless curiosity about recipes. They fed me generously and shared their stories.
Those memories still live in my cooking today. I do not always need to open a cookbook to create a recipe. I return to my heart, and a flavor, a fragrance, a voice from Lucknow rises again.
Chef Sanjai’s journey into Ayurvedic cooking began at home, in close proximity to the living teachings of Ayurveda and Yoga shared by his life partner, Acharya Shunya. What began as love for flavorful, nourishing food slowly became a deeper calling: to preserve, teach, and share authentic Ayurvedic cuisine as a healing tradition.
My life partner, Acharya Shunya, has spent her life teaching Ayurveda, Yoga, and Vedanta. Through our shared life and work, my own love for food deepened into a disciplined study of Ayurvedic cooking.
Ayurveda teaches that food is not merely fuel. When diet is aligned with constitution, season, age, digestion, and daily rhythm, it becomes medicine in the most natural sense. Inspired by this wisdom, I studied classical Ayurvedic principles and Sanskrit source texts, and began to understand cooking as a sacred act of nourishment.
Over time, I became concerned by how often Ayurvedic food wisdom is simplified, commercialized, or separated from its roots. Through Vedika Global, the nonprofit educational foundation Acharya Shunya and I co-founded, I have shared more than 200 Ayurvedic recipes with students around the world, preserving this living food tradition with integrity and care.
Rooted in Ashta Ahara Vidhi from the Charaka Samhita
My cuisine is guided by Ashta Ahara Vidhi, the eight classical principles of food and eating taught in the Charaka Samhita. These principles are not decorative ideas for me. They are the foundation of how I understand food.
When I cook, I consider the nature of each ingredient, its qualities, its potency, its post-digestive effect, its seasonality, its compatibility with other foods, and the person who will receive the meal. I also consider timing, quantity, preparation method, digestion, and the state of mind in which food is cooked and served.
This is why Ayurvedic cuisine cannot be reduced to “healthy Indian food.” It is a precise science of nourishment. A dish may look simple, but behind it there is careful consideration of dosha, agni, season, climate, age, strength, and the purpose of the meal.
This is the knowledge I bring into my kitchen. Every recipe I create is meant to taste beautiful, digest well, and support the body’s natural return to balance.
