Vijay's father grows things.
He always has. On a small farm in Gujarat, the kind that does not make headlines and does not receive subsidies designed for it, he rises before the heat arrives and begins the day's work. His hands carry the evidence of this. The knuckles are larger than they used to be. The palms are mapped with lines that are partly life and partly sun. There is a particular quality to the wrists of someone who has worked with soil and water and seed and heat for forty years. A density and a groundedness, as though the earth has left some of itself behind.
He does not think of himself as doing something remarkable. He is farming. He has always farmed.
Dalsukh's father is much the same. Two men in Gujarat with rugged hands and sun-carved faces and a quality of life in their eyes that is entirely at odds with the difficulty of what they do. They raised their sons with a set of values so quietly insisted upon that the sons would be in their thirties, building something in England, before they fully understood what had been given to them. The understanding that working hard and working honestly are not two different things. That what you give to people, what you grow, what you cook, what you place in front of them, carries your intention in it. That the ground beneath your feet is something you serve, not something you use.
These men are still farming. While Namaste Village opened its sixth location, while Urmila's recipes spread to restaurants across Norwich, Cambridge, London, Twickenham, and Oxford, they are right now somewhere in Gujarat, in the sun, with those hands.
The values that crossed the ocean
There is a direct line between the hands of a Gujarati farmer and the hands of Urmila at a kitchen stove. Both working before others have started. Both guided by the understanding that what you produce will be received by someone, and that this someone deserves your full effort. Both entirely free of the idea that the work is a transaction. It is a duty. A devotion. A form of love expressed through doing rather than saying.
Urmila carries this in the way she cooks. The patience required to make a kadi correctly, waiting for the yoghurt to reach the right temperature and watching the tempering without rushing it, is not a professional skill. It is a farmer's skill. The willingness to wait for the thing to be ready rather than deciding it is ready because you are tired of waiting.
When Vijay and Dalsukh opened Namaste Village, they were not opening a business. They were putting into a building, into food, and into the welcome at the door, the values that two men with rugged hands in Gujarat had been quietly insisting upon for decades. The restaurant is the farm, seen from another angle.
International Yoga Day and the philosophy behind the food
The 21st of June is also International Yoga Day. And here, too, the Gujarat connection runs deep. The philosophy behind yoga, including ahimsa or non-violence, satya or truthfulness, and the understanding that how we live and what we eat and how we treat others are not separate questions, is the same philosophy that grew in the fields Vijay and Dalsukh's fathers have always tended. A vegetarian table is not a lifestyle choice in this tradition. It is the natural expression of a way of seeing the world that was tilled into the family long before anyone in England had heard of plant-based dining.
For the fathers who shaped the feast
This Father's Day on 15 June, we want to acknowledge all of it. The fathers who farmed. The fathers who cooked. The fathers who drove quietly and without complaint to the airport, said goodbye to sons who were going somewhere they had never been, and trusted them to carry the right things.
And we want to acknowledge every father at every one of our tables on that day. The fathers who deserve a Sunday that is not a Sunday roast.
This Father's Day, Father's main is on us when accompanied by two adults. Because a farmer's son grew up understanding that generosity is not a marketing strategy. It is how you were raised.
Book your Father's Day table at Namaste Village across Norwich, Cambridge, London Islington, Twickenham, and Oxford. Gift vouchers are also available for the father who deserves the meal he truly deserves.
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