When Zarine Khan revealed she would send home-cooked food to husband Sanjay Khan's film set crew, "I was pregnant with Sussanne Khan but..."

When Zarine Khan revealed she would send home-cooked food to husband Sanjay Khan's film set crew, "I was pregnant with Sussanne Khan but..."

With the passing of Zarine Khan today, many have revisited her interviews over the years, especially the one she gave to India Today where she spoke about her food, her childhood, and the way she brought her family together through cooking. It reads almost like a diary of a life lived generously.

She once described the roots of her cooking style with a quiet fondness. “When I was a child, my mother and her sisters lived with their respective families in a building adjoining what is now Shah Rukh Khan’s house at Bandstand,” she recalled. The memory unfolded like a scene from a film: her grandmother’s house just a few lanes away, two balconies facing the sea, evening breezes rolling in, and a long dining table set for a large family gathering. “My grandmother was a great cook. We’d sit there every evening to chit chat. She’d lay the dinner on a long dining table, and we’d sit together to eat,” she said. This ritual of cooking as a way of gathering, of holding a family in one place, stayed with her for life.

It resurfaced powerfully in the early years of her marriage to actor-producer Sanjay Khan. Those were busy, chaotic years, especially during film shoots when Sanjay would be away for long hours. But instead of staying on the sidelines, she made her presence felt in the most meaningful way she knew: food. “When I was pregnant with Sussanne, I remember I could hardly eat much myself, but I’d cook enough to feed the 40 people on Sanjay’s film set and send them home cooked food everyday. The food used to be so popular, I’d enjoy doing it,” she said. The image is striking: a young woman, exhausted, carrying a child, still finding joy in feeding others.

Over time, that food became part of the family identity. When their daughters Farah, Simone, and Sussanne got married, Zarine gifted them handwritten copies of her recipes. “That, I suppose, was the beginning of this cookbook,” she shared.