Umme's baking a career
...and celebrating her birthday today!
Hey, dessert lovers! We have a guest on the newsletter today — friend and baker, Umme. I’m so excited about this issue and grateful to her for allowing me to tell her sweet story (pun intended) on our shared birthday, today. Hope you enjoy it!
After I mentioned her in my last issue as U, Umme texts me saying she’s already made a cameo in the newsletter. I pictured her grinning cheekily. Just a fortnight beforehand, I had mentioned how it’d be amazing to have a written-down account of her seemingly uncommon but passionate journey and we both agreed we should do that here, on this newsletter.
I called it an ‘interview’ and she did too but it’s probably better described as two friends catching up, going deeper about this creative decision that has come with a lot of big life changes.
Umme Salma is a 24-year-old who got her Bachelor’s degree in Physics from IIT Kanpur, a prestigious technical institution in India and is currently studying ‘Baking and Pastry Arts’ at Le Cordon Bleu, Paris.
In college, when she eventually decided to get serious about baking, I remember excitedly telling everyone I knew about her plan. Almost everyone reacted with a lit-up face and said something along the lines of ‘Damn, that’s so cool’ and we both unmistakably sensed a tinge of ‘Why an IIT, if you wanted to go into baking anyway?’
That’s an important question, here’s what she replied when I brought it up:
When you’re in your tenth standard of school, that’s when you get tasked with taking the first steps regarding your career. You think: do I go study math, physics or commerce or biology? Around that time though, my mom was adamant about my taking a gap year to get into Hifz (Arabic for ‘learning by heart’) Quran. Being a Bohra, it was an important community practice to know the entire Quran by heart. I hadn’t wanted to commit to that so early, especially in the formative years of my career and with the help of my sister persuaded her to let me study formally first before I embarked on my Quran journey. My sister had studied at IIIT Gwalior and along with my brother-in-law encouraged me to attempt the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) since I was good at math and science in school. That’s how I landed at IIT Kanpur — as a minor escapade that went on to define the next few, solid years of my life.
Umme surely did succeed in passing a tough exam to study Physics but she tells me she grew up being fascinated by baking — watching a show on TLC where the pastry chefs conjured beautiful cakes for various occasions — weddings, birthdays and more. But she had left it at that, a mere passing fantasy. It was only in lockdown, in a wave of everyone placidly baking banana bread, that she decided to connect with a rekindled love. Coincidentally, this was the internship season in college which brought with it some introspection about career choices and she decided that science wasn’t her jam.
On speaking about unpursued technical prowess, she said, “Cooking/food is an intrinsic part of my personality and I would like to someday, combine my technical and culinary skills to create an innovative product. I loved my internship with a cloud-kitchen/bakery in Bangalore where I got to work on themed cakes and learn that baking is an up-and-coming, lucrative business to be in. I plan to come back home, to India and pursue the two dreams I have — baking bespoke wedding cakes and eventually, running a café of my own. Until then, I am determined to do with my time what will take me closer to them.”
We went on to talk about the nitty-gritty of her course at Le Cordon Bleu: a one-year diploma with lessons across domains divided into basic, intermediate and advanced with a four-month internship. She, along with her multi-cultural classmates, has started baking cakes and French pastries — shortbread cookies, tarts, madeleines, almond cakes, croissants and the like. She chuckles and says that it’s funny how the French consider making croissants a basic skill. “They’re quite complicated to get right”, she adds.
And of course, as one would expect, we had long, unwinding talks about Paris — the city of love itself. Talking about the good and bad parts of it, Umme says:
I miss eating regular Indian food, with its complex flavours on the daily. I live with a family acquaintance — an Indian lady who’s eighty years old and we cook taking turns. However, I can’t have three dedicated square meals a day due to my classes. So, we end up buying bread and eating a lot of it. I’m not complaining about that though. Paris is the absolute bread-heaven. I see people casually carrying baguettes and munching on them as they grocery shop. It’s quite a spectacle how Parisians love their breads and baked treats. Moreover, the fresh fruits here, are some of the juiciest and tastiest ones I’ve ever had — plums, oranges, peaches, you name it!
“Despite the romanticised version of foreigners’ outlook on Paris”, she goes on, “the city of love has its unique shortcomings, especially relating to my experience. Metro-strikes are quite common and private transport is expensive and time-consuming. To not be late to my 7 a.m. class, I usually have to wake up and leave as early as 5:30 a.m., constantly hoping that the metro wouldn’t abruptly halt and I don't lose my wallet to a pickpocket.”
On her first week in the city, she shared quite a few photos with me marvelling at the architecture in Paris. She texted me on 11th October, the day she paid a visit to the Arc de Triomphe that she was inspired to write a line:
“Living in the era where I'm led to believe that merely moving to Paris is an act of triumph.”
She was looking to convey that the "Arc of Triumph" is a symbol of such a magnanimous victory (in war and politics) from the past and standing in front of it, one can’t help but wonder why the victories we celebrate nowadays (moving to Paris, in her case) seem minuscule compared to it.
She goes on to dwell on the novelty of the Parisian monuments and homes brimming with history in their texture and stylised construction.
It was the time of the Paris Fashion Week when she was in the city and she reminisces how fashionable the whole of Paris felt. “You’d see people decked up in full glamour, looking like models, on a random street or the metro next to you. Some looked ridiculous to me and others mesmerising!”, she laughs heartily. She attributes the modelesque features of the city-dwellers to their lifestyle involving a lot of walking and their stubborn attitudes to get a run in, no matter the time or the weather. She realises that she was walking over six thousand steps a day without having to try, mainly due to the urban planning and the nature of commuting in the city. The best part about being a student, according to her, is the access to free cultural tours, art museums and other enriching educational benefits that the place has to offer.
From my frequent talks with her about various aspects of the city, I have come to look at it less like a fantastical land and more as a colourful place made of its people, art, food and history. Umme seems to have found her place, right now in Paris and in general, in her career and I can see it in the way she calmly but adamantly is baking her time away!
I can’t wait to see where life takes her on this journey and I hope I get to eat her croissants soon enough (bonne chance, mon amie and happy birthday!)
Those croissants look picture perfect straight from a Pinterest catalogue.