Cutting Chai with Lakshmi Ganapathy is a monthly series of bite-sized interviews with prominent South Asians showcasing their career and personality and celebrating their South Asian Australian identity.
This month we feature SHAUN CHRISTIE-DAVID, a radical restaurateur and social innovator, founder of Plate It Forward. He received the 2024 TimeOut Magazine Sydney’s Future Shaper award and was also named 2023 SMH Good Food Innovator of the Year.
Lakshmi Ganapathy: How do you turn the anger you feel into forward motion instead of getting stuck?
Shaun Christie-David: Anger is crippling…You see injustice, racism, things that you don’t agree with, but don’t know how to do anything about. As a teen through to [when I was] a young adult… it took me a long time to understand and reconcile with [my anger].
It was [learning] how to channel that rage into doing something positive…We often think by just shouting and screaming that we’re going to [get] change. No. How do we make a difference? It’s by doing it in a way that’s inclusive…not having that rage be the voice but calming it down and doing something beautiful with it. What can we do to unite not divide?
Lakshmi Ganapathy: How do you think teenage you would look at you now?
Shaun Christie-David: He’d be pretty pissed about the amount of grey that’s in my beard and the belly I’ve got going on!
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Would teenage me be happy? Yeah, I think so. As I reflect on the person that I wanted to be growing up, I think [I wanted to] stand true to something I believed in and be able to live that every day.
I consider myself one of the luckiest people in the world. I get to hang out with the coolest individuals who have been underestimated, but overwhelmingly are the most incredible people. I get to feed people globally with amazing food and connection and hope. I get to have a lifestyle that’s not so much about money, but about purpose.
When I look back on that and at what are the pillars of success, [for me] it’s doing something [where] you can go home each day and know you’ve made a difference. As a teenager – a dreamer, an idealist, a person that hoped for good in the world…that’s all we can try [to do].
Lakshmi Ganapathy: You’ve employed people who’ve fled war, lost careers, and been shut out of the workforce. What’s the most powerful transformation you’ve witnessed?
Shaun Christie-David: I’ve been lucky enough to employ about 250 people from those communities, so I’ve got 250 powerful stories. I’ve got a lady with eight kids, who’d never spent more than two weeks out of incarceration before she met us and is now three and a half years out and sober, living an incredible life with a job that she loves and her kids back with her. I’ve seen people who have come to me with huge war trauma, laughing and smiling and happy.
There’s so many stories of people who have built the most incredible journey, so I’d never call one out, but the ripple effects of change that they make across them and their communities is the dream that we have and it’s come to fruition.
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Shaun Christie-David
Lakshmi Ganapathy: What’s something that you’re currently listening to/reading/playing/watching?
Shaun Christie-David: I’ve started watching Bait with Riz Ahmed; it’s so good to see representation of that ‘first generation cool London Indian’.
Lakshmi Ganapathy: What’s a word that you like in a South Asian language, and what does it mean?
Shaun Christie-David: I don’t know how to speak Tamil, but it’s like ‘Poitu Varen’; in Tamil they don’t say goodbye, they say ‘I will go and I will come back’, and I think that that’s beautiful. We will all see each other again in some way shape or form, so when I see someone that I love I don’t say ‘bye, see you tomorrow’, I say, ‘I’ll see you soon’.
Lakshmi Ganapathy: And finally – Soan Papdi or Papdi Chaat?
Shaun Christie-David: Papdi chaat. I don’t eat sweets at all. I’ve had a restaurant for six years and I’ve not had the dessert there yet. I put on heaps of weight when I have sugar, so I conditioned myself out of it. But [I love] anything fried and savory, so it’s not like I’m being some healthy guy, it’s just sugar!
READ ALSO: Cutting Chai with Mannie Kaur Verma
