“Did you watch the last episode?”, Sarah asked. “It was amazing.”, she added. “Oh really? What was so special about it?”, I asked. “Uh, you know…”, confused, she went silent. Five seconds later, exclaiming as if she had got it, “For the same reasons we like the show.”

I nodded, smiling as if I knew what she was talking about. But I wondered why was it so difficult to explain the reasons why we watch MasterChef?

From the promo one can say the show is about cooking, they show a lot of good looking food. But is it really? You don’t learn recipes, maybe you learn a technique or two. There’s also drama and entertainment. But is that really why I watch the show?

My mom is a professional chef. I grew up in her kitchen. I was 9 and my greatest passion already was cooking. My friends wanted to be engineers and doctors but I knew I wanted to be a chef. When I turned 11, my dad bought me my first computer. It was great, I was the only kid in the block to have a computer at home. Like every other kid, I saw it as a toy. I was suddenly popular.

My uncle (mom’s brother) visited us. He had been living in the US for more than half a decade. He would tell us stories about how different, comfortable and convenient the life was there. I was fascinated. I wanted the life he was living. He was a computer programmer.

I loved puzzles, mathematics and problem solving in general. “Kid’s a natural”, my uncle said. “You should take this seriously, kiddo. Enough of games. Learn to program. I want to see you back in the states when you grow up.”

I was torn. It’s not a bad situation to be in. Having multiple passions and a gift. I could only have one career. It was a tough choice. But it was going to be programming. Mostly because it was the “safe” choice.

Being a 90s kid from an educated middle class family in a small town in India, you are conditioned to love western countries. You begin to want them. Your education starts shaping towards it. Computer Science, Engineering, IITs. I took a different route but I made it. It’s been overall satisfying living a good life in Germany.

Food still remains a big part of my life. I would have lived an incomplete life if I died without doing something meaningful with it. It’s on the cards. The path is an unpaved one and it may take a while to discover it. But it’s going to happen.

MasterChef contestants are normal people, like you and me, with jobs but with the same dream of doing something worthwhile with their passion. Theirs is food and cooking. Yours might be signing, dancing, quiz or something else. When you see them, you see yourself. You can relate to their stories and their struggles. When they’re cooking/singing/dancing to stay in the competition, their passion surfaces. It’s like watching a good sportsman perform up close. They’re battling it out to change their lives forever, they are the underdogs. Everybody loves an underdog. They want to be a part of their triumph.

There’s something about watching passionate people do their thing.