Bengaluru: Atul Kochhar is an Indian celebrity chef who was terminated by the JW Marriott Marqui Hotel in Dubai in June 2018.

The reason: 

He had questioned the silence of actress Priyanka Chopra for not apologising to Hindus facing terror by Islam for well over 2000 years.

Here’s the tweet.

Priyanka Chopra had tendered an apology as a result of backlash against an episode of her Hollywood TV show Quantico. The episode had shown Indian nationalists plotting a nuclear attack in Manhattan to frame Pakistani terrorists. This fictional plot twist that was far away from reality had, in fact angered many Indians.  Atul Kochhar was also one of them, who did not mince words to have expressed his displeasure over the issue.

The issue died down with Kochhar being sacked, but the agony and privation he had to suffer as a consequence didn’t end.

He even laid bare the pain he went through as a result of his being terminated in an interview.

 

Such was his plight that he had forced his kids to stop going to school for some time as they too had to face a huge embarrassment.

As depressing as it gets, his professional rivals used this episode to decimate him. As he himself says, “I think it was the darkest time of my life.”

In what comes as a heart-warming gesture, it was his Muslim friends who stood by him during the entire crisis. He grew up at Shahjahanpur near Lucknow and his Muslim friends very well knew he was and is a secular-minded person. Atul also adds that he has helped several orphaned kids financially during his career as a chef.