Reflections & Family · Life Lessons

Carving His Own Path: Why I Am Quietly Proud of My Son, Shourrya

A gifted boy raised in comfort, tested by divorce and the fall of a family fortress, who still chose hospitality, still worked for others from the floor up, and who — I believe with every bone in my body — will make it big one day.

There are nights when a father closes his eyes and still sees his son as a child — the Nike cap, the bus window, the pigeons in Venice — and then opens them to the man who now runs a London dining room: Director & General Manager at Pahli Hill Bandra Bhai, after years of struggle on someone else’s floor with the same intensity other people reserve for their own empires.

That sight is not easy. It is not easy to watch a gifted child grow up. It is not easy to watch him struggle. It is not easy to watch him work for others after he was raised inside a family that India knew — after he had tasted every comfort the world could buy — and after that fortress broke precisely when he needed it most.

This is my reflection on Shourrya Sachdeva — my son. Not a résumé. A father’s heart, written plain.

One small note on the names: I was born a Sachdeva and later changed my own surname to Sachdev. He kept Sachdeva — the original family name. Different spellings on paper; the same house in the heart.

01A gifted kid — and why GiftedKids.in exists

Shourrya was a gifted kid long before I had language for the word. Intensity. Curiosity that would not sleep. A mind that leapt three steps ahead and then got restless waiting for the room to catch up. The questions. The impatience with mediocrity. The strange mix of sensitivity and drive that gifted children carry like an invisible second pulse.

As a father, I did not always know how to hold that fire. I only knew it was real — and that India still offers gifted children too little: schools that reward compliance over depth, relatives who call intensity “attitude,” and parents left alone with a child who is brilliant and restless at the same time. Watching Shourrya grow — and later watching other bright, uneven, extraordinary children — is what motivated me to start GiftedKids.in: a place for parents who sense their child is wired differently and need language, community, and dignity instead of labels that flatten them.

I believe, without theatre and without apology, that Shourrya will make it big one day. Not because comfort promised him that. Because giftedness plus grit — tested in public, on someone else’s floor — eventually compounds. I have seen the boy. I am watching the man. The trajectory is still climbing.

A gifted child is not a trophy. He is a responsibility — and sometimes a wound of love — until the world finally has room for what he was built to become.

02A childhood of comfort — and the wide world

Shourrya was not raised in scarcity. He was brought up in a family that India knew — a manufacturing name, travel, festivals, gatherings, and the quiet assumption that the ground under your feet would hold. He had the comforts of the world: places to go, doors that opened, a childhood that looked, from the outside, like a fortress.

I look at these photographs now and something in my chest still tightens. A father and son feeding pigeons in a European square. A boy on a bus with a red Nike cap. An overlook above a city. A toddler kissed on the cheek. Nights with family. Temples and tilak. The small frames of a gifted boy who did not yet know how fragile a family’s financial skyline can become.

He grew up with the comforts of a known Indian family — travel, festivals, a name that opened rooms. Then, when he needed that fortress most, it broke.

03Early clarity — and Les Roches

Most children drift for a while. Some wait for a family business to decide their future for them. Shourrya was not like that. Gifted minds often aren’t. They fix on a craft early and refuse to be talked out of it.

From an early age he had a clarity that surprised me: hospitality. Hotels. Service. The craft of making a room feel like care, a kitchen feel like discipline, a guest feel seen. He did not romanticise it. He named it — and then he chased it all the way to Les Roches in Switzerland, one of the world’s most demanding hospitality institutes.

There he mastered what brochures never teach: global standards of hospitality, discipline, operational rigor, and the management muscle that turns a smile into a system. I was proud in the ordinary way fathers are proud of degrees. I did not yet know how much more pride would cost — or how much more it would mean — when the degree had to survive without a family cheque behind it.

He did not ask the family business what he should become. He told the world what he intended to master — and then he went to Switzerland to prove it.

04Growing up when the home split

There is a chapter I will not dress up, and I will not dissect.

During formative years, our family went through a divorce. I will say nothing about the other parent. That is not this essay’s business. What matters here is the emotional weather a young gifted boy had to walk through: the turbulence of a split household, the loss of an intact home as a constant anchor, and the quiet work of keeping his emotional footing when the house itself had changed shape.

As a father, that chapter still sits heavy. You want to be the roof. You want to be the weatherproofing. And then you discover that even love cannot always keep the beams from shifting. He did not advertise that pain. He carried it. Through school, through ambition, through Les Roches — he kept his centre. I am still learning how much strength that took.

Some boys inherit an unbroken roof. Others learn to build an inner one. Shourrya learned the second kind of architecture.

05When the fortress broke — when he needed it most

Then came the disappearance that still cuts deepest for me as a father.

Su-Kam, the manufacturing company I built over decades — the name, the plants, the financial fortress that had framed his childhood — fell into insolvency under India’s Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. Overnight, the company and the comfortable safety net people assumed would always be there vanished.

He had been raised with all the comfort of the world. And then, precisely when a young man needs a background cushion most — entering adulthood, building a career, standing in the wind — that cushion was gone. No parental financial buffer. No family safety net. Zero background security queued up behind his surname.

I have written elsewhere about what the IBC process does to founders and factories. This is the private side of that public story: a gifted son raised inside a known family’s comfort, watching the fortress break at the hour he needed it most — and realising he would have to invent his own ground while his father watched, unable to hand him the soft landing that had once seemed inevitable.

The cruelest timing is this: to grow up inside comfort, then lose the fortress the day you finally need its walls.

06Rachita

Through every hard season, Shourrya has had a steady pillar beside him: Rachita Syal. Theirs is a strong relationship — not the kind that only shines in easy years, but the kind that holds in thin times and thick times alike. She has been his emotional support when the ground shook, when the days ran long, and when pride had to be rebuilt quietly. That kind of partnership does not announce itself; it simply stays. In a life that asked him to stand alone more than once, her presence has been one of the deepest strengths he has been given.

07Ground zero — from Crepe-fe to Pahli Hill

Here is the part that still catches in my throat.

Before London, he built something of his own — and he also spent a brief stretch inside the family company. Shourrya worked at Su-Kam for a short period earlier in his path, learning the factory floor and the weight of a manufacturing name from the inside. Then he started Crepe-fe in India — a dessert-and-comfort brand he ran successfully for six years. That was not inheritance. That was entrepreneurship: outlets, nights, delivery, guests, the full weight of owning a floor.

Then came London — and the climb that looked, from a father’s distance, like starting again from ground zero. It is not easy for a father who once built factories to watch his son work for others after Les Roches and after Crepe-fe. Fourteen-hour days on someone else’s floor — kitchens, briefings, inventory, guest complaints, the unglamorous arithmetic of service — after the family name had meant something different, and after his own Indian brand had already proved he could lead.

He did not abandon hospitality. He did not turn bitter. He did not look for shortcuts. He took the Les Roches training into the trenches of food and beverage — leading operations, managing frontline teams, building and rebuilding — until the struggle in London earned him the right to run the room.

Today he is Director & General Manager at Pahli Hill Bandra Bhai in Fitzrovia, London — a regional Indian restaurant recognised with a Michelin Bib Gourmand and voted London’s Best Indian Restaurant by FACT 2025. That title was not gifted. It was reached after a lot of struggle in London. You can follow his path on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Linktree.

He is a true entrepreneur like his father. Crepe-fe proved it. The London climb proved it again. And I know — from my heart, not from a balance sheet — that one day he will create his own brand. May God help him in building the same: a name that is his, a house that stands because he built it, brick by brick, guest by guest.

But the pride I feel is not only for the titles. It is for the years when there was no title — only struggle, only showing up, only working for others while a gifted mind refused to quit. That is character. That is the part that makes me believe he will make it big one day.

I did not raise a prince waiting for a throne. I watched a gifted professional choose the floor — work for others without bitterness — and stay long enough to earn the right to lead Pahli Hill.

08Perspective from above

Alongside the grind, he built a second craft early. Shourrya learnt drones young — not as a weekend hobby, but with the focus of someone who meant to master the sky. He became an expert drone flyer, lifting a camera into air that most of us never earn, and reframing the world from height.

You can see that work on his YouTube channel Aerial Indians, and on Instagram at @aerial_india. During the COVID period — when the streets emptied and the city held its breath — he was up there filming. One of those lockdown shoots is this birds-eye view of Gurugram from 2020:

I see a rhyme in that. Hospitality teaches you to read a room at eye level. Flying teaches you that the map is larger than the room. Gifted minds often need both — the close work and the wide sky.

09What a father is actually proud of

Many fathers take pride in handing over an empire or wealth. I understand that pride. I lived inside a company for most of my adult life.

But real resilience cannot be written into a will. It is built when a gifted child grows up in public — through divorce, through the fall of a family fortress, through the dignity and the ache of working for others — and still wakes up, still masters his craft, still cherishes an extraordinary partner, and still refuses to become bitter.

Shourrya faced life’s harshest tests. He built an unshakeable identity. He cherishes Rachita. He stood on his own two feet. And yes — I believe he will make it big one day. Not as inheritance. As consequence. He is a true entrepreneur like his father, and one day he will create his own brand. I know it from my heart. May God help him building the same.

That is why I am quietly, fiercely proud of my son. If gifted children — and the parents raising them — are part of your life, start at GiftedKids.in.

I could not leave him an unbroken empire. He is leaving me something rarer: proof that a gifted son can lose every comfort, work for others without shame, love without quitting — and still be on his way to building a brand of his own.

— Kunwer Sachdev