Padma Lakshmi was born in Chennai, India.Her father was a Pfizer executive, and her mother, Vijaya, the first wife of her father,[6] was a nurse who specialized in suicide prevention.[5] Her mother tongue is Tamil.[7] She grew up shuttling between her grandparents in Chennai and her mother in New York.[5][8][9] She is her parents' only child from this marriage. Her parents separated when she was age one. They divorced a year later. Both parents later remarried,[10] and Lakshmi has a younger paternal half-brother and half-sister. The latter formerly worked as an actress and classical dancer but is now pursuing a career with children with special needs.[10] In an interview in The Guardian. Lakshmi said, "My father had quit his job as an executive at Pfizer to manage her career. That was kind of like rubbing salt in the wound. I didn't understand why he wanted that relationship with her, and not with me."[5] In 1984, when she was 14 years old, Lakshmi was hospitalized for two weeks, eventually diagnosed with Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, which is caused by hypersensitivity to an infection or certain kinds of medications. Two days after discharge from the hospital, she was in a car accident in Malibu, California, causing an injury to her right arm that required surgery, which left a 7-inch scar between her elbow and shoulder. The incident took place on a Sunday afternoon as Lakshmi was being driven home from a Hindu temple in Malibu, where her mother had taken her to give thanks for the healing.[5] She remembers a flash of orange, looking over to see the large car upon her. Padma describes the event in the April 2001 edition of Vogue, saying, "Being in a car crash was like an exhilarating hallucination, an unbelievable moment that oddly remains one of the most beautiful images in my memory."[11] The accident also left Lakshmi with a fractured right hip and a shattered upper right arm.[cit
