Mumbai Masala
When Jagruti Devasthali arrived in Luxembourg in 2019, she thought she knew what her future looked like. She believed she was putting her legal career on hold, not leaving it behind.
Born and raised in Mumbai, Devasthali studied law at the University of Mumbai before completing a master's degree in Intellectual Property Rights. She spent around seven years working in law, handling civil and property disputes, compliance and insurance matters. She later took on a senior legal management role with the State Bank of India, covering legal matters across Maharashtra.
Her husband was completing his master's in Germany. They had imagined building their life in Berlin. Then, two months before their wedding, he received a job offer in Luxembourg. "Everything changed on fairly short notice", she recalls.
Continuing her legal career in Luxembourg was not straightforward. Her Indian law qualification did not directly allow her to practise, and the legal systems were very different. "I had trained for seven years to become a lawyer, and suddenly that qualification wasn't something I could just take with me", she says. Language was another barrier: in law, you need to communicate confidently, and a basic knowledge of French was not enough.
During lockdown, she started cooking for friends. Their reactions surprised her. She also noticed a gap in Luxembourg's food scene: the Indian food she knew from Mumbai was difficult to find. She had grown up in a city where food changes from one neighbourhood to the next, where regional diversity is visible on the streets. Dishes that seemed ordinary to her were unfamiliar to people in Luxembourg.
When restrictions eased, she approached a food festival in Reckange with a pitch for an Indian street-food stall. Among the dishes was vada pav, the Mumbai street-food staple she believes she was among the first to introduce to Luxembourg's food-festival scene. More festivals followed, then a tiffin delivery service, and eventually a food truck. She named it Mumbai Masala.
In December 2025, she opened her first restaurant, Mumbai Flavors, in Luxembourg. The idea was to move beyond the narrow image of Indian cuisine.
She says accompanying spouses often face an invisible challenge: while one partner arrives with a job opportunity, the other has to rebuild their professional identity from scratch. "People often say, 'How lucky you are, you get to live abroad.' But rebuilding a career from nothing, away from your family and everything familiar, is not easy."
Seven years of law. A qualification that does not transfer. A language that is not enough. A pandemic that keeps you from home. And then: cooking for friends, a stall at a festival, a food truck, a restaurant. "My heart will always be Indian, but Luxembourg gave me the opportunity to rebuild my life and create something I never imagined."