Rebuilt
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, she 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.
Then, two months before their wedding, her husband received a job offer in Luxembourg. The couple had expected to build their life in Berlin. Moving to Luxembourg meant starting over.
Her Indian law qualification did not directly allow her to practise in Luxembourg, 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 with people confidently, and a basic knowledge of French was not enough.
During COVID 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. Dishes, flavours, and traditions that had always seemed ordinary to her were largely unfamiliar to people in Luxembourg.
When restrictions eased, she approached a food festival 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, then a food truck called 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 city that was not the plan. A lockdown that changed everything. She started cooking for friends, brought vada pav to a food festival, opened a food truck, then a restaurant. Mumbai Flavors opened in December 2025. Her heart is still Indian, she says, but Luxembourg gave her the opportunity to rebuild. The law degree is on the shelf. The kitchen is where she works now.