Robert Trathen
It’s not often that the Woman’s Weekly turns up to a photoshoot and finds its stars trying to sell their sofa to the publicist.
But after being settled in New Zealand for 25 years, Eat Well for Less NZ host Ganesh Raj and his wife Jo are preparing for a life lived between two countries.
With Ganesh’s mum Sundari in the early stages of dementia, the couple needs to spend more time in Singapore while keeping a foothold in New Zealand. For Ganesh, it’s about making the most of the precious time they have left.
“Being around for Mum is what’s important to me,” the 56-year-old says. “She’s 87. I reckon I’m in single digits in terms of the number of years I have left with her.
I had to make a choice: was I going to engineer a life where I can see her or not?”
Scary diagnosis
Ganesh first noticed his mother’s memory was starting to fade in 2022 and a year later, she received the scary diagnosis. For now, her long-term memory is still intact, but Ganesh knows it won’t always be that way.
“Her short-term memory is not that good, but everything else is fantastic,” Ganesh says. “We are at the point where she won’t remember what we talked about yesterday or little things like going to the shop. But her long-term is all good, so we have conversations about family, friends and life.”
It has taken time for Jo and Ganesh to figure out how to make their careers work across two countries, but the final pieces have fallen into place.
“This year has been about recalibrating our world to have this split-country existence,” explains TV producer Jo.
His close relationship with his mum
Ganesh was an only child raised by his solo mum.
“I’m so blessed that I have this opportunity to give back,” he enthuses. “We have forgiven each other for all the crap that we’ve given each other over the years and now it’s just pure love.”
Another bonus of the move is that it will be cheaper to visit daughter Kali, 21, who is currently living in Melbourne and, as Ganesh proudly boasts, is “the youngest graduate” at accounting firm Ernst & Young.
Though the family group chat keeps them connected and they never go longer than 10 weeks without seeing each other, Ganesh admits he still misses having his beloved daughter nearby.
“It’s taken me time to learn that I’ll always miss her and how to cope with it,” reflects Ganesh. “It doesn’t mean I’m always coping successfully. I might be successful 60 percent of the time and the other 40 percent I’m an absolute mess. But that’s okay.”
But Jo, 53, adds, as wanderers themselves, they know just how important it is to explore the world.
“She’s talked about if she decides to have a family, she’d come back to NZ, which would be fantastic. But your twenties are about figuring out who you are, and she needs to go and do that.”
Work is a driving force
While they may be spending more time overseas, Ganesh, who is nominated for Screen Personality of the Year at the NZ Screen Awards, has no intention of stepping away from the work that has become a driving force in his life.
Now in its sixth season, Ganesh says he and his Eat Well for Less co-host Michael Van de Elzen wanted to look beyond the figure on the supermarket receipt and look at the bigger picture.
“This season, we’re trying to figure out not just financial stuff, but getting deeper into what a family needs to do to feed itself,” he explains. “Some were spending less than the average, but they were eating highly processed foods.”
Helping Kiwis to budget in the kitchen
But Ganesh’s work doesn’t end when the cameras stop filming. Over the past six years, Ganesh has collaborated with community organisations and healthcare groups to develop his Four Recipes, One Pantry programme, and his new e-book Cook More, Spend Less. The book features 32 dinners built around four affordable pantry plans and shows how to make nutritious meals while keeping grocery costs down.
It’s a philosophy he and Jo live by themselves.
“We’re on a budget,” Jo says. “We eat a lot of leftovers and we make different dishes with the one or two ingredients we’ve bought. We’re walking the talk.”
While he’s proud of what he’s achieved, Ganesh says he’ll keep fighting for food education until every Kiwi can afford to feed themselves.
“If you want to get stuff done, you have to get your hands dirty,” he says. “Otherwise, you’re sat outside throwing stones and I’m not built that way.”
Eat Well For Less NZ streams on TVNZ+. Visit ganeshraj.tv to purchase Cook More, Spend Less.
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