The scent of coffee beans begins to fade, and the rich smell of a Sri Lankan curry takes its place. A bouquet of aromas wraps itself around the room, enveloping both the space and its patrons. Some are excited, some are unsure, but everyone is hungry. Nigethan Sithrasegram, an asylum seeker living in Warrandyte, begins to plate up the first dish for this month’s Tamil Feast fundraiser at Now and Not Yet Café.

Once a month, Sithrasegram, or ‘Nige’, as he is known by the community, and his friend cook up a three-course meal to raise money and awareness for other refugees.

“People don’t know much about Sri Lankan food and culture and everything,” he tells upstart. “So, through the Tamil feast, we’re telling our story.”

The fundraiser has changed peoples’ perspectives on asylum seekers, Sithrasegram says.

“They have some imagination [that] ‘refugee be like this’ but we [have] broken that imagination,” he says.

Derek Bradshaw, café owner, says that many people walk away with both respect and admiration for Sithrasegram as well as a changed mindset after these meals. He recalls a particular night where he invited someone who held “pretty conservative views on immigration” to a Tamil Feast.

“He walked up to me at the end of it, actually in tears and said, ‘I’m so sorry for the position that I’ve held’.I’ve realised we’re not talking about an issue here, we’re talking about people,’” Bradshaw says. “And he walked up to Nige, and he gave him a hug.”

In 2009, Sithrasegram made the difficult decision to leave his wife and son for his own safety.

“My whole life in Sri Lanka was hell because [of] the war,” he says.

After arriving in Australia, he was eventually placed in a detention centre called Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation (MITA) based in Broadmeadows.

When Sithrasegram first arrived, there were 4,077 people in immigration detention across Australia. As of 31 December 2023, there were still 872 people being held.

During his time at the centre, Sithrasegram met other Tamil refugees and began to learn new skills. Every day he would call his wife and she would teach him how to cook over the phone.

“I’m not [a] chef in Sri Lanka, I’m a fisherman,” he says. “So, I learnt everything from [inside] that detention centre.”

It was there Sithrasegram first met Bradshaw. When visiting the centre, Bradshaw was introduced to multiple residents of MITA including Sithrasegram and his friend. Before he knew it, Bradshaw was already being fed.

“I found out that in the detention centre, if you go and do some extra things, if you go to the gym or if you go to the library or whatever, you can get these credits and you can buy extra food,” he says. “The fact that these guys had cooked this extra food for us was pretty amazing.”

After leaving the centre that day. Bradshaw contacted his friend who was working as an asylum seeker support worker. He asked what he could do to help and offered to supply housing and work to anyone his friend thought would be a good fit. A couple of months later, Bradshaw remembers a couple of familiar faces walking into his café for the first time.

“I realised, ‘just a second, these are the guys that cooked me food’” he says.

Sithrasegram and his friend began working in the Now and Not Yet kitchen when they were first released from the detention centre in 2015.

“I really enjoy working. It’s a really good community and people and volunteers,” Sithrasegram says.

After a few months, Bradshaw and Sithrasegram came up with the idea for monthly Tamil feasts.

“When they started helping out in the kitchen, we talked about, ‘well, what would it be like to help these guys to celebrate their culture in an Australian situation?’” Bradshaw says.

Nestled in the heart of Warrandyte, Bradshaw says Now and Not Yet first opened its doors in 2014 with the goal of making “a positive impact on the community”.

“I’m a Baptist Pastor but… I was pretty sick and tired of sitting around and talking about stuff and being the moral police of the universe and all of that stuff,” he says. “I just wanted to get out and do some good.”

Since they’ve been open, Now and Not yet have provided support to eleven asylum seekers including Sithrasegram, who has now lived in Warrandyte for nearly seven years thanks to the efforts of the café and the community.

“Our goal essentially was to provide a period of housing and a period of employment and training and job readiness to help people coming out of detention,” Bradshaw says.

A report surveying asylum seekers found that 40 percent felt that the lack of friends or community networks was the main barrier to finding employment.

Bradshaw’s vision of Now and Not Yet aims to strengthen the assets of the town and allows him to help wherever he can. The café employs and trains people with disabilities, supports those facing homelessness, provides aid to victims of domestic violence and hosts a rotating exhibit of local art in the Now and Not Yet Gallery. This is all happens while coffee and food are served seven days a week.

“The concept of ‘Now and Not Yet’ is that the community is now already good, but not yet as good as it can be,” he says.

The Tamil Feasts keep increasing in popularity and are now being booked out in minutes. Bradshaw says by the end of the night, people appreciate both Sithrasegram’s story and his cooking.

“The food is amazing. In fact, we’re looking at running some cooking classes because so many people are wanting to know: ‘How come my curry doesn’t taste like that’” he says.

Sithrasegram is still enjoying working at the café and hopes to continue his cooking career by someday opening his own Sri Lankan restaurant in Australia. With the help of Now and Not Yet and the Warrandyte community, he has been reunited with his son, who is now enjoying high school. Sithrasegram is also waiting for his permanent resident visa to be approved so that his wife can come to Australia too.

Article: Ruby Oosthuizen is a fourth-year Bachelor of Arts (Digital media) and Bachelor of Science (Zoology) student at La Trobe University. You can follow her on Twitter @OosthuizenRuby

Photo: Supplied by Now and Not Yet Café and is used with permission.