When Padma Lakshmi didn't reveal who the father of her baby was, his identity became subject of intense media scrutiny. "It certainly was icky when the press started snooping around in various countries — not just America, but in India, England, Australia. At that time, it was splashed all over the newspapers and it was mortifying," Lakshmi said on a December 9 episode of People's podcast "Me Becoming Mom." Lakshmi was "sort of between relationships," as she put it. She was casually seeing two men when she discovered she was pregnant and was herself uncertain of his identity, a situation she explained in her 2016 memoir "Love, Loss, and What We Ate" (via Independent). 

After divorcing novelist Salman Rushdie in 2007, Lakshmi began seeing Theodore J. Forstmann and, later, Adam Dell. "It probably wasn't the best choice, but it was the choice that I made at the time. I didn't want to be in a serious relationship. I was still really hurting from my divorce," she told TODAY in 2016. It turned out that Dell was the father of her daughter, Krishna, who was born in 2010. Despite the revelation, Lakshmi and Forstmann decided to give their relationship another try, according to Us Weekly. When the billionaire died in 2011, he included Krishna in his will, the report detailed. Lakshmi and Dell continued to have an on-again, off-again relationship until early this year, when they went through an "amicable" breakup, per Page Six.

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