Joining the dots

Ideas speed into this 56-year-old8217;s mind like the Toofan Mail. Incidentally, Kalra traced its 8216;culinary8217; route while working on the menu for a conference at Delhi8217;s Rail Museum. 8216;8216;The Toofan Mail ran from Peshawar to Kolkata. We recreated its food trail, so Kolkata was the dessert station and Panipat was the bar,8217;8217; says Kalra, breaking into a smile that travels right to his eyes.

The idea of mapping Indian food was inspired by Khuswant Singh8217;s The People of India. Kalra worked with Singh at The Illustrated Weekly of India in Mumbai in the 8217;70s.

8216;8216;He is my guru. He did the People of India to bring the country together. I decided to take a leaf out of his work, and map the food of India,8217;8217; says Kalra.

But what provided the momentum was an ignorant remark made by a group of editors during a US tour in 1980. 8216;8216;I was meeting food writers and editors, and they remarked, 8216;but all your food tastes the same8217;. I was furious,8217;8217; says Kalra. That was how Prasad Allied Publishers, Delhi, was born. The book8212;described by Amazon as the 8216;8216;Bible of Indian Cooking8217;8217;8212;has sold more than three million copies worldwide.

Kalra8217;s initiation into writing on food happened 25 years ago in Mumbai. The culinarily-inquisitive sardar, a trainee journalist, discovered a restaurant, 8216;8216;a hole in the wall8217;8217;, in Mumbai8217;s Apollo Bunder, and got its chef to rustle up 8216;8216;kum mirch ka khana8217;8217;. Gradually his friends joined in 8216;8216;adman Prahlad Kakkar was my dining partner8217;8217;. As the numbers swelled to 30, so did his reputation as a foodie.

8216;8216;Then one day, the editor of The Evening News Of India asked me to do a food column. I was a rookie, all of 22, and grabbed the chance,8217;8217; recalls Kalra.

What started with Prasad he wrote other books subsequently, including works on Awadh and Punjab, which includes cuisine from undivided Punjab, had to continue. 8216;8216;Because I did not include a very essential component8212;cuisine from south India.8217;8217; Eventually, the idea grew into documenting the nuances, influences and variety of regional Indian food.

Also on the itinerary is the cuisine from Maharashtra8217;s coast8212;Sindhudurg and Malwan8212;right down to the port city of Mangalore in Karnataka and the temple food of Orissa. Friends and well-wishers are chipping in. 8216;8216;Sadanand Maiya, chairman of MTR Foods, has promised me the Ayurvedic food of the temple town of Udupi,8217;8217; says Kalra, who has worked out a common grid for all his books. And it is more than simply compiling the traditional eats.

8216;8216;One thing missing in many cuisines is desserts. Also, they have to learn to balance out things when they present it to others,8217;8217; he says.

Today, he8217;s all set to attend the World Gourmet Summit, Las Vegas, in November to talk about Indian cuisine at their first ever Master Class. 8216;8216;That8217;s a big kick, reviving Indian traditional food,8217;8217; says the gourmet, who popularised food from small towns and cities across India in his pioneering early 8217;90s television series Daawat. But it also brought him face-to-face with problems involved in letting the world know about our cuisine. 8216;8216;The Indian thinks of food as a nuclear secret,8217;8217; he says rather ruefully.

Which makes his current task all the more tedious. So how does he manage to stay on track? The stroke he suffered in 20008212;leaving his left side paralysed8212;did slow him down a bit, he says. 8216;8216;But then I have done nine books, opened six restaurants, worked on festivals in Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and Hyderabad on a wheelchair.8217;8217; The hint of sadness that overcomes him when talk veers to his present physical condition is replaced by a feeling of pleasant complacency. 8216;8216;Now I tell myself, even if I had been fit, this is what I would have done, so I8217;m not complaining.8217;8217;

Kalra says the ultimate high would be to come out with a book that is as much a reference point as the cookbooks handed down by mothers to their daughters.

And while this might take another couple of years, he is already thinking of his next venture. 8216;8216;A companion to Indian food,8217;8217; says the man behind the chaat-flavoured Lays potato chips. For instant gratification, there8217;s Ullithial8212;a Madras onion curry flavour8212;on Kurkure next.