Joining the dots

noopener" target="_blank">Delhi, Saraswats from Kashmir to Karnataka, the Thikanas of Awadh, the Bohras of Mumbai, the ‘meaty’ areas of Gujarat, the Anglo-Indians of Kolkata and the Syrian Christians of Kerala, even an Indianised version of Chinese cooking for housewives.

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

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

‘‘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,’’ says Kalra.

But what provided the momentum was an ignorant remark made by a group of editors during a US tour in 1980. ‘‘I was meeting food writers and editors, and they remarked, ‘but all your food tastes the same’. I was furious,’’ says Kalra. That was how Prasad (Allied Publishers, Delhi), was born. The book—described by Amazon as the ‘‘Bible of Indian Cooking’’—has sold more than three million copies worldwide.

Kalra’s initiation into writing on food happened 25 years ago in Mumbai. The culinarily-inquisitive sardar, a trainee journalist, discovered a restaurant, ‘‘a hole in the wall’’, in Mumbai’s Apollo Bunder, and got its chef to rustle up ‘‘kum mirch ka khana’’. Gradually his friends joined in (‘‘adman Prahlad Kakkar was my dining partner’’). As the numbers swelled to 30, so did his reputation as a foodie.

‘‘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,’’ recalls Kalra.

The Toofan Mail ran from Peshawar to Kolkata. We recreated its food trail—Kolkata was the dessert station and Panipat the bar

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

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

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

Today, he’s all set to attend the World Gourmet Summit, Las Vegas, in November to talk about Indian cuisine at their first ever Master Class. ‘‘That’s a big kick, reviving Indian traditional food,’’ says the gourmet, who popularised food from small towns and cities across India in his pioneering early ’90s television series Daawat. But it also brought him face-to-face with problems involved in letting the world know about our cuisine. ‘‘The Indian thinks of food as a nuclear secret,’’ 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 2000—leaving his left side paralysed—did slow him down a bit, he says. ‘‘But then I have done nine books, opened six restaurants, worked on festivals in Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and Hyderabad on a wheelchair.’’ The hint of sadness that overcomes him when talk veers to his present physical condition is replaced by a feeling of pleasant complacency. ‘‘Now I tell myself, even if I had been fit, this is what I would have done, so I’m not complaining.’’

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. ‘‘A companion to Indian food,’’ says the man behind the chaat-flavoured Lays potato chips. For instant gratification, there’s Ullithial—a Madras onion curry flavour—on Kurkure next.