Feast of a job

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Some people ask me, how did I land the job that I did? Well, to tell you the truth I don't really know. But I have, for the longest time had the yearning of being able to live on a pea and have a body that would be the envy of Hrithik Roshan. But alas, every time I look at a cookbook, or enter a restaurant, the yearning seems to disappear quicker than the menus arrive!

I don't know what food is to you; in fact, I don't particularly care, because for me, it's been for the longest time one of the central themes of my existence. Now, I'm not the best of writers, but I'll try and put it in simpler terms.

When I was growing up, I fell in love, for the first time, with potatoes. I mean I obsessed about them. I would try and get the cook to make me a batch of chips (not French fries, but chips), until he too refused. So, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I decided to cut the potatoes myself using a bonti. That, if you are from the eastern part of the country you'll realise is one of two dangerous things you should not do as an amateur in a kitchen.

But before I could graduate to the next dangerous thing, the bonti did its job and I managed to slice a nice bit of my index finger. I clearly remember running round and round my grandmother's bed, bawling at the top of my voice bleeding drop by drop from my finger. I'm all right now and the finger was saved, though I remember curiously the fact that since the floor was red oxide, the blood didn't really show. I was about 5 or 6 at that time.

Thus scarred, I quickly graduated to cooking full force, usually when the cook, the other servants as well as the rest of the house was having their siesta. Until I started looking like a little balloon, a smaller version of what I look like now.

But it's not just potatoes which have filled me since. I've had the curious knack of being able to taste a great many things and actually found them non-offensive. I usually am ok with tasting something once, even try and find something nice to say about it (yes, my producer has always held this against me, but truly I wouldn't put it in my mouth if I didn't think it would taste nice).

My television story began five years ago, when I was hired, for reasons I'm sure everyone continues wondering, by CNN-IBN. But through quirk of fate, I began Secret Kitchen, which was a more practical version of my first show idea.

What happened during my shoots and shows, I'll tell you in my next entry. Suffice it to say, that the 30 odd kilos I've put on have been due to some fantastic eating! Sigh, so much for trying to have a body that Hrithik Roshan envies. But wait a minute, I think he may... after all; HE can't afford to eat to his hearts content and do no exercise, can he?