Frank Unedited: The Best of Frank Simoes Roli, Rs 395

Born into an aristocratic Goan family, Frank Simoes left school when he was 18 and set out to see the world, working on a cargo ship. His experiences as a dishwasher, porter and general dogsbody on that voyage provided him with rich material in his future career in advertising and writing.

Backed by a facility for manipulating words, Simoes joined a large advertising firm as a copywriter. As Dom Moraes writes in the foreword, Simoes “wrote some of the most brilliant copies ever known in Indian advertising…He and the team he inspired, together with the Taj group of hotels, made Goa a landmark on the map of world tourism.”

Simoes, however, always wanted to be “a proper writer”. He finally abandoned advertising and sold off his highly successful company for a full time career as a writer. Up to now, he has authored over 300 articles and two books.

This volume has around 60 articles catering to diverse tastes and interests. They represent the best of Simoes as advertising guru; historian of two places he loved a lot, Mumbai and Goa; traveller to distant parts of the world; gourmand and connoisseur of drinks; and irreverent, witty and often scathing chronicler of our times.

Sample this passage: “And let us draw a merciful veil over the front pages of our daily newspapers where life outdoes art — the Bhagalpur blindings; the rape, murder and torture of children; the slaughter of hundreds in the name of God and community, the burning of meagrely dowried brides; the routine gun-toting coercion of the electorate and the new extra-judicial services so thoughtfully provided by the underworld to a grateful citizenry.”

To Simoes and a handful of iconoclastic copy-writers go the credit for sex coming of age in Indian advertising. Their motto was — who dares wins.

Gourmets will relish Simoes’s colourful descriptions of various dishes. “My culinary rite of passage in London begins with the most welcome of first rituals, lunch at Senor Saachi at Knightsbridge. Here the best Frascati outside Rome offers the perfect foil to the stuffed peppers augratin, the veal rolls encased with bacon, almonds, sultanas, Parmesan, parsley with a thickly reduced red wine sauce, the mussels baked with herbs, Pecorino and crumbs.” Simoes rates the restaurant, Alfred, on Shaftsbury Avenue very high, which is famous for its steak and kidney pie, and roast beef with Yorkshire pudding.

Simoes switches easily from food to colour prejudice. Colour prejudice in England, he says without mincing words, is a fact of everyday life, present at all levels of society. Simoes cites his own experiences to make this point.

Simoes’s articles belong to the genre of the personal essay, made famous by G.K. Chesterton, E.V. Lucas and A.G. Gardiner. They may not be the best of their kind, but they make compelling reading.