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Taste of art
The journey from palette to palate can be quite an extraordinary one. Especially if the guide is a celebrated painter like Shuvaprasanna. Working on the belief that culinary experiments require as much creativity as fine art, the affable artist has lent his expertise to designing some special dishes for three of Taj Bengal’s popular restaurants — Souk, Chinoiserie and Sonargaon — as part of the hotel’s new gastronomical venture called ‘Palette Palate’. “The concept is based on some simple principles — “the taste of colour and smell of beauty”, says the artist, adding that he loved helping his mother in her kitchen. “You can greatly enhance the taste of your food if you can aesthetically present it.” Take darsaan, a Chinese dessert which is served in Chinoiserie. Shuvaprasanna has tweaked its shape and transformed it into what he calls jhilimili gaja. Well, from arty to hearty — the foodie takes it all.
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Rude ride
Remember George Orwell’s Animal Farm, where some pigs were “more equal”? Well, India is no exception. Even in a congregation of the great and the good, some invariably get to take the upper hand. Biocon chief Kiran Mazumdar Shaw got a taste of Orwellian wisdom recently when she was invited to take the inaugural ride on Bangalore’s swank new metro rail. Did she enjoy the ride? Er, not quite. Far from managing to set foot on the train, Shaw got pushed out of the metro station by a sea of “politicians’ sidekicks”. “It was madness,” said Shaw later. “The party workers pushed everyone aside and boarded the train. We were left standing on the platform. I said, forget it, and left.” Still, the outing was not a complete washout for Shaw. She decided to take an auto ride instead — something she hadn’t done for years. And it turned out that she thoroughly enjoyed that journey.
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Punjabi pride
You must hand it to Farhan Akhtar. Whether he is directing or acting, he tackles both jobs with equal dedication and drive. Director of the edgy new Don series, Akhtar’s acting skills are also legion. And he is willing to do all it takes to play a role perfectly. Take the Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra film Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, where Akhtar is playing the legendary sprinter Milkha Singh. The role requires him to speak chaste Punjabi — a lingo Akhtar is not so comfortable with. So he is now taking Punjabi lessons from Gulzar (who is from Punjab) to get his accent right. Evidently, Akhtar doesn’t believe in that familiar — and blasé — Punjabi saying, “Ki farak painda”!
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Book hook
When David Davidar says something about publishing, people usually listen. The veteran publisher, who was in Chennai recently to launch his latest book Ithaca, can count on readers to look upon it as an authoritative account of the goings-on in the publishing industry. Meant to be an insider’s view of the “commercial” publishing world, Ithaca narrates the journey of a publisher, “who is going through a huge state of anxiety and sense of displacement about work and his personal life”. That ought to ring a bell, for Davidar, who was CEO of Penguin International in Canada, and had quit when a sexual harassment suit was filed against him. But bygones, as they say, are bygones. With Ithaca, and the editorship of a new publishing outfit, Davidar is clearly looking set to rule the bookworld again.