Dear readers, here I am again. Only this time, I have been cuffed by the editor and instructed to ignore grand socio-political issues.

The directive, or brief, is quite ordinary. I am to simply talk about the great food I eat at friends’ homes, extol the delights of plush restaurants that will now give me a free meal (burp!), crow about roadside stalls and dhabas that don’t give a damn who I’m writing for and what, if any, difference it will make to them and, lastly, the culinary fantasies that my old Oriya chef makes come true, ably assisted by a young turk Bihari from Darbhanga who has played hell into my French.

For those fellow nitpickers and the eclectic few who liked to read my intellectually fraudulent and “grab it by the *****” pieces that used to appear in this paper, I owe a small explanation for the year-long silence I have maintained. The fact is, from last February, which is when I last put pencil to paper, the world has feasted on a diet of deception, misrepresentation and glorified suicide.

The culinary skills of Blair and Bush have enthralled the world with democratised jambalaya and other giddy gumbos flavoured enigmatically with WMD (weapons of mass destruction), a seasoning that these caucasoid MSGs (mass-slaughter-gluttomates) hadn’t realised would eventually cause haemorrhoids in their armies and heartburn in their constituencies.

And, at home, Buddha’s Quixotic attempts to introduce a nouvelle cuisine are drawing mixed-menu signals from Bengalis who were wet-nursed on Mao’s mammary and have grown up on trussed and stuffed industrialists (dormas) and buses and trams flambeed (poras) and the political steam (bhapas) of blue-collar reform.

Alas, against my better judgment and the diktat of those who will toss me a chauwanni to appet-tease you, I have strayed once again. So let me save my future by getting back to the topic I am supposed to address.

Now, who in the cosmetics world would have ever thought that a stretch mark remover would turn out to be the anti-wrinkle breakthrough of the decade? That, sort of, sums up what this column of mine will set out to achieve every week.

After all, isn’t everyone we know on some ridiculous ‘locarb’ or ‘highpro’ diet or another? It’s a different matter that my girlfriend is shaping up (or down should I say) to slip into a bikini and accept an invitation to swim in the Phi-Phi lagoon outside Bangkok when, for a middle-aged man like myself, with a traumatic prostate, the locals embarrassingly pronounce it “Pee-Pee”!

As you can tell, semantics can upset bladders just as easily as it does stomachs. So, as the weeks roll by, it shall be my aim to give you delectable insights into the bullshit of gourmet cooking and also let you into a few private secrets that master chefs reveal when they let their aprons down.

Also on line will be how the beautiful people tread the traditional belly-path into their lovers’ hearts. So, look out every Sunday!