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A culinary expedition
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Shoba Narayan on her gourmet experience and writing
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FOOD FOR THOUGHT Shoba Narayan PHOTO: R.SHIVAJI RAO
Shoba Narayan, culinary writer, best known as the author of "Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes", says she isn't a great cook but that doesn't stop her from enjoying cuisines in all their varied forms and writing about them.
Speaking at a meeting organised by the Madras Book Club at the Taj Connemara, these words were true encouragement for many budding writers. Dwelling on the many aspects of writing biographies, she used "Monsoon Diary... " as a focal point and made it clear that most biographies are not just about everything that happens in one's life. Editing and selecting the most interesting episodes played an important role.
But the speech wasn't just a lecture on how to write well. Reading out extracts from her work, Shoba underlined how her travels across India, the United States and Singapore influenced and exposed her to an assortment of food and cooking methods. Growing up in Chennai and being a South Indian meant there was sambar and rasam at home but school was a true multi-ethnic experience and break time was a wonderful opportunity to explore what the others had in their lunch boxes. In fact, she writes that the cooking prowess of the mothers determined the pecking order among the girls!
A person with diverse interests, she studied psychology, majored in Fine Arts, studied alternative medicine and nearly became an acupuncturist before establishing herself as a writer for journals as varied as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and Condenast Traveller.
Winning the James Beard Foundation's M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award, considered the most prestigious food-writing award in the U.S., for her story "The God of Small Feasts", which appeared in Gourmet's January 2000 issue was a turning point.
"Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes", her first book, was published in 2003. Besides her gamut of experiences, she believes that reading too makes an enormous difference. A speaker at various culinary conferences, she says the time spent with several master chefs has taught her a lot. A vegetarian, Shoba says, "I don't eat anything that moves" but regrets leaving out many interesting foods, like the different kinds of meats, out of her gourmet experience.
PAROMITA PAIN
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