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Photo: Murali Kumar K.

Informed choice Jiggs Kalra turned vegetarian inspired by his father

. Jiggs is all contempt for the British who “randomly drew a line across Punjab and caused the greatest mass migration in the history of the subcontinent”.

The festival, he says, celebrates Punjab in all its glory, celebrates the twin gourmet cities of Amritsar and Lahore. It is also a celebration of his own origins in undivided Punjab.

Having started his career in food reviewing with Khushwant Singh’s Illustrated Weekly back when the very concept was quite alien to the country, Jiggs has since done everything from write books to host television shows to start his own restaurants to help food brands get on the map.

Analysing the social dynamics of Indian cuisine from every angle, he flits from idea to idea, running his mind and mine across the length and breadth of the country and its history. “The tandoor oven had great social importance,” he reveals. “In the villages, all the women would make their pedas and bring them to the tandooriya and his fee was one paise for a roti.

But this was also a place for women to gather and get things off their chest, complain about their mothers-in-law and their husbands. And besides, it was a great energy saver,” he explains.

“Of course, more well-to-do families like mine had a tandoor in the house. Ours was a small snowcem drum, in which my dad had had clay laid. That must be the most well-travelled tandoor in the world,” he laughs.

And so the conversation shifts to Jiggs’ life as a soldier’s son and to the rather astounding fact that Jiggs, is vegetarian. This change he attributes to the influence of his father becoming vegetarian. “Meat makes a mess of your stomach. When I have some dal and rice, I am happiest. Even now, when I go to Delhi, the first thing I will have is khichdi, and then I sleep so well. Dal and roti is our culture, and they are supreme, simple and healthy,” he explains.

Indeed, he says, much of the great wealth of North Indian cuisine has been forgotten over time. “We have lotus stems, the eggplant, white and purple. It surprises people that my menus are 66 per cent vegetarian.”

The biggest defaulter in his mind is the butter chicken. “You must provide the option in order to pander to local demands, but I really don’t believe in the dish,” he says. He is just as dismissive of what passes for food reviewing today. “Most journalists are food reporters not reviewers,” he points out.

“A food reviewer has to be an appraiser, which only comes with knowledge. You can’t criticise on account of your own tongue without knowledge of the food.”

As trenchant a critic as he is of mediocrity, Jiggs is just as much an enthusiastic admirer of the good things in life. And nowhere is this more visible than in the unabashed flirting he indulges in with almost every woman he meets.

“I am the most outrageous flirt after my guru Khushwant Singh,” he says, and just to prove his point knocks the wind out of the Leela representatives with the most charming of compliments.

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