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Photo: R.V. Moorthy

Dishing out the real thing Shrabani Basu at India Habitat Centre’s The Deck restaurant

To be known for one’s book is a dear wish every writer has, though not all who wield the pen can achieve it easily. Basu knows this, and so you will not only find her forgiving you for knowing more about Noor, her protagonist in “The Spy Princess: The Story of Noor Inayat Khan”, than about her, but also grinning from ear to ear if you compliment her for fleshing out the World War II figure with such dexterity.

“Just the other day, my daughter saw someone auctioning the book in Manchester to raise money for women’s football,” she says with a smile. Basu’s delicate handling of the story succeeds in restoring the dignity of Noor who met an unsung, brutal death while following the call of duty. Her plea to the British Government to place a memorial blue plaque outside Noor’s house, and to the Indian Government to release a stamp on her, are not met with yet though. “I am trying to meet Government officials here to pursue it,” she says.

Meeting up for a conversation over lunch, Basu, holding a glass of lemonade in her hand, is at The Deck restaurant in New Delhi’s India Habitat Centre. Not quite in the mood for an elaborate meal, particularly when she is being “pampered a lot with great food” at her mother’s house here, the London-based author settles for a non-vegetarian platter.

The conversation obviously veers towards her books first. Basu’s first work, “Curry in the Crown” traces the passage of Indian curry to British dining tables. Routeing it through the Raj past to the present mushrooming of Indian restaurants across England, the book examines why and how the curry rose to hold its post of primacy in Britain with a National Curry Day to count. Interestingly, that country also has a curry club, in the House of Lords.

What with having penned the book in 1999, and with “The Spy Princess” still in news, you won’t find Basu too inclined to talk about it. Unless you mention Abdul, a cook in Queen Victoria’s kitchen.

“I came to know about Abdul while researching for ‘Curry in the Crown’. There were two Indian cooks in Queen Victoria’s kitchen but only Abdul rose to the position of a butler and her confidante,” says Basu. How Abdul rose to the position and got so close to the queen “intrigued” her so much that it has become the material for her third book, to be published early next year by Rupa.

“It will be called ‘Victoria and Abdul’ and will not be as dark as my last book,” she says, even as the waiter intervenes to put the platter on the table, with an inviting assortment of pink salmon, chicken satay, crusty dumplings with a minced meat filling, chicken wings and kimchi with a Lebanese dip.

Over morsels of food, Basu says, “I love Lebanese, Italian and Thai food a lot.” But what gives her a whiff of nostalgia is Bengali food. “I cook Bengali food at home, particularly mustard salmon,” she says. “Earlier, good mustard oil was not available in London and so I used to carry it from here. Thankfully, you get it there now,” she adds. With her elder daughter now attending university and living on her own, Basu says she had to pen down a lot of easy, ten-minute recipes for her to cook. “I now have a plan to turn it into a book, particularly for students who are on their own,” she states.

With the quick meal over, it is time to wrap up the meeting, and as you leave, you ask her if she ever thinks of writing a novel. “I might, but as of now, I am too fascinated by reality.” So time is now to bring Abdul to the fore. To throw light on this native of Agra, who died a quiet death in his hometown, taking many an imperial tale with him.

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