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Photo: V.V. Krishnan

NATURALLY HEALTHY Dilip Hiro tries some Indian fare at the IIC annexe in New Delhi

Hiro is in his element. The man who usually caresses words wears a smile. That is not something you will find him doing when he talks of the oil politics in West Asia — a subject he has written about extensively in his books, the latest of which has just been brought out by Penguin India in a paperback edition. All is fine until he declares, “I don’t usually have lunch.” ‘Usually’ is the operative word here as Hiro makes an exception today. Soon, the table is full with orange juice, fresh vegetable salad of cucumber, carrot, tomato, onion, chilli and lemon, pickles, tandoori naan, aloo ki sabzi, mixed vegetable, boiled rice and yellow daal. “Indians don’t eat any greens,” Hiro complains as he sips his juice, adding, “Back home in London, I make my own food. I like simple food. I don’t take sugar, masala or anything like fried fish. Just grilled fish is fine. I eat five portions of food every day.”

The man who is a disciplined writer — he puts pen to paper for about 10 hours a day — begins his days with porridge for breakfast. “Without sugar,” he reminds us. It is complemented with black tea without sugar. “I have not taken sugar since 1974,” he recalls, adding, “Black tea is an anti-oxidant which helps in preventing cancer.”

The seasoned pro in him comes to the fore. As he begins his lunch with some salad, he says, “If you have to take sugar, have brown sugar. Otherwise, banana, orange, melon have natural sugar to meet the body requirements. White sugar is unhealthy. These things don’t show up on your body when you are young. When you are 50, all the negatives of eating habits show up.”

Brown things certainly appeal to the man who shifted abroad in the 1960s. “Eat brown bread, not white bread. I don’t like to eat chapatti. I have one Indian meal every two weeks or so. I make sure there is not much ghee in my food. Ghee and heart attack are married to each other. And I love red wine with my meal.”

The daal and mixed vegetable on his plate cry for attention. But Hiro is in no hurry to finish his main course. Talking of his dietary habits, he says, “I take my breakfast around 9.30. I take boiled egg with tea or coffee or even a juice. I exercise in the morning. I have sandwich with cheese and greens for lunch. Here I had made peace with chapatti though. For dinner I cook myself. I make vegetable soup with carrots, spinach and broccoli. Also, I put in some garlic and ginger.”

As he adjusts his Moor cap, Hiro asks for some water to wash down a bit of the mixed vegetable he has had. “I am a full-time writer. I am like a child-bearing woman, one book a year is my output. I start writing at 11. I write seven days a week. Writing is like a religion. If I don’t I will suffer from withdrawal symptoms!”

Writing! That is something he has been doing plenty of. Over the past half a decade, he has come up with books on Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan besides a Baburnamah translation, and a play, “To Anchor a Cloud”, that was recently staged to an appreciative response in Delhi.

It is getting late in the afternoon. Hiro has his deadlines to meet.

As he readies to go to his desk again, he has one more tip for the health conscious. “If you eat the typically oily Punjabi food, you will die early. Eat all types of food but eat lots of greens.”

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