Art takes on new meanings and forms in the hands of Rajeev Lochan. The director of the National Gallery of Modern Art can discourse on fine food just as happily as he can light up a canvas with meaningful strokes.
Making aloo bhindi, you would have thought, doesn't take a moment of thought. Such an idea, for Lochan, would be scandalous. He recalls a time when bhindi was plucked a few hours in advance of cooking, at exactly the time when it could be easily snapped into two.
It was diced into tiny pieces and stirred lovingly in an iron kadhai for it to absorb iron. "The vegetable had turned dark and was it juicy," he says, painting a delicious picture.
Contrasts, says Lochan, in the right proportion, stir up a fine dish. "Anyone would think tori is an insipid vegetable. But when I make it with keema, one wouldn't even know." And he decides to prove his point, using the kitchen of the Taj Palace Hotel in Delhi to make this with a quick spinach egg.
It's the art of cutting, stirring and serving that gives a palette its worth, he explains. The rasa, he says, or the innate essence, is what eventually stays, which is true of any creative form. It is the human presence that lingers.
Poetry, literature, music, dance and, of course, art all share a link to food
