Saturated schedules and oil-free meals

This Mumbai British Council boss is a part-time everything, and a full-time food lover.

If you're doing something, do it well. Quality is the only thing people will remember you by." With Dr Roopa Patel, that's no feeble maxim "" she lives by it. For a lady who is part-time educator, part-time tarot card reader, part-time homemaker and full-time head of arts and cultural activities at the British Council (western region), Patel flits between roles with ease. And still has the time and energy to host brunches for 50 friends at a time.

At the last such brunch, Patel decided to impose her dietary discipline on her closest friends "" to share her pain, if you will. The menu was completely oil-free and to her surprise still turned out a raging success. "That got me thinking about authoring a cookbook," says Patel, who's wondering why a day has only 24 hours. At home, Patel indicates, food is a prickly issue. "My husband, who's Punjabi, and I, a Gujarati, disagree on the tiniest things, even the way rice is cooked. To him, mustard seeds in a dal's seasoning is anathema," she laughs. That the family is a bunch of foodies is evident; there are at least 10 pickles and chutneys on the dining table. "We believe eating is one of the greatest pleasures of life."

Patel is often perceived as the public face of the British Council (she's worked with them for 15 years), spotted regularly at social gatherings around the city. While the British Council stands at the cusp of consolidation and growth, Roopa Patel has been there through the years of re-examining relevance and shifting focus. "I am the one who has to keep my finger on the pulse of the current and then find ways to keep the organisation as relevant to young people as possible," she says. She's introduced audiences to the pleasures of standup comedy and performance poetry and was part of the ideation and production of the spectacle that is Tim Supple's A Midsummer Night's Dream, an Indo-British theatrical production conceived of by the British Council, that then went on to reap rave reviews from around the globe.

Patel wears her mantles lightly. Prone to bursting into smiles, she never lets up on her overfilled schedule. She still contributes several tarot columns to newspapers, takes the odd college lecture (her last one was about reading parapsychological references into T S Eliot's The Waste Land), and does hour-long pujas twice a day. "I attribute my obsession with being challenged to the stimulating environment I grew up in. My father would initiate dinner table conversations around rationalism and spiritualism and we'd groan and grumble," she recalls. "I cannot imagine not living my many lives. I'd be bored stiff," she laughs.

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Favourite Recipe - Carrot Toast

8 tbsp grated carrot
2 tbsp grated paneer
2 tbsp cream
1/2 a medium-size onion, finely chopped
2 green chillies, finely chopped
6 slices of wholegrain bread
Grated cheese for topping
Salt to taste

Remove extra water from the grated carrot by squeezing gently. Mix all the ingredients into it. Toast the bread lightly and cut each slice in half. Put the filling on each piece in a thick layer. Bake in a medium hot oven for 10 minutes. Grill for five minutes to make the top crisp. Serve hot with ketchup.