ON the 19th floor of a swank apartment in South-Central Bombay, the singer, VJ, actress and television anchor Raageshwari is humming to herself as she bustles about her kitchen making lunch. The view outside the window, I see over her shoulder, is not so pleasant: hundreds of rooftops of barrack-like buildings that are actually Central Government Servants� quarters. Like POW camps in a Richard Attenborrough war film. Thankfully, the house reflects Raageshwari�s sunny nature and cheerful disposition. It is colourful and has curios she picked up on all her travels abroad. And, a big fish tank in which goldfish swim about happily.

Raageshwari is smartly turned out in form-hugging jeans and a pullover. Onto this, she has slipped on an apron as she goes about her work in the kitchen. Lunch is vegetable pulao, chana masala and palak paneer. There�s gajjar halwa for dessert. She makes an apologetic moue. �I would have preferred a more elaborate meal, but what to do, I can hardly walk,� she says pointing to her feet with a grimace. I look at down. The left foot is wrapped up in plaster. At least the big toe is. She opened the living room door on it and broke the toe nail. �What followed was a surgery, soooo painful,� she says dramatically. Now she hobbles around the kitchen yelling for �Upendra�, her Man Friday, to come and help with the lunch.

I regret the accident because Raageshwari, I know, is extremely fond of cooking and fussing about the kitchen. And if she says she would have cooked us an elaborate meal, then that is what she would have done. She claims to be able to cook just about everything. �Indian, Italian, little American, Japanese, French, I love to do lobster thermidor, I get my lobsters from the Gajalee restaurant, they keep them aside for me,� she says. Cooking, she adds, helps to build up her ego. �It makes me feel better about myself. And people always say good things about my food.� Her house is open to friends, and the day she spends at home cooking, everybody in her building knows about it. �Because khana goes from here to most people�s homes,� Raageshwari tells me.

�I grew up watching my aunts and neighbours cooking,� Raageshwari says when I ask her where and when she learnt to cook. �My parents were working and my brother and I used to be kept with neighbours. I must have been eight or ten, just tall enough to reach the gas knobs, so I�d climb on a stool. I started by experimenting. And when my mother came home in the evening, I�d surprise her with dal-chawal and simple dishes like that.� Later on, there were other influences. Like cookery books and TV chef Martin Yan of the popular show Yan Can Cook. Raageshwari likes to make a production number of laying out the table. �The food must look inviting even if it is just dal-chawal,� she says. �Today�s kids, they won�t eat otherwise. I must have achar, papad, raita, small additions that make a simple meal look inviting, bring a little colour to the plate.�

Cooking for her at this point in her life, her busy career, is like a process of unwinding. She won�t cook on days when she has been shooting. For cooking, she must have an entire day free. She will go to the Matunga market (�the vendors there don�t know who I am�) to shop for produce, ingredients, spices. Her knowledge of most of these things is sound, though she prefers to pick up most of her sauces, vinegar, seasonings and curry powders from abroad. Her repertoire of recipes stretches from biryani to barbequed foods and her signature dish is her Shanghai Omelette. Raageshwari describes its making: �I use Chinese vegetables, little besan to make the omelette thick, spinach, mushrooms, soya sauce, all kinds of spices, sesame seed oil, ginger-garlic paste, spring onions, babycorn. I take all this in a casserole, beat the eggs into it, add little vinegar, chilli-garlic sauce, add the spinach last and stir-fry the whole thing.�

If cooking gives her a high, eating out is not one of Raageshwari�s past-times. �It depends on my mood,� she says mysteriously. �It�s weird. If I�m very happy or very sad, my appetite drops. When my life is normal, I�m doing the same mundane things, everything is routine, I eat well. I can be with friends then or all by myself. I�ve got adventurous tastes. I�ll go out and try anything. But I don�t like making decisions, selecting restaurants, planning menus. I leave that to friends. I don�t really have favourite restaurants, places I like to hangout at, though I think the food at Gajalee is fantastic. And I used to like Sunil Shetty�s Thai Me Up. What great food it had, I was so sad when it closed down. I don�t have favourite restaurants abroad, too. I travel only for work.�

Upendra is laying out the dining table with Raageshwari�s lunch, and I notice, he pulls out a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from a wine cabinet and takes it to the kitchen to open. Yes, Raageshwari does not mind a small glass of alcohol now and then. She prefers Baileys with crushed ice. I ask her about favourite foods, and Raageshwari replies straight away: Japanese. She is in love with Japanese culture and people. �They are so loving, so brutally honest. I love their food habits. I have a close friend, Satoka Mitsui, a former prime minister�s daughter, who introduced me to the food. I fell in love with the cuisine when I first tasted Japanese Chicken Curry at Maldives.�

Lunch is over and as I am leaving and the elevator is riding up to collect me, Raageshwari is was telling me to plan a day at her place, she will cook all the meals, from breakfast to dinner. �Come, I�ll give you the Shanghai Omelette and pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast. But these are pancakes with buttermilk. I don�t use milk. It makes no difference to the pancakes, though with buttermilk, they turn out lighter, and a little more sour. The maple syrup balances that. We�ll also have juice, bacon, sausage, luncheon meat, salami, it�ll be a family thing.� Then, I thought, admiring Raageshwari�s figure, slim and trim figure, I�d have to go on MTV and leap about to work off that heavy breakfast.