Thanks Simon :)

I picked up his book, ‘Eat My Globe’, on a flight to Calcutta. Formed a connection by the time I reached half of the first page and hungrily read up the book. I was tickled to see some similarities between us. He is half Bengali. I am full. Both born in Britain. Both our fathers were doctors. Simon Majumdar was born in the North of England, me in the South.  He stayed back though. Life led me to Mumbai via Rasht and Calcutta. And yes, we both revere Bourdain (I am taking the liberty of writing this on his behalf here).

Since the time I read Eat my Globe, I found his blog, Dos Hermanos, which he writes with his brother Robin, and followed it. Found him on Facebook and we became friends. He’d occasionally act as a patient sounding board for me, a stranger to him. Despite being a celebrity all his chips were on his plate, not on his shoulder. Since then he has written another book, ‘Eating for Britain’, and will appear on Iron Chef as a judge. He often Tweets about going for runs. Something which inspires me to hit the treadmill, and amble on it. I am ‘full’ Bengali after all. And the best thing is that he is someone I precociously count as ‘one of us’. He did not start off as a celebrity chef, or a professional food writer. He was and is a blogger. A Blogger who at the age of forty decided to chase his dream. That’s what makes him different.

This morning I opened Facebook and saw that he had linked Finely Chopped on his Facebook page and wrote, “If ever a food blog made me want to revisit a country, this is it. A must read for lovers of the food of India”

I have not stopped beaming since. Then I went to Twitter and saw this tweet from him: My favourite food blog of the moment http://finelychopped-k.blogspot.com/ A must for lovers of the food of India

  So come over Simon, we will hopefully Eat My India together.