The Prime Minister's Table by Purabi Shridhar and Sanghita Singh offers a captivating look into the dietary preferences, personal eating habits, and diplomatic banquets of India's leaders from Nehru to Modi. Through extensive research and interviews, the book uncovers fascinating culinary trivia that highlights the lesser-known personal sides of the nation's most prominent political figures.

The Prime Minister's Table by Purabi Shridhar and Sanghita Singh offers a captivating look into the dietary preferences, personal eating habits, and diplomatic banquets of India's leaders from Nehru to Modi. Through extensive research and interviews, the book uncovers fascinating culinary trivia that highlights the lesser-known personal sides of the nation's most prominent political figures.

The Prime Minister's Table by Purabi Shridhar and Sanghita Singh offers a captivating look into the dietary preferences, personal eating habits, and diplomatic banquets of India's leaders from Nehru to Modi. Through extensive research and interviews, the book uncovers fascinating culinary trivia that highlights the lesser-known personal sides of the nation's most prominent political figures.

Gujarati lasagne came out of a delicate situation—PM Modi was on his first visit to the US back in September 2014, and the State Department scampered to award-winning chef Vikram Sunderam, founder of Rasika, considered amongst the top ten restaurants in the American capital, to work out the menu for a formal lunch banquet hosted by Joe Biden (then vice-president) and secretary of state John Kerry.

“They wanted an amalgamation of Indian and American ideas (and) it had to be vegetarian because Prime Minister Modi is one,” Sunderam is quoted by authors Purabi Shridhar and Sanghita Singh in their enchanting new book, The Prime Minister’s Table – Delicacies & Diplomacy from the Era of Nehru to Modi. Sunderam’s solution? Gujarati Lasagne, an innovative amalgamation of a continental classic spiced up with Indian ingredients like tomato masala, besan and Kashmiri degi mirch.

The dish went on to become such a hit that it was incorporated into Rasika’s regular menu due to popular demand—though it’s another matter that Modi did not sample it, considering he survives just on water during his Navratri fasts!

But then, food sustains life, and prime minister or plebeian, everybody’s got a take on it. And wouldn’t we like to know what our illustrious list of PMs dietary desires (or lack of it) were like? That’s exactly the fascination, and foundation, that this book attempts to familiarise us folks with.

While Modi prefers simple no-fuss food—the Lok Kalyan Marg regular menu is almost exclusively Gujarati vegetarian fare nowadays, food choices run the whole gamut when you take all his predecessors.

And by talking to relatives, close acquaintances, fellow politicians, hoteliers, staff and chefs over a period of several years, besides painstaking research (the book does have a treasure trove of archival photos of state dinners and official banquets interspersed with family get-togethers and intimate breakfasts), the two authors of this book have uncovered gems of trivia that will warm the cockles of the heart of any genuine Indophile.

For example, did you know that relatives had to admonish kids, like grandniece Mira Hazari, not to make a face when they were invited for breakfast with the first PM Nehru, because the fare was the same bland porridge, at best sometimes accompanied by toast and eggs. Nehru’s funda was that porridge at breakfast would carry a person throughout the day, but then when you are invited to a PM residence, you do expect something grander, don’t you?

While Nehru, for all his aristocratic background, preferred simple food, perhaps due to the influence of Mahatma Gandhi, as equally as how his viewpoints changed after he was influenced by the freedom movement and public life, at least some of those who followed him to the hallowed post pulled out all the stops when it came to entertaining, especially formal banquets.

Indira Gandhi, for example, was meticulous when it came to selecting the menu, crockery, table settings and guest seating—and ensuring that support staff like drivers and security men were always fed on time. Her heart softened at the mere mention of Kashmir, including Kashmiri food. Though, of course, both the father-daughter PM duos altered their cooking to avoid chillies, the book informs us.

So it goes, diving into the personality, passions and preferences of all those who adorned the PM post, right from Chandrashekhar doting on dishes with the humble potato, to Vajpayee going ga-ga over anything from five-star golden fried prawns to peda and bedami puri at the annual Gwalior mela which he never used to miss.

The book is trivia central, opening up the palate preferences of our premiers, and then weaving in bucketfuls of anecdotes on how those foods themselves reveal new aspects about these public figures about whom, if you really think about it, we really don’t know too much beyond their national leadership. This book then makes a small but steady attempt.

The Prime Minister’s Table: Delicacies & Diplomacies from the Era of Nehru to Modi

Author/s: Purabi Shridhar & Sanghita Singh

Publisher: Amaryllis (Imprint of Manjul Publishing House)

Pages: 322

Price: ₹1,499/- (hardbound)

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