Smita Deo

Cooking with Passion

Cooking since she was 13, her passion has only grown and culminated into a cookbook which brings forth home recipes with panache. Meet Smita, a very sincere cook

Text & Photographs: Farzana Contractor

Meet Smita Deo. A cook par excellence, who at 15, as a student at Bombay’s Bai Avabai Petit School, was absolutely sure she would be a cop one day. Must have been the influence of an uncle who was an IPS (Indian Police Service) man. “True, I was totally enamoured by V.K. Pai my DCP mama and was set on joining the police force myself!”
But she wasn’t to know that she would soon start dating a bright young architect studying at JJ College of Arts and her life along with career goals was about to change. As it did. The man happened to be the son of well-known and well-respected actors from Indian Cinema, both Hindi and Marathi, Seema and Ramesh Deo. Before she knew it, the two tied the knot and she settled into a happy domestic life, spending hours in the kitchen, indulging in a passion handed down to her from her mother and aunts, cooking away blissfully. While her talented husband, Abhinay Deo went on to become a director and film maker in Bollywood, making such wonderful and successful movies like Delhi Belly, Game, Force 2, Gulab Gang and Blackmail among others.

“I do have some great memories from my early ‘bridehood’ days. My ma-in-law had apprehensions about my cooking abilities. You see I was a ‘Carter Road girl’ who grew up in Bombay footloose and fancy-free and it was assumed I would know nothing about ‘kitchen life’. But I surprised her. On the third day after my wedding I was in the kitchen cooking up meals!”

Also cooking up a friendship, Smita’s mother-in-law went on to become her best friend. A strong bond was created and Smita came to be like the daughter her in-laws never had. They lived in a joint family at Juhu, later Versova and when Smita’s family grew it was time to shift with her nuclear family into their own apartment at Lokhandwala. Which did not augur too well with all concerned and Smita, a very affectionate people’s person felt alienated from her parents-in-law, felt she had no one to talk to and went into a downward spiral. “That was in August 2007. Changing circumstances really affected me and I felt cut off. I am one of those who love to talk and here I was, a new Smita, who became very touchy and aloof and promptly fell ill. I remember the date. It was Aug 15, 2007. I don’t know what happened. I did not want to speak to people or go out anywhere socially. I went into some sort of a depression. My one passion, cooking, was also something I gave up. In fact, I would tremble at the idea of even going into the kitchen!”

For about two years Smita struggled but with the help of Dr Vishal Sawant her psychiatrist, she came out of the low phase of her life and took up his advise; work, keep yourself occupied, get out of the house, he told her. And she did. In 2010, along with a friend she started a company called Our Little Bit, retailing organic and natural products procured from NGOs. But as bad luck would have it a few years later another void set her back and she continued to shun cooking and the kitchen.

It was friends who pulled her out from her self-exile. The constant requests for recipes and immense encouragement from her husband made her decide to write a cookbook.
“I am so grateful to all of them. Finally it was the world of food, that drew me out. Once I agreed and started on the book, there was no stopping me. I wanted to create not just a recipe cook book, but one where I could tell my culinary story. About my childhood in Aversa, 50 kms from Karwar in Karnataka where I grew up.”

And indeed she did. The book, Karwar to Kolhapur via Mumbai documents not just her family recipes but also weaves in childhood memories. Smita describes her kitchen, her village, the way her mum would cook, also tales from her grandmother’s rustic kitchen where utensils were displayed on a wooden stand; clay, brass, copper, iron. Where the water was drawn from their own well and vegetables from their own kitchen garden and food was cooked on wood fire.

Since Aversa is right on the coast, a lot of fish was eaten in their house. Her uncle and dad would go to the seaside to buy fish and return home with baskets of them, much too much for their requirement. To the question that she must be a big fish lover, this is what Smita avers, “To be honest, I ate and saw so much fish, I went off it when I was eight years old! Don’t eat it at all, though I cook it excellently.”

How could she not be an excellent cook? Her training began pretty early. Her first memory is of her making coffee all by herself. And second, at 13 years, cooking dal, rice and fried potatoes, under her mum’s instructions as she sat with her friends in the living room directing little Smita in the kitchen. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am that I learned to cook that early. My mother always said, ‘you can be whoever, whatever, however big in life, but at the end of the day you have to be able to cook a meal, that is vital.’”

The sage advise has come handy. Smita who could cook biryanis and innumerable chicken curries even during her student days while studying textile designing at SNDT College today rustles up  vast amounts of food in her well-equipped island kitchen. With the gas burners on the centre table she stands right there and fries fish and eggplant as three of her kitchen staff run around assisting her. She loves to cook in kansa and fry on iron pans and serve food on plantain leaves with tiny brass bowls to hold liquids.
Smita Deo has a wonderful blend of values. Being influenced by old-worldliness, she is traditional and through education and  Bombay living, modern. “True” she says. “I have to do my puja every morning. I am also one of those who celebrates every festival, be it Dahi Handi, Holi, Ganpati, by making appropriate foods associated with each of the festival.”

Smita wakes at 5.30 every morning and cooks lunch. This she does until 7 am after which she sits and writes, a habit since 25 years. “Early morning is the best time to think and plan and what not,” says Smita. That done, she has breakfast at 9 and then leaves for the gym, returns by 11, showers and goes and does her puja. After which, before and after lunch she works. Another cookbook is in the pipeline and then there are videos to be shot for YouTube. Early evening it’s time to cook dinner, which is done with the help of her maids and she is done by 6 pm. Then she goes for a walk. She gets into bed by 10.30, reads, watches some cookery shows and sleeps soon after. Quite a routine!

“Oh yes, I must tell you, I have to make my daily four phone calls. Meenakshi, my friend, who I call when I get into the car on my way to the gym, Sheetal, another friend on the way back. Then I call my mother in the evening, as also my mother-in-law. This is my daily ritual!”

I, for one, knew I was in for a treat right when I stepped off the private elevator leading to her apartment on the top floor of the high rise in Lokhandwala. The aroma that hit my olfactory senses sent me into a spin. So distracted was I, I could barely shoot the pictures I did and am glad we kept the interview for after we had eaten and what a meal it was! If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, it is also in pictures’ shot. Which you are welcome to look at and drool. Or better still, cook. The recipes are right there. On the other hand, you could also order her book which is full of home recipes and try some others from there. No, UpperCrust is not plugging Smita Deo. She deserves to be promoted. Here is one genuinely talented, unpretentious woman who bubbles and gurgles over food and food stories and one who simply loves to cook and feed!