Every chef cannot become a food stylist, Saba says. It takes a lot of attention to detail. �I am really like a make-up person, instead of highlighting cheek-bones and the nose, I look at the colour, texture and consistency of the food I am readying for photography.

SABA GAZIYANI is cute and perky, a yuppie, 21st century F&B professional of a different kind. She is India�s hottest food stylist. �A chef cooks food for taste, for smell, he makes it yummy; I do the same with food, but only to look at. I am like a make-up person for food,� she explained simply. The advertising world is in awe of, and in love with, Saba. Ninety per cent of the food ads you see in the print media, and the commercials you watch on television, have been styled by her. Go onto her website, sabagaziyani.com, and see for yourself. You will then soon come to recognise her work, her creative genius, in the food ads for cheese, bread, jams, ice-creams, pizzas, juices, oils and even refrigerators that attract you to these products in the first place.

Saba, amazingly, started off her career in the F&B industry by working as a chef for the Leela Kempinski. She tells the story. �I did catering college in Bombay because I did not get into medical school. I was studying to be a science graduate in 1992, then thought, I won�t get anywhere with that degree. So I gave the entrance exam for the catering college with the understanding that if I cleared it, and was getting into the Bombay institute, then I would accept and do it. I got through!� But why catering college? �Because I was always interested in cooking. From small, my mother trained me to be a good housewife, I was learning to make Khichdas and Biryanis at home,� she says.

But Saba did not know what she was getting into when she joined catering college. �Anything was better than graduation,� she admits. �But from Day One, I knew I was at the right place. And I just continued from there. I did well in cooking because, to start with, I knew more than the other boys and girls. And at the end of three years, kitchen was my obvious choice of subject.� She joined the Leela for an executive training post in the kitchen, but the hotel tried to get her interested in the front desk and an office job! Saba put her foot down. �Only to find that I was the only girl in the whole kitchen,� she says.

She worked as a chef in the Leela for three years, doing the Continental kitchen and the coffee shop, baking pizzas and making burgers. �I did ice-creams, huge salads, the Christmas buffets, marriage banquets... everything,� Saba says. �And I learnt how to cut and chop really fast, how to clean 100 kilos of prawns in a day, that was the initial work. Then came developing supervisory and managerial skills, like how to churn out 500 litres of soup for banquets, the best way to marinate chops, I had a free hand to do whatever I wanted... as long as the shift went smoothly, everything else was inconsequential.�

Then one day a production house she knew asked her if she could make good chappatis. �Good chappatis, of course,� replied Saba astonished. �Yeah,� said the creative director of the production house, �but these are for camera. We want to shoot them.� And that is how Saba Gaziyani went on to become India�s No. 1 food stylist. �That was my first ad. film. It was for Captain Cook Atta in 1995,� she remembers. There were really no food stylists in the industry then. And she started getting frequent calls from ad agencies to style food for photography. �It was paying handsomely and the work was much more interesting,� she says.

Saba knew she would have to take a call when she started spending 20 days out of the Leela on food styling work and only ten in the kitchen. �A photographer friend helped me to make up my mind,� she admits. �He said, �You need to work only a day!� And it was true, I was making Rs. 5,000 for a day�s work whereas the Leela was paying me Rs. 4,500 for a month!� She quit her job. �I was also pregnant at that time... so I just went ahead.� Today, she cannot count the number of food ads she has styled. �All the oil ads, Saffola, Sundrop, Godrej, Fortune, all the refrigerator ads... stocking them up is a huge job... all the Hindustan Lever ads, ITC�s range of foods, their Kitchens of India, McDonalds, Dominos, Pizza Hut, I�ve done menu cards for hotels... so much of work.�

Every chef cannot become a food stylist, Saba says. It takes a lot of attention to detail. �I am really like a make-up person, instead of highlighting cheek-bones and the nose, I look at the colour, texture and consistency of the food I am readying for photography. And the ambience! It�s not just about shooting food, the table-cloth, crockery, cutlery, bread-basket, napkin, salt and pepper cellars, the background... all this depends on the target audience of the product. If I�m doing an ad film, then I go into the brand colours, Kit-kat is red, Maggi is red and yellow, Perk is blue, Pepsi is blue, Coke is red. And I use colours to match the products, I work around layouts, sometimes I use raw products around the dish of food even.�

She is enjoying her work. She opens her equipment case, a doctor�s bag-like tool box, into which Saba keeps her range of extremely sharp knives, butane guns, heating filaments to grill meats and brown breads, coloured gels, soaps (�I once used Pears soap for honey!�), false prawns, designer cutlery, glasses, other gizzmos. She understands quite a bit of photography and that helps in her work. �I look into the wide angle lens to see where the light has to be thrown, how the grains of lettuce look, whether the slice of kiwi is lit... like the creative director does. That helps me to do food compositions... I see the food from the point it has to be shot,� she exlains.

What about real cooking? Does she have time to cook? And the inclination? Or has former chef Saba Gaziyani lost her touch? �Cooking�s like cycling, you never forget,� she grins impishly.