JOHN Abraham, eat your heart out! I had breakfast in bed with the ravishing Bipasha Basu recently. And it was an exotic breakfast. The prize Bengali fish Hilsa, flown down in an ice-box straight from the River Hooghly in Calcutta, some fresh fruit, hot coffee and biscottis. No chef would have offered such eclectic fare on his breakfast buffet. And I might have passed it up myself. But for Bipasha. She was providing the exotica. To my wicked eye, she was the most appetising dish of all, propped up among the pillows with the morning newspapers open on the bedspread, her hair falling all over her shoulders, perfect lips pouting in a moue of appraisal over the Hilsa. Even at touching distance, she is drop-dead gorgeous, not in that classic Bengali beauty way of, say, a Sharmila Tagore. But certainly worth drooling over. I could quite see why John ties himself up in knots over her. Bollywood should use Bipasha better. There is a vivacity about her that is contagious and which I don�t think has been captured on screen as yet. As for that smouldering sexiness, that even the ad-film makers are onto, but from up close it is something else. The thought of having Hilsa for breakfast, perhaps in a soul-tingling mustard sauce, had excited Bipasha no end. Bengalis are quite crazy like that about their cuisine. They have an ongoing love affair with the Hilsa. Ask any one of them except Sushmita Sen � incredibly, Miss Universe hates the Hilsa, and they will tell you that they could die for this succulent fish, despite its thousand bones. Or even kill for it. Now Bipasha was daintily inspecting the Hilsa that was to be our breakfast, two in a platter, and holding them lovingly like they were her twin babies. I held my breath, not because I was taken up by Bipasha�s radiant beauty, but because I dislike the smell of fish. Bipasha pronounced her judgment: �The fish is excellent. It will make an excellent Shosha Diye Ilish Maach!�

I, of course, knew what Illish is. My friend Anjan Chatterjee, whose Bengali cuisine restaurant Oh! Calcutta had sent the fish, has educated me sufficiently about the Hilsa. It is known as Ilish in Bengali. And Shosha Diye is the popular dish in which the fish is cooked in coconut milk and a hint of mustard. Anjan had invited me over to sample the Hilsa which he was getting from the Hooghly during the season. The elusive, silvery fish spends the winter months in the deep, turbulent waters of the open sea. Then, from around March, it leaves the Bay of Bengal and in large shoals begins finning its way up the Ganges and other rivers to spawn. The Hilsa swims strongly against the flow of the rivers to go far upstream and lay its eggs. That�s where the Bengali fishermen lie in wait for it. The fish is particularly plump and juicy from all the exercise when caught now. Anjan was getting a fresh and steady supply of the exciting Hilsa for his restaurant. The chefs at Oh! Calcutta had produced as outstanding a menu of Hilsa recipes as is possible outside West Bengal. Unfortunately, Bipasha could not dine at the restaurant with me.

Bollywood�s Hottie No. 1 was required for a show in LA. But the morning of the night she was to depart, Anjan generously delivered the Hilsa to her home. Now here I was, sitting at the edge of her bed, discussing food with her. �I like the Hilsa very much,� Bipasha was saying. �I like it with the bones but I love it without them.� Her parents who she says are tremendous cooks, are forever deboning the Hilsa for Bipasha when they cook it at home, though her mother admonishes the young actress not to behave like a princess! Her father Hirak, who is a civil engineer and has a construction company in Calcutta, is a big foodie. �He reads up cookery books, he sources out recipes from the Net, and he can always be trusted to come up with something new and different at meal times,� said Bipasha lovingly. But it is mother Mumu�s cooking that she raves about. �She makes a jhol with the Hilsa in which she uses the brinjal, it is such a light and yummy preparation,� Bipasha said.

She herself cannot cook. �The rare occasion when I try, I am on the phone in a half-an-hour STD call to my mother, following her instructions,� Bipasha said. So her father patiently made a small recipe book of all the mother�s signature dishes with simple step-by-step instructions. Fortunately for Bipasha, her mother chose to leave Calcutta and come and stay with her in Bombay. Her father moves up and down. But soon, he too will join the family here for good. We got back to talking about the Hilsa. Her earliest memories of eating the pride of Bengali cuisine was when she was a child staying in the Bengali colony Chittaranjan Park in New Delhi. �Whenever anybody got the Hilsa, it was an event, friends and family got together and it was a celebration,� Bipasha remembered. The Hilsa was always a problem for her to eat. �It required a lot of concentration despite which the bones would get stuck in my throat and I would be made to swallow a ball of rice,� she said. So her parents took to deboning the Hilsa for Bipasha when she was young itself. �You can�t get rid of your kids, so you may as well love them,� she said cheekily. �I don�t think any woman should become a mother unless she can cook. I have decided that I�ll learn cooking before I become a mother. You know, all kids crave for mother�s cooking. And I wouldn�t want my kids to say in despair that they like some aunty�s cooking better because I cannot cook myself!�

We had moved off the Hilsa, so I gently steered Bipasha back in that direction. �The Hilsa is hugely popular with Bengalis. I know they have it even in New York and New Jersey,� she told me. I asked if she could identify different fish, the Hilsa from the Bekti for example, the Bekti being another favourite with the Bengalis, though not so fatty, rich in taste and costly as the Hilsa. �Not when I see them, but from the taste, certainly,� Bipasha admitted. �I can differentiate between the Koi, the Magur and the Parshe, these are fish you cook in totality, not like the Hilsa and Bekti which are cooked in fillets.� She likes the Hilsa especially in two preparations. �One is the Smoked Ilish and the other is the Shosha Diye Ilish, I don�t know how they are cooked, but the flavour of the fish stands out in one and the gravy in the other. My mother makes a different Hilsa curry, with potato and brinjal, it is a very light curry. I have tasted better, though. My aunt makes a good Hilsa. Though my childhood nanny, Jharnadi, had a hand for making fish curries that is unmatched. What yummy food she makes. I also love Hilsa eggs, give me a stomach piece with the eggs, ooh my mouth goes ummnn-mmnnn-nnnn,� she sighed.