Is food as important to you as, say, chess?
Well, I like food. I like eating different cuisines. I�m fond of experimenting with my tastebuds. When I�m playing tournaments, I�m eating out of restaurants all the time. And I like to eat everything I can lay my hands on.

Like what?
Like foods in Mexican, Thai, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Mediterranean, French and Indian cuisines. My tastes are quite broad. I enjoy spicy food just as much as bland food. But my favourite cuisine is Indian. South Indian and Gujarati. My mum�s an expert cook. The idlis, wadas, rasams and sambars she makes are something! I also adore the various dals and kadhis of Gujarati food. When I come to India, I make it a point to eat in these thali restaurants. I�m also fond of bhel-puri, chaats and other street foods of Bombay.

Is food, diet, fitness important to a chess grandmaster?
The games are between 1 and 7 p.m. Or 2 and 8. And 3 and 9. Playing chess is a lot of tension. Players suffer burnout. It�s important to go out and have dinner, therefore, after that. And diet... well, you can be overweight and still play chess. This is not like tennis. But over a period of time, say nine days at a stretch, obese players lose steam. Their performance drops. I keep fit. I go to the gym every day for an hour or so. Or I cycle and swim. I make sure I don�t overeat before a game. That makes me drowsy. It�s important to keep munching while playing. Some players eat chocolate. That keeps the energy levels up. And chess has no mind-enhancing foods that I know of. Unless you count caffeine and colas!

What�s the most exciting food you�ve eaten?
Exciting? Hmmmn... I�m a vegetarian. But I�ll go for chicken and fish sometimes. No meats. I�m happy to be vegetarian 80 per cent of the time. And there�s no dearth of variety for vegetarians in Indian and Italian cuisines. Also Greek and Lebanese food. Not so much the main courses, but the starters are pretty amazing.

Are you a drinker?
No. No alcohol for me. Once or twice a year, a glass of champagne when it gets awkward to spoil the party�s fun by drinking juice or water! But I don�t like champagne. It�s not that I can�t hold my alcohol. I�ve never gone that far as yet to find out.

What�s it like living in Spain?
Wonderful. Though it�s not easy for the vegetarian, for sure. They have a fantastic cuisine. I like their seafood and salads. And that breakfast dish... simple bread, olive oil, chopped tomatoes, salt and a topping of ham or sardines. There�s a lot more to Spanish food than what the world knows. Initially, I was about to settle down in Amsterdam, but I�m happy to be living in Spain.

Does chess leave you with any time to try your hand at cooking?
No... and I�ve not tried cooking as well. Of course, it�s easy to make a pasta. Or a fondue. I do this often... but that�s not cooking. I experiment with fondue. I like cheese, so I use Rockerfort, Camembert, Mozarella, I put in garlic, nothing sophisticated, but its very satisfying.

Can you cook?
I always believed I would work hard to be able to afford a cook. Though now I am learning to make chicken stew and boiled vegetables with tonnes of butter, salt and some spicy powder for my daughter. She's 22 months and is cutting new teeth. I want her to say one day that her mother cooked for her!

What tastes do you remember from your childhood?
This breakfast food of roti broken into little pieces and mixed with banana, milk and sugar. Also yellow dal. I was over fed on that to the extent that now I will only eat black dal! I grew up in Delhi, my tastes are for Punjabi food; though I was born in Hyderabad, spent three years there, and have the taste for Hyderabadi biryani.