Nirmal Zaveri is a Habano man. His favourite cigar is the Monte Cristo No. 1. �It�s long and very nice,� he explains. He got into the habit in 1974 when his travels started taking him to fine wining and dining restaurants where the humidor was passed around after dinner. But his cigar smoking was limited to the occasional box he would bring back home when he went abroad. �Cigars were not available here then,� he says.

NIRMAL ZAVERI, the Gujarati jeweller from Bhavnagar, was a strict vegetarian for 40 years. Then one day in the 1990s when he was in the Middle East, by mistake he tasted fish. And he was astonished to find that he enjoyed the taste. That was his first experience of non-vegetarian food and he is glad that his tastebuds got working with seafood. Today, he describes himself as a connoisseur of food. He likes good food and he will try out most anything that appeals to him.

His business, which is creating designer diamond jewellery, takes him abroad often. The Middle East, Far East, places like Dubai, where Nirmal says there are futuristic restaurants, good food, and all kinds of cuisines on earth. By now he has tasted everything. And if he is asked to name his favourite restaurants, he does not hesitate to say, �Golden Bull in Hong Kong for the Vietnamese food and Automatic in Dubai for the Lebanese.�

He, himself, is an amateur but gifted cook. But his experiments are restricted only to vegetarian food. Perhaps, because the rest of the family is not as adventurous in its tastes as Nirmal. �I cook when I find the food at home is not very good,� he admits. �Or on Sunday evenings, when the whole family has got together. I do three, four dishes in the dinner menu. And I can cook most anything that is vegetarian.�

His other big habit is cigars. Nirmal Zaveri is a Habano man. His favourite cigar is the Monte Cristo No. 1. �It�s long and very nice,� he explains. He got into the habit in 1974 when his travels started taking him to fine wining and dining restaurants where the humidor was passed around after dinner. But his cigar smoking was limited to the occasional box he would bring back home when he went abroad. �Cigars were not available here then,� he says.

He gave up smoking cigars between 1993 and 1995 and returned to the cigarette and pipe. The pipe was too cumbersome, the cigarette not up to his style. He returned to the cigar full time and now smokes five to seven Monte Cristo No. 1s a week. He�s got a humidor at home and typical of the man and his style, Nirmal Zaveri has presented some of his close cigar-smoking buddies with humidors that have their names engraved in gold and diamond ornate work.

�Smoking a cigar gives me enough thinking power,� he says. �It puts me in a different mood. When I�m designing in the shop, I light a cigar, and this helps me in the thinking process.�

A true blue bon vivant, Nirmal Zaveri is also a single malts and a scotch man. He used to only drink Johnnie Black. But because that is not so freely available, or available only with spurious content, he�s switched to Black Dog. �It�s a good scotch,� he says, �and easily available here.� He must have two pegs a day wherever he is. And his other big drink is wine. In Geneva, when he was studying the ropes of his business, he also learnt all about wines from a friend. He prefers the whites, a Chablis, which is more on the sweeter side. And he makes it a point to drink wine whenever he is abroad. Which is one or twice a month!

Food, cigars, scotch and wine. What next? �Golf,� says Nirmal Zaveri with passion. �I am a very avid golfer. Twice, thrice a week, I get up early, round about 6.30 O�clock, for a round of golf with friends.� He does this on Saturday and Sunday afternoons as well. And he admits to being quite fussy about his schedules and does not like them being broken. Generally men with such exquisite tastes and expensive habits also follow a dress line in clothes. But Nirmal Zaveri is different. �I�m not passionate about clothes,� he says. �And I�m not trendy. I�ll wear what I like.�

Nirmal Zaveri is also enjoying his work with as much passion as his food, cigars, scotch and golf. He�s been actively designing jewellery for the last two years and in January this year, he launched his N-7 collection, and the N-8 in October. His line is different and is well received by the customer. For the October release, he had an exclusive dinner at the Taj Mahal Hotel for 300 of Bombay�s most elite ladies. �No men were allowed,� Nirmal Zaveri says with a grin. �The hit item was the scarves with semi-precious stones. Nothing was copied out of a catalogue. I mixed and matched and put the collection together.�

He gets his inspirations from his travels abroad. He catches the new trends of the jewellery designing world at the international exhibitions. He likes using vibrant colours. Handbags, scarves, watches are best in vibrant colours, he says. So he uses semi-precious stones in them. Shocking pinks, light blues. He does the designing, his helpers carry out his instructions. Looking at his big hands as he lights a Monte Cristo No. 1 and rolls the smoke in his mouth before releasing it, you wonder how he can be cut out for such a delicate task as jewellery designing. Golf, cigars, cooking and jewellery designing don�t go together. The first three are such macho things to do! But Nirmal Zaveri disagrees heartily. �Most people in their minds are extremely soft. They are only macho outside,� he says. And he puts the Monte Cristo, only his seventh in the week, back to his mouth and winks.