LILLIAN TOO, the leading Feng Shui expert of the world, is an Oriental Oprah Winfrey of a woman. Large, jolly, extremely colourful in thought, speech and attire, warm-hearted, sympathetic, and a great lover of food. Let me explain the last bit first. I met her over lunch at the Taj Mahal Hotel's Golden Dragon restaurant in Bombay. And Lillian can eat! "But I am not a gourmet," she clarified over a cup of jasmine tea, "I'm not so bold as to claim to be one. Of course, I love food. I appreciate fine wining and dining. I like tastes that are subtle and not loud. Or those that are stunning, exquisite, a nicely married fusion cuisine. Like an Italian spaghetti in Chinese sauce. Yum, yum, excellent!"

Our table which was being cleared, had a short while earlier been groaning under the weight of food. She had tucked into a good bit of this with flashing chopsticks, relishing every morsel I thought. I suggested to her, "May be the feng shui here in the restaurant is good for your appetite." And Lillian, who is Malaysian, not Chinese, had paused in between eating. "Yes," she replied thoughtfully. Then she drew out a small but expensive-looking Tiffany compass and got it working for her. When it stopped spinning, Lillian frowned. "Actually, I am facing the south-east, which is not a good direction. I should have been sitting in that chair (she pointed west), then the lunch would have been much better!"

That's when I had an idea. "Do you do the feng shui of home kitchens," I asked eagerly. And a short while later, we were driving to my home, Lillian Too, her husband Too Wan Jin, and their adopted son Lim Han Jin. She has a daughter, Jeniffer Too, who is an electrical engineer. The whole family is into feng shui, but not all professionally. "We're not obsessed by it," Lillian said. "We have a lot of fun with feng shui and that's the way it should be. But we don't go around doing people's feng shui. I don't describe myself as a feng shui consultant. First and foremost, I am a writer. Read my books, I've written 50 on feng shui, and none of them overlap. Through them, I'm slowly, progressively giving out the secrets of feng shui to the world."

And it's true. Lillian Too who has painstakingly learnt feng shui from ancient Chinese masters, is not against sharing her knowledge with anybody. Even total strangers. Readers of her books around the world, yes, India too, have gone on to become self-proclaimed feng shui masters all because of the generosity of this Oriental woman. She encouraged me to take up the study myself. "Practise the 8 Mansions Formula, or the Kua Formula, to find your bad luck directions," she said. "Any serious feng shui consultant should know this. You do nothing but practise this, and it can change your life. This is a powerfully potent method of discovering personalised auspicious and inauspicious directions based on birth dates. From the kua number, you will get four lucky and four unlucky directions."

Now she steamed into my home and kitchen majestically, a jazzy and flamboyant personality with her peaches and cream complexion, red coat and black trousers. The liftman who brought us up, had not seen such a colourful character since the time Dev Anand called on me dressed in brown courdroys, green shirt, maroon cravet and wearing a stetson. Or since Rashmi Uday Singh, the foodie, came for one of my parties dressed as Cat Woman! "Kitchens," Lillian had told me on the way up, "decide the health and harmony of homes. They should be located in that part of the house that represents the bad luck direction of the residents. Kitchens have the ability to press down the bad luck and keep it under control." I was mystified, and now most anxious to see what she would say about my kitchen.

"There's health, wealth and happiness here," she pronounced first step in. I was amazed. Then Lillian pointed out to the large, bone china statuettes of the three Chinese gods � Fuk, Luk and Sau � that a friend had brought for me from Hongkong for my birthday and which I had installed on the kitchen window ledge. "They're facing the dining table, they bring wealth, affluence and longevity, but put them higher up at some place prominent. Fuk symbolises happiness and wealth, he stands a head taller, place him in the centre. Luk, the god of high rank and affluence, holds the sceptre of power and authority, place him on the right. And Sau, with his domed head and carrying a peach in one hand and a walking stick in the other, stands on the left. Let them look down on you eating. And put something solid behind them. They will protect you from premature death through accidents and the like." Fuk, Luk and Sau looked at me in anticipation.

Lillian had moved on, and into the kitchen. "It's a very nice kitchen," she said, "clean, well appointed, it shows you are a cook, that you get happiness from the kitchen. I know whether a woman can cook just by looking at her kitchen. It's very important that the kitchen be clean. Yours, there's not a speck of dust! I'm into this sort of thing. I'm eccentric. I like looking into the kitchens of restaurants. More than the freshness of the food, I look at the cleanliness of the utensils. That's one thing about restaurants, they have such dirty kitchens! But, oh my goodness, this is really good!" She was gushing, now. And thrilled by her reaction, I followed Lillian Too about my own kitchen expectantly, wondering what she had seen that had excited her so much.

"I usually don't like exposed shelves," she was saying, "But here there are no poison arrows coming out, there's no hurt, and that's very good feng shui. The shelves serve the purpose, you have utilised space." She was at the dining table next, rapping her knuckles on the wooden top. "The dining table's fine. It's nice and cosy. Oval tables are good. And you got eight dining chairs, that's a good number. Even ten is fine. But not 12. Also, your kitchen faces the south. That too is fine. South is fire. Fire is energy. You are a vibrant cook. I see you like ledges in the kitchen. More than feng shui, it reflects the kind of person you are. I'm not surprised to see a kitchen like this. Even the colour element is fine. White. It's very safe. It's a yang colour. In fact, yang is the ultimate feng shui colour. And you are using the colours of other things to bring in feng shui colours into your kitchen." She was pointing out to a shelf of colourful ceramic mugs that I had picked up from cities of the world that I had travelled.

She sat at my dining table then and talked about her own kitchen. "It is a big kitchen with a wet and dry section where I do the washing, chopping and cleaning and the cooking respectively. I'm not a bad cook. I can cook Malay and Chinese food. I like to cook for my family, my extended family, but not outsiders. Mine is a feng shui kitchen. The refrigerator is far from the stove and oven. Also from the sink. To have fire and water confront each other is bad feng shui. A kitchen can create disharmony in a family. It manifests in different ways. The maid will act up. Your health will be affected. A kitchen is not so much about the cooking itself as the health and harmony of the house! The kitchen also depends on the layout and direction of the rest of the house, it depends on the date of birth of the owner, that's your chi. And in the kitchen, the stove is all important. Don't place it in the north-west corner, that can effect the patriarch of the house, there could be serious illness or even death! This situation is called Fire at Heaven's Gate. How do you find out where your stove is? With a compass!"

And we talked about food. Lillian Too is of the opinion that foods are not intrinsically good or bad. "It depends on you," she said. "You must find out what kind of person you are. A yin person who ought to be eating cooling foods. Or a yang person with whom warm foods go well. Food depends on your system. Vary your diet to give you optimum health. To the Chinese, the symbolism of eating and food is synonymous with prosperity. They greet each other with the words, 'Have you eaten?'"

And she might have told me more about food, but Lillian Too's attention was suddenly distracted by the soft pealing of bells coming from my kitchen window. They were wind chimes, actually, swinging gently in the afternoon breeze and making music as they lightly brushed into one another. Her face lit up. "Wind chimes! It's fabulous, all over the world people are using wind chimes because I popularised them. They are a very powerful feng shui tool and act as an energiser and cure. Hang them in the south-west corner of your house. This year, the south-west corner is afflicted by the Flying Star feng shui affliction. It is a formula that determines good and bad time dimensions for homes and buildings. It applies to everybody. So hang your wind chimes in the south west corner for good luck. Tell everybody, tell your friends, do this till March, then see!"