Eating Out
Bhaichand Patel Dines Amisha Patel

Mumbai is two cities divided by the Mahim Creek. People in the north do not venture south except to work. They have their own gymkhanas, discos, cinemas and eateries as good as the ones in the Fort area. Five-stars are sprouting like mushrooms in the suburbs. They make downtown Taj Mahal and The Oberoi look like old maids. The new kid on the block is the swanky Marriott on Juhu beach. Amisha and I tried out its Lotus Cafe. For starters, we ordered penne pasta with smoked tomatoes and the Middle Eastern mezzeh which included hummus and stuffed vine leaves. We decided to share.

Amisha is riding high with two huge successes, Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai and Gadar. I fall between two stools when it comes to this pretty slip of a girl. I’m older than her father, Amit, and younger than her grandfather, the legendary lawyer-politician, Rajni Patel. Five of my best years were spent as a junior barrister in Rajni Patel’s chambers in Churchgate. That was before Amisha was born. Those days her father was running around our office in his chaddi. Amisha has her good looks from her mum and her grandmother, Sushila, a Chitpavan beauty who had P.V. Narasimha Rao chasing her during their student days in Poona’s Fergusson College. Sushilaben is now in her 70s and still makes heads turn in Pune.

Back in Lotus Cafe I order salmon with zucchini and mozzarella cheese. Amisha, like all actors, is weight conscious. She settles for Cajun spiced chicken with salad. Here we are, two Patels who are traditionally vegetarian digging into fish and fowl!

I first met Amisha four years ago when she was fresh out of Tufts University in Boston and had come for dinner at my place in Malabar Hill. Kaho Naa... was still to come. Why did she take to acting? I ask. “I was good at it in school but I might have taken to law if grandpa was still alive,” she says. “He was very fond of me. I was the only girl in a family of boys.” I tell her that her grandfather once told me he wished he had a daughter. Amisha wants to know more. She was only five when he died. I recall for her his clashes with Sanjay Gandhi who was jealous of his political clout in Bombay. I tell her how he fell foul of Mrs G.

“How is the chicken?” I ask. She reaches for my salmon and delivers her verdict on both: “Yummy!” There’s no room for dessert. Each passing day I look more and more like an over-extended food critic. Amisha, as I said, is a slip of a girl and she intends to stay that way.

Back