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Anjana Chandramouly

From reading to designing furniture, he enjoys doing it all. But nothing beats his love for a `perfectly uneventful day'.

The majestic wooden gates open into a traditional South-Indian thinnai (verandah). The bright all-white ambience and the minimal, elegant wooden furniture in the house captivates you.

"I take a lot of pleasure in the pursuit of aesthetics and thoroughly enjoyed designing my home, and working with the architect. I love designing furniture too," says G.B. Prabhat, Director - Consulting and Enterprise Solutions, Satyam Computer Services Ltd, Chennai.

He and his family — wife and two daughters — scanned Web sites and browsed books to select their home decor. The big clock, set in an imposing wooden case, catches your eye as you enter the drawing room. The garden's landscaping reflects the owner's keen interest. "My wife and I are absolutely passionate about gardening. I spend a lot of time working with the landscaping team."The spacious study, with about 2,000 books, marks him out to be a voracious reader. "Yes, I read a lot of books, eclectic in fact, but more of `old work' ranging from literature to poetry, philosophy and economics... Occasionally I read contemporary work, and we buy practically all the magazines sold in India — both Indian and international," he says.

An avid reader

Literary fiction is his favourite genre and though he doesn't have any favourite author, he mentions Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner. "I like many of Faulkner's short stories, but don't think he was a great novelist." He also reads Tamil literature, and with a "smattering of German", has read many German works in English.

One of his other pursuits is philosophy and he has read Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein, Arthur Schopenhauer, George Santayana, Benedict de Spinoza and S. Radhakrishnan, as well as Zen philosophy. The works he has read "quite deeply include Jean Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes." However, his favourite is Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

This avid reader also loves to write; he has written a novel, and occasionally writes for newspapers.

But how does he generally unwind? Principally by fooling around with his family, and not doing anything in particular, he says. "I rejoice in the routine day, what people would term a perfectly uneventful day. After work, I take long walks — a 45-60 minute walk every day."

Weekends are special when spending time with the family is priority, he reiterates. "For example, we watch a serial between 9.30 p.m. and 10 p.m. The quality of the serial does not matter. What matters is that we are all sitting together in one room, taking a crack at the serial and laughing heartily."

The travel buff

Prabhat's favourite Indian destination is Munnar, especially its unexplored regions. "Outside India, the Lake District in the UK is close to my heart. It's where great poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge lived. I went there to find out the ethos, the milieu, and to figure out what made these poets great... I discovered that it's the most enchanting place on earth. There are about 16 lakes, untouched by human intrusion."

Prabhat says there are two kinds of vacations — one, where you go for just the sightseeing like Mt Titlis in Switzerland, good for a couple of days. "But it's not possible to stay there for two weeks or more to get a taste of the culture. But in places like the Lake District, even a month is not enough. It's close to my imagination of an 18th-century existence. If you want a clean break from the cluttered, noisy, polluted world that you live in, you should go to places like these!"

An extensive traveller, how does he handle the transit time between flights or the long-haul flights?

These days, you spend only 2-3 hours on transit, he explains. But earlier, it used to be 8-9 hours, and "that could be very testing. You go to the lounge, wait in the queue for a shower; and when you freshen up, it's already past an hour or so. And if you grab a cup of coffee, it's time to report for the next flight." On long-haul flights he unwinds by watching movies, and of course reading.

The absolute foodie

The other passion that Prabhat pursues is food. His interest in food was kindled by necessity — he is a staunch vegetarian — which "forced me to experiment with various kinds of food." He says it's "a myth" that there are no vegetarian options in most cuisines. These are available, provided one is bold enough to experiment and seek help from locals.

"You'll find a divine eating experience waiting for you in each of these cuisines. In the last 10 years, the number of times I would have eaten Indian food outside India is very minimal, because Indian food overseas is of the worst quality. It is not Indian food and it is not western food either. They tone down the spices to please the westerners and make it insipid; it is also very expensive."

And he has made some surprising discoveries; for instance, he finds Ethiopian and Indian cuisines quite similar. Their Injira is similar to our dosa, he says. Ethiopian cuisine also uses spices and dal for cooking vegetables.

"There is enough across all cuisines for vegetarians. I can't cook, and it is one of my greatest regrets! But short of cooking, I know all the ingredients that go into food, and what makes it taste the way it does."

Break from work?

He doesn't believe in taking a break during a routine workday. "It's not as if one's work is so detestable that it stresses you out, and you go after something that provides a palliative, and then go back to work. Personally, only in 5 per cent of work situations I have faced stress. I invest a lot of time in planning my work. There are stressful and unforeseen situations, but not on a daily basis. But I don't see any part of recreation as escape or palliative to work!"

Unusually, he treasures the ability to go "on domestic shopping every evening for all kinds of trivia, the ability to stand and gaze at my local neighbourhood, the ability to see the sea every evening (he stays close to the beach)... I have never felt the need for a break or recreation," is his parting shot.

Picture by Bijoy Ghosh

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