There must be easier ways of researching a book than travelling through India by train and cooking British food for people. After all, the subcontinent is known for its spice-laced dishes and culinary diversity. Why would a group of Delhi socialites be interested in eating bland, mashed potato-topped mince whipped up by a Glaswegian Sikh who has just stepped off a train with no ingredients and a bad dose of Delhi belly? It's a question Hardeep Singh Kohli asked himself more than once during his cooking, sightseeing and self-discovery odyssey around the country of his forebears.
Kohli is a British-based journalist and current affairs commentator and a minor celebrity on his home turf. A regular on BBC radio and television and with a column in a Scottish Sunday newspaper, he considers the weighty issues, such as the challenges of growing up in a minority in Britain, as well as lighter but no less important questions, such as declining dress standards among the British (shell suits and Burberry caps). He is well placed to explore both topics because he was born in Glasgow in 1969 and was regularly referred to as a 'darkie' at school. And he rarely appears on television in anything less than a brightly coloured suit and matching turban - of which he has almost 40.
His latest incarnation as the author of Indian Takeaway: One Man's Attempt to Cook His Way Home, was not born of a decision to pursue a new career path as a writer. To listen to him explain events, his first book appears to be the by-product of time spent soul searching - albeit with some cooking thrown in.
'I'm a storyteller, one way or the other. If I wasn't working in telly, radio, books and newspapers I'd be the drunk at the end of the bar wanting to tell you a joke,' he says. 'So I don't really see why I should compromise the vehicles for my work because it's handy and tidy for an industry to know what I do for a living. I don't do what I do for the industry - I do it for the end user. So I don't make TV for TV executives, I make it for the viewers at home. Similarly for radio, the newspaper column and the book. I want to make decisions based on whether I want to do the work, not whether I'm defined as a broadcaster or writer. I understand that makes life slightly difficult for me, because people want to put you in a box. But I'm too old now to do things I don't want to do.'
Indian Takeaway traces Kohli's journey from Kovalam, in India's south, to Ferozepure, the birthplace of his father, in the north. The trip was partly inspired by the belief that his 75-year-old father, 'the big fella' to whom the book is dedicated, would be pleased with his son's journey and by Kohli's love of food.
As it happened, on revealing his intention to travel through India cooking British food for locals, his father handed out some less than encouraging words of wisdom: 'Son, if British food was all that good then there would be no Indian restaurants in Britain.'
I meet Kohli at his hotel in Edinburgh. He is in town to do something with BBC Radio Scotland, but he's not sure what. It's his second appointment of the morning and we decide to find a comfortable spot in the lounge because he has spent the past hour in a straight-backed chair eating breakfast. He seems jaded with the whole work thing and doesn't sound enthusiastic about having spent the past 19 years working in the media.