LUNCH WITH BS: Shashi Ruia

Rollovers and Ayn Rand

Shashi Ruia's latest passion is losing weight. But he doesn't follow a simple regimen. To shed the pounds, he visits his favourite health spa, Shivasun, near Bangkok. The treatment consists of one day of golf apart from the regular massages and exercise.

Considering Ruia's penchant for good food, it's a fair guess that the visits to Bangkok must be pretty frequent. For, given a choice, the older of the Ruia brothers would like nothing better than eating hilsa, which is flown in for him from Bangladesh, steamed with mustard paste, Bengali style, in coconut leaves. Or he'd settle for prawns which are 25 cm in length (these are ones that can be exported, he says) which are delivered from his prawn farm in Gujarat. And this in a family that is strictly vegetarian.

Ruia, who is chairman of the Essar group, is a pernickety eater, so he wasn't keen to choose from any of Delhi's restaurants for a lunch with Business Standard. Instead, he invited me to his Jor Bagh residence