Author Salman Rushdie and his wife Padma Lakshmi would be visiting Kolkata this December to join the family of legendary auteur Satyajit Ray in celebrating 50 years of the epic film "Pather Panchali".

"'Pather Panchali' is the film that really shaped my consciousness about cinema," said Padma Lakshmi, ramp rage, actress and celebrity food author.

"That one film is still within me as the core of what real cinema is all about and what cinematic empathy means," Manhattan-based Lakshmi tells in New Delhi, where she is on a visit with her friend, curator Sharan Apparao.

Lakshmi is visiting her grandparents in Chennai, where her family originally belongs, spending her time reading film scripts, buying Indian chutneys and gathering recipes for a new cookbook.

"I have a few Bollywood and international film offers, which I am seriously considering. So I'm spending a lot of time in Mumbai," said Lakshmi, supremely toned and tanned in a short lime dress.

On her arm glistens the seven-inch scar that she got at about 17, a scar that almost took her off the international runways and that she used cakes of makeup to hide.

But then Helmut Newton, the god of female nudes in the world of photography, discovered her and made the scar her style statement, surging her exotic appeal.

After a very successful stint at modelling for magazines like Vogue, Elle and Glamour and labels like Armani, Versace and Ralph Lauren, the theatre arts student from Clark University in Massachusetts hosted a TV show in Italy.

The globe trotting foodie then wrote a book, "Easy Exotic: A Model's Low Fat Recipes From Around The World". The book sold so well that the Food Network gave her a show, "Padma's Passport".

"That book had about five dozen recipes, my new one will have hundreds, I'm just grabbing every recipe that I can find," laughed Lakshmi.

"The great thing about being in India is that there are so many varieties of food. People eating different things all the time and my relations are getting a little tired of my recipe demands."

Though her film "Boom" flopped last year, Lakshmi is looking forward to the cinematic adaptation of a story by her Booker winner husband.

"'The Firebird's Nest' is being developed as a script by Salman, and I, like everyone else, am sitting twiddling my toes, waiting for it to emerge."