I always carry an extra pair of slippers in my bag, a pair of nice-looking flats. Any function can get long and your feet start to ache in high heels. Yet you must look good,” says Betty Saldanha (picture by Sanat Kumar Sinha), as she settles down at Oxford Bookstore on Thursday after the release and book-reading session of her second book Gazpacho and the Railwayman’s Daughter.

She is well-equipped to talk about slippers, or any footwear, having travelled to many distant parts of the world. The Loreto College, College Calcutta graduate, a mass communications veteran, has worked for Gourmet Magazine, NY, and has fond memories of South America. She lived for 10 years with her husband in Peru, where she worked at a children’s hospital and conducted music therapy lessons.

In 1971, she had started the mass communications department in Sophia College, Mumbai. She has also edited the Lalit Kala Akademi Contemporary Journal.

Impressive CV. “Yet I have never stayed away from my husband or family. Wherever I stayed, I could always write and send them to journals.”

Gazpacho, a Spanish soup, is symbolic of all that her Spanish daughter-in-law has brought to her life. The book is about her own life. Her early years were spent in south India. “It’s written in the first person. I tried to write in the third person, but it wouldn’t come,” she laughs.

Saldanha calls the book journal of practical spirituality for women. She says she has been “very lucky in life”, yet had to “cope”. “I was very independent. But I had to learn to adjust.” Her first book was also on South America and India.

“I was sad to leave South America, especially the children in Lima,” says Saldanha.