Chef (2 page)

‘What is all this?’

‘Don’t you see?’ The middle-aged woman sitting close by comes to my rescue. ‘This is heeng and that one is cinnamon . . . cardamom, coriander, cloves, fenugreek, crushed pomegranate, poppy seeds, rose petals, curry leaves, nutmeg and mace.’

‘Why so many spices?’ asks the first police-wallah.

‘Are you a woman?’ asks the second.

Chuckles from the two of them. ‘Carrying an entire kitchen on the train?’

‘The only reason we will let you go is because your trunk is not a real coffin,’ one of them says from the other end of the bogie, making eye contact with me, staring.

They chuckle louder after making that odd remark, and leave.

Then silence. Only the sound of the train.

Outside I see India passing by. I readjust my glasses. It is raining mildly, and I am glad it is raining because India looks beautiful in the rain. Rain hides the melancholy of this land, ugliness as well. Rain helps me forget my own self. I see a face reflected in the window. Who is that man with spots of gray in his hair? What have I become? But certain things never change. I have the face of someone who is always planning serious work, someone who does not know how to take time off. Now even that will be snatched away from me.

None of my fellow passengers understood the police-wallahs when they said, ‘The only reason we have let you go is because your trunk is not a real coffin.’ Our country is a country with a short memory. They don’t remember the coffin scam which took place in the army during the war with Pakistan and cost the General his promotion. Because of the scam he could not become the chief of army staff. He was innocent really. Officers below him, jealous of Sahib’s abilities, screwed him. Sahib did not get the respect he deserved. There is no way I am going to explain to the civilians the coffin scam. Even if I tried they would not understand.

The middle-aged woman is surveying me, looking at me from the corners of her eyes. She is eager to ask me thousands of questions. Her face resembles a plate of samosas left overnight in rain. The man sitting across the aisle just said he is proud of the Indian army. After the police-wallahs left, he asked me, ‘What did you do in the army, sir?’

‘I kept the top brass healthy and cheerful.’

‘What is it exactly you did, sir?’

‘I was the General’s chef for five years.’

‘Oh, you were a cook,’ he said and controlled his smile. His wife could not control herself. She looked up from the glossy magazine, laughed. The middle-aged woman could not control her laughter either. Civilians.

Then suddenly as if to break silence, he asked: ‘Have you ever won a woman’s heart with your cooking, sir?’

I did not reply.

‘But you must have?’

‘There are no women in the army,’ I said.

‘But sir. Women fall for men in the army. You, sir, had the biggest weapon in your hand. Cooking. Did you ever make someone fall in love, sir?’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I am looking for a chai-wallah. Did you hear a vendor selling tea?’

‘Oh, we have tea in our thermos. Please pour some for sir.’

‘No, no, thank you very much.’

I turned to the window and the conversation stopped. The view outside the window was far more interesting.

3

India is passing through the night. Night, just like rain, hides the ugliness of a place so well. We are running behind the backs of houses. Thousands of tiny lights have been turned on inside them. Towns pass by, and villages. I remember my first journey to Kashmir on this train. It was a very hot day, and despite that, passengers were drinking tea, and the whole compartment smelled of a wedding. Girls in beautiful saris and salwar-kameezes sat not far from me; some of them spoke hardly any English. Their skins had the shine of ripe fruits. How shy I was then. How much I yearned to talk to them, but I pretended that I was not interested. I had picked up the paper the man in the corner seat had discarded, and hid my face behind the news. I would stealthily peek at the girls and when one or two returned my gaze I would hide once again behind words. One time my eyes locked with the eyes of an oval-faced girl, and this created an awkward moment. She started whispering, and then suddenly an exclamation was followed by loud laughter, and I felt they were all laughing at me, and I hid again behind the paper. How I yearned to talk to them, and how I desired for them to leave me alone in the carriage because I could not endure so many of them, and I wanted them to carry on with their usual business without bothering me, and when they disembarked at a strange platform how alone I had felt in that near-empty carriage. I had missed my chance. A beautiful opportunity had presented itself, but I had spoiled it. Partly to deal with loneliness and partly to deal with the absence of girls I began reading the paper. Several times I read the article which had shielded me from the beauties. It was accompanied by a large photograph of the body of a soldier.

BODY OF A SOLDIER FOUND AFTER 53 YEARS

Trekkers on a remote stretch of Himalayan glacier have found the fully preserved body of a soldier 53 years after he died in a plane crash. They discovered the corpse, still in an overcoat uniform, with personal documents in the pockets. The discovery was reported yesterday at the base camp. The team also found aircraft parts close to the soldier, suggesting there could be other bodies buried in ice.

It is believed the crash occurred in early 1934. The soldier may have been flying to or from Ladakh, the high altitude area in Kashmir.

In 1934 India had yet to be partitioned by the British to become ‘India’ and ‘Pakistan’. So it is not clear whether the body belongs to India or Pakistan. The two countries have fought four wars, three of them over Kashmir.

Kashmir. It was my first time, and I found the place different from the way Delhi-wallahs describe it, as paradise, or shadow of paradise. I was a young man, but old enough to separate romance from reality. There was thick fog and it was very cold. I did not have a proper jacket. I had arrived with only one suitcase and the recruitment letter in my pocket. By the time I stood on the lawns of the General’s residence the sound of the train had simply disappeared from my mind. A uniformed man accompanied me from the gate-posts to Sahib’s residence, the Command House, located on a hill overlooking the golf course. I must have waited for half an hour on the lawns. I thought I was going to die of cold when a middle-aged man stepped out of the house. He was wearing an apron. The hair on his head was closely cropped. His face, clean-shaven with thin eyebrows, ears unusually long. The man’s body had a muscular appeal to it. A black dog trotted ahead of him. The dog came to sniff me. I touched its muzzle.

‘How old is he?’ I asked.

‘We are all growing old,’ the man said. ‘Fourteen, maybe, the dog is fourteen.’

‘How long do dogs live, sir?’

He did not answer, but took off slowly in the wind towards a patch of vegetable garden, fencing around it. He opened a little wooden gate and shut it. The dog circumambulated the fence while on the other side the man stooped and plucked leaves of what to me looked like fenugreek or coriander. How the vegetables grew in the extreme cold was beyond my imagination.

‘Come.’ He asked me to follow him.

I handed him the recruitment paper.

‘Not now,’ he said.

On the way to the kitchen the man patted me on my back. He was an inch or two taller than me. Something about that pat made me feel uncomfortable.

‘Follow me,’ he said. ‘The General’s ADC has told me about you. He has given me the instructions.’

‘What do I call you, sir?’

‘I am Chef.’

‘Sir.’

‘Call me Chef Kishen.’

‘Sir.’

‘Just call me Chef.’

‘Yessir.’

‘Follow me with your luggage,’ he said.

We entered his room, which was between the kitchen and the servants’ quarters. The place reeked of shaving cream; cuttings from Hindi newspapers covered the walls: photos of Bombay actresses in revealing saris, including my favorite, Waheeda. On the side table a tape recorder was playing music unfamiliar to my ears. German music, he said. I wouldn’t have imagined, I said.
Does this bother you
? No sir. Top mewjik, he said. There were two beds side by side, and they formed a huge shadow on the floor. The square shadow on the wall came from the tape recorder. Chef pointed towards the smaller bed. Suddenly my body felt the exhaustion of a long journey. I dumped my suitcase and sat down on the bed.

‘Not now,’ he said. ‘Keep following.’

The kitchen. Scent of cumin, ajwain and cardamom. On the table, a little pile of nutmeg. Thick, oily vapor rose from the pot on the stove. The room was warm and spacious, the window high and wide. Tiny drops of condensation covered the top of the glass. Smoke soared towards the ceiling in shafts of light. I noticed many shiny pots and pans hanging on the whitewashed walls. And strings of lal mirchi, and idli makers, and thalis, and conical molds for kulfi. In the corner the tandoor was ready. Its orange glow stirred in the utensils on the walls. I walked to the oven and stooped over. A wave of heat hit my cheeks. It was then he put his arm around my shoulder and took me towards the dining room. He said, ‘Kitchen without a memsahib is a nice place to work in.’

‘Sir.’

‘See that woman looking down at us?’

‘Sir.’

‘She was the memsahib.’

The painting was seven or eight feet tall, and so was the beautiful woman. Her eyes were big and wide open. Her brows, fearless. Skin, the color of cinnamon. She was wrapped in a graceful red sari.

‘Sahib used to love her as if she were a Mughal queen and she in turn loved him the way she loved her dog.’

‘Sir.’

‘She loved me too.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What do you mean
yes, sir
? She was a bitch. Memsahibs is people that controls the kitchen. She counted spoons. She counted to test the reliability of staff. That woman banned cooking without a shirt on, and I had to wear at least a banian in her presence. Aprons appeared suddenly. She cooked the dessert herself on Tuesdays and made me taste it and one wrong (but honest) word would make that woman swear in English. It was hard for me. The hardest thing to do is to hold my tongue, Kirpal.’

‘Sir.’

‘That woman refused to change recipes. To disturb a recipe is to disturb the soul of the dead, she would say.’

Right then I heard loud voices coming towards the kitchen from other rooms. The bell rang for service. Chef replaced the server out on a cigarette break and dashed into Sahib’s room with the tray of tea and samosas. The samosas smelled of pork. Sahib is fond of pork, he said before leaving the kitchen. There was rhythm in his legs. In Sahib’s room I will also take
ardor
for dinner. He pronounced ‘order’ as
ardor
. It was one of the few English words in his vocabulary.

I soon learned about him. Chef had joined the army as an ordinary soldier, and after an injury in the war he was sent to the Officers’ Mess. During a meeting of the middle brass of the regiment he had committed his first error. He had refused to serve tea to a Muslim officer.

‘I refused tea to that man,’ said Chef. ‘The problem with
those people
is that they smell.
Badboo
. That is why. The colonel showed me his teeth and reprimanded me severely. I was transferred to the kitchen as a dishwasher, but within a few months I bounced back. I made the kitchen my territory and impressed the officers with my
above average
culinary abilities. The brigadier of the regiment chose me for a four-month training course in international cuisine conducted by the foreign embassies in Delhi. German, French, Chinese, Italian, Szechuan noodles, linguine with clam sauce, lamb provençal, Pavlova – that kind of food. You see, if I had not refused to serve tea to the Muslim officer I would never have become a chef. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

4

It is almost midnight. The train picked up speed close to Panipat Station. The light in the ceiling is flickering. A miniature fan swivels and hurls hot air. Not a single thought I have is peaceful. The screeching sound of metal against metal competes with passengers pushing and jostling even at this insane hour. A child lowers the window, raises it again. Her parents are stirring in their sleep, mouths half open. Their faces move left to right and right to left as if to a pendulum. Diagonally across from me a honeymooning couple is sitting underneath brightly colored bags. The wife is young and pretty. (A white jasmine tucked in her hair.) I like the nape of her neck, and henna on hands. Her husband, in brown corduroy, is glued to the World Cup cricket commentary. It must be day in Australia. He is holding the transistor radio close to his ear. Now and then he lifts his free hand and runs a finger through the brand-new wife’s hair. Such displays of emotion were not possible in public when I was a young man.

She asks him to turn off the radio; he smiles and raises the volume. The peasants sitting next to him applaud: they too would like to know the score. The child on my right yawns. She is no longer playing her window game. The cricket commentary is interrupted by commercials and the hourly news. The newscaster’s voice is convent-educated. Some would say sexy.