Monsoon Diary (15 page)

During pledge week, when the station suspended all activities to ask viewers for money, the president of the station learned about my plight from the other interns. He called Mary Jacob, who explained the situation. This was all the substantiation Jim needed to dash off letters to the local Rotary Club, India Association, and area churches. “Young Indian student needs your support,” the letters said. I had become part of the station’s pledge drive.

Two churches gave five hundred dollars each. The India Association gave one thousand dollars, and the Rotary Club gave five hundred. I had gained twenty-five hundred dollars through the generosity of strangers, but I still needed a thousand more.

It was Jennifer who suggested that I throw a benefit dinner to benefit me. I didn’t know what a benefit was but was eager to embrace any ideas that would put me back in school. Jennifer was working in Boston, but we spoke frequently on the telephone.

“Invite ten people to a benefit dinner, charge them a hundred dollars each, and you’ll have your thousand dollars,” said Jennifer.

“Are you nuts?” I screeched. “I can’t charge a hundred dollars for food, and that too, vegetarian food.”

“People don’t attend benefits for the food,” Jennifer explained patiently. “The food is beside the point. You could charge five hundred dollars for all they care.”

“I don’t know any rich people, and besides, I couldn’t charge a hundred dollars as a matter of conscience,” I replied primly. “I’m going to let them pay as they like.”

It was egalitarian and, like a good painting, didn’t push too hard— the only way to do it. I would assemble a group of people and cook a meal that was a paean to the versatility of vegetarian food. I asked Mary and Doug for permission to use their backyard for my party, then got down to the difficult task of assembling a menu and a guest list. I consulted Jennifer frequently on the phone. After racking my brains about how many people to invite, I threw in the towel and decided to invite everyone I knew, which came to about fifty people.

Designing the actual invitation was more challenging.

“How can I invite people to dinner and then ask them to pay?” I asked.

“You’ll just have to call it a charity dinner,” Jennifer replied.

“Yes, but I can’t be my own charity.”

We went back and forth before coming up with a solution. Jennifer volunteered to officially throw the party and be the hostess. We put down her name on the invitations and didn’t mention mine at all.

“Jennifer Harris hosts charity dinner to benefit young Indian student,” said the invitations, each of which we handwrote and hand-painted.

“If I become famous, each of these invitations will be worth millions,” said Jennifer. “Maybe I should write a P.S. and ask them to hold on to these invitations, just in case.”

Jennifer also decided, over my protests, to include a “Suggested Donation” line. “If we don’t, people will pay like five dollars,” she said.

“You and I would pay five dollars,” I replied. “Not these people.”

“Still, I think we should make it clear that they should plan to cough up at least fifty bucks, or not come at all,” said Jennifer.

We sent out fifty invitations. Twelve people accepted.

“It’s because you demanded that they pay fifty dollars,” I wailed accusingly over the telephone. “Otherwise, more people would have come.”

“Oh, pish!” Jennifer said, and hung up.

She called back a minute later and said, “Just to make sure, I’m going to be standing at the door, collecting donations before they actually eat your food. Who knows? They may taste your cooking and renege on their promise.”

Her high-pitched cackle split the line.

WHAT COULD I COOK and charge fifty dollars for with a straight face? It would have to be extravagant, exotic, tasty, and well presented. My stomach in knots, I sat down on the bed and twisted the sheets again. People would pay fifty dollars for meat, not just vegetables. I considered cooking the whole meal with meat substitutes, but the “tofu turkey” I tried tasted so horrible that I decided against it. Indian food too was out, even though I knew how to cook it well. It was too easy, too predictable. My menu had to reflect America, and my experience of it. It was Doug who suggested “world cuisine” after reading a newspaper article. I jumped at the idea. America was a nation of immigrants, after all; I was one myself. It seemed perfectly appropriate to appropriate dishes from different cultures for my benefit dinner.

I evenhandedly chose one dish from each continent, except Antarctica, which didn’t seem to have anything vegetarian. For the main course, I decided on the cabbage dolma that Kim’s father had taught me to make. Cabbage stuffed with rice, tomatoes, onions, pine nuts, currants, herbs, and spices was vaguely reminiscent of stuffed turkey. It would remind people of Thanksgiving and its extravagance of food. It seemed poetic to offer something from Turkey in lieu of turkey. Not that stuffed turkey or anything Turkish had to be the main dish, I reminded myself, but I couldn’t come up with anything better. Dolma it would be.

I couldn’t get the image of stuffed turkey out of my mind as I came up with accompaniments for my stuffed cabbage dolma. Instead of mashed potatoes, I would serve
babaghanouj.
Japanese
umeboshi
paste was about the same color as cranberry sauce. I would flavor it with Asian ingredients like wasabi, lemongrass, and
galangal.
I looked to Europe, specifically Italy, for my appetizers and salads.
Aleecha
was a hearty vegetable stew from Ethiopia and the only African dish I was familiar with. I also decided to make chilled avocado soup with mango-cilantro salsa from South America. From Australia came its Shiraz wines, which I loved. For dessert, I bought baklava, Chinese mooncakes, Mexican
churros,
and finally, in a nod to American tradition, apple pie.

Jennifer advanced me a couple of hundred dollars, which I used when I went shopping. Mary gave me free rein of her kitchen but told me firmly that she and Doug had other plans on the actual night of the benefit.

So it came about that I stood in Mary’s kitchen on August 20, cooking up the world and awaiting twelve guests. Many were acquaintances I barely knew. About half were foreigners who had appeared on my radio show, and the other half were artsy Americans who liked the idea of eating to support a human cause. They had accepted my invitation, even after I told them that they had to pay for the all-vegetarian feast.

Jennifer arrived that afternoon, laden with dozens of plastic Halloween lanterns that she’d gotten on sale at the flea market. Mary had arranged for a dozen plastic chairs and a table to be delivered from her church. We arranged the lanterns on the grass and spread the chairs around tables before discovering that there was a thunderstorm watch that night. Hastily, we moved everything into Mary and Doug’s dining room. It was a tight fit, and I worried about people banging into things and breaking precious objects.

In a continuation of my Americana theme, I spread a bright blue tablecloth and littered it with silver stars and candy canes (in lieu of stripes). The centerpiece was a small American flag that I stuck in a vase. I also added flags from several other countries so as not to offend the foreigners, until my table looked like a veritable United Nations.

My guests arrived, professing hunger and eagerness to sample my food. Jennifer stood at the door dressed in a tuxedo and collected donations. “We made it,” she said jubilantly after the tenth guest. “They each gave a hundred dollars. Isn’t that nice? You don’t even need more people. You can turn the other two away for all I care, or let them in for free.”

“No, no,” I said. “I have to pay you back two hundred dollars, remember?”

Before dinner I felt like I had to come clean. So I stood before the group and awkwardly told them that the charity in question was in fact me. They had paid to put me through school, I said, and in gratitude I was going to give each one of them a sculpture of their choice from my portfolio. I felt morally compelled to add that they could take back their money in case they didn’t like my food and was encouraged when they made dissenting noises.

They sat around the dining table looking innocuous as they awaited my chilled avocado soup. The mango-cilantro salsa made a colorful garnish. But when I brought it out to the table, Todd, the painter, said he was allergic to mangoes, and Carlos from Guadalajara hated cilantro. How could a Mexican hate cilantro, I thought as I spooned out the garnish from Carlos’s bowl. Margo, the macrobiotic, wouldn’t eat avocado since it wasn’t native to the Northeast, and Robert, the banker on the Pritikin diet, was banned from eating it because it was high in fat.

Things got progressively worse. Niloufer, the daughter of a Turkish diplomat, took one look at my dolma and said, “That doesn’t look like the ones my grandmother made.” Reza, the Iranian consultant, announced that he wouldn’t eat Turkish food, since his ancestors were murdered by Turks. Todd, I discovered, was allergic not only to mangoes but also to cabbage. He was the only one in the group who touched my
umeboshi-
cranberry sauce, which the entire group pronounced inedible. Olivia, my fashionable Italian friend, stated that she “simply couldn’t” eat the pine nuts that I had liberally included in my dolma stuffing, and spent the entire meal scratching her plate to spot and discard the offenders.

With each dish, I had to recite its ingredients in excruciating detail and answer questions—had I used stone-ground flour? Was the produce organic (it wasn’t)?—all of which determined who would deign to eat my delicacies.

The wine flowed freely, and so did the conversation, sometimes louder than I liked. Olivia waxed eloquent about how pine nuts were among the fattiest substances on the planet. Reza and Niloufer exchanged cutting remarks. Todd talked about his multiple allergies to anyone who would listen. Robert and Carlos got punch drunk, and Margo spent the night slapping their hands off her thighs.

“The whole evening is a disaster,” I hissed as Jennifer and I assembled the dessert plate in the kitchen.

“What do you mean?” she replied. “I thought things were fine.”

“No one has eaten a thing, have you noticed?” I asked. “Not a thing. Not the dolma, nor the
aleecha,
the
babaghanouj,
or the
umeboshi
sauce.”

“The sauce was a bit much,” Jennifer admitted.

“They’re all going to demand their money back,” I said worriedly.

“Not if you stun them with some last-minute item,” Jennifer replied.

I flipped through my recipe book, looking for something equivalent to a soufflé. Something that would surprise and delight my guests into prayerful silence, make them forget the entire sorry meal and end the evening with panache and pizzazz. I had to redeem myself. And I had to accommodate all their allergies and preferences.

I decided to make
upma. Upma
is a one-dish dinner as simple and comforting as a casserole, not to mention wholesome, quick to make, and easy to like. It has no extraneous allergy-producing ingredients and could be made rich enough to satisfy on its own.

I rummaged through the cupboard for some cream of wheat, tossed in some onions, peas, ginger, and green chiles after making sure nobody was allergic to them. By the time I finished roasting the cream of wheat, everyone crowded into the kitchen, attracted by the scent of ghee that I was cooking on the side. They watched as I tossed the vegetables into a large wok and whipped everything around like a professional. I added some water, salt, and a little turmeric for color. By the time the cream of wheat softened, people were licking their lips. A dash of lemon juice, and the
upma
was ready.

I scooped it onto plates and handed it around. Todd took a taste and sighed. At least he wasn’t breaking out in hives. Robert and Carlos glared at each other and offered to feed Margo. Olivia examined the
upma
for offending nuts and then proceeded to polish off her portion in one sitting. Reza and Niloufer stopped fighting long enough to murmur approvals.

Jennifer simply leaned back in her chair and smiled expansively. In her top hat and tuxedo, she looked like a circus ringmaster. She took another swig of beer and nodded. It was all right, she said. The whole thing was all right. We had made our money, and the guests were happy.

UPMA

My parents wanted my brother, Shyam, to meet this girl, Priya. She is beautiful, they said, talented and versatile. No matter, said my brother; “Can she cook?” My parents didn’t know but managed to arrange a meeting. When Shyam met Priya, he was so bowled over that he proposed on the spot. Only after marriage did it occur to him that he still didn’t know whether she could cook. By then it was too late.

The young couple moved to Philadelphia, where Shyam was attending business school. On his first day back from classes, Priya set out a candlelight dinner. “What’s cooking?” asked Shyam. “
Upma,
” she replied. Shyam’s face fell. He hated
upma.
“Oh, my favorite,” he exclaimed when she led him to the table. He tasted a spoonful. The semolina was roasted and cooked to creamy perfection. The vegetables were just right, and the spices were used judiciously with a restrained hand. It was the best dish he had tasted in his entire life.