Food was served. Fenugreek gosht. Nadir kebab. Aloobukhara korma. Goat tails. Haakh saag. Tabak maaz. Dum aloo. Rista-63. Gushtaba. Saffron pilaf in the middle. Shirmal. Rumali roti, yellow and thin like a two-day-old newspaper. No part of the tablecloth was uncovered.
They were about to start.
But.
The chief cleric asked the General to beckon the ‘cook’. The cleric said: I want to have a word with the ‘cook’.
Chef put on his military (jungle) hat and asked me to accompany him. I adjusted my black turban and buttoned up my white jacket. We walked together to the tree and stood before the table, silently, waiting. The colonel of the regiment, sitting on the left of General Sahib, said, ‘Kishen, Pir Sahib would like to ask you a question.’ The imam was sitting on the right of the General.
Chef stood confidently, just a bit ahead of me, his hands clasped behind his back.
The imam opened his mouth. I only want to double-check if the meat used in Rogan Josh is halal? he inquired.
I sighed in relief. Chef reassured the imam and the other clerics that the meat used was pure halal, but he didn’t stop there. He uttered a few things, a few extra things, which I think ruined him.
This is what he said, I hear those words even now: One hundred percent halal was used, sir, we procured the meat from a genuine Muslim shop in Lal Chowk. Many interesting dishes can be prepared with pork, sir – whether it is halal or not. But we did not use pork. Only lamb was used, sir. Personally I am not for slaughtering pigs.
The situation around the table grew tense. The imam looked as if he was about to vomit.
Generaclass="underline" Pork has not been used?
Chef: Lamb meat was used, sir.
General Sahib looked at the imams, then at the colonel of the regiment.
Coloneclass="underline" No pork has been used, sir.
Chef: Only lamb was used, sir. Hundred percent halal, sir.
The imams did not touch the meat dishes. They ate very little, and hurried to the inspection tent in their dark cloaks. Some of us from the kitchen followed as well.
Our army had set up a huge shamiana tent on the uppermost terrace of the garden. The imams were seated on the carpet, and I saw the General and the police chief standing close by with burning anxiety on their faces. The vial passed from one hand to other, and eventually it ended in the hands of the holiest man, the head imam, and he sat there gazing with wonder, and it took him twenty minutes to pass his verdict, and I did not see him nod, but I saw the tense expression on the police chief’s face change into a smile, and I heard the General’s sigh of relief.
The vial was returned to the mosque, put in the high-security room, and the protests stopped on the streets. I did not know then that those hours were the last few hours of my apprenticeship.
The next day Chef got a written order from the colonel’s office. He had been demoted, and was being transferred (with immediate effect) to the Siachen Glacier in the Karakoram mountains.
So I was now Chef.
Before he left I cooked Italian tortellini and poured him a tall glass of Kingfisher beer. During that dinner he played the slow movement of the German music on the tape recorder and told me many personal things, which to me at that moment sounded a bit comical. But with time the same things have become less and less comical. He talked about his family.
He began by telling me that the Kashmiri Hindus had no problems eating meat.
‘Brahmins do not eat meat,’ I protested.
‘They do, Kirpal. In Kashmir the Hindus eat goat and mutton. In olden days they used to eat cows, peacocks… Don’t give me that look.’
He poured another glass of Kingfisher.
‘In this country, Kip, we have too many taboos, and sometimes I get sick of them, really sick of them.’
‘But, Chef, in college the teacher told us that because of these taboos we Indians, Hindus and Sikhs and Muslims, were able to rise up against the British in 1857. The colonial officers introduced the Enfield rifle. It was bad technology, the soldiers were told to bite the cartridges in order to load the rifles. The cartridges were greased with offensive pig fat or cow fat… We refused. Mutiny! Our first war of independence!’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘But that was then.’
‘But it is true, Chef,’ I said.
‘In 1857 you Sikhs sided with the British.’
‘Chef, you are trying to lump all Sikhs into one,’ I said. ‘As if there is only one kind of curry powder? One kind of mango? One kind of Rogan Josh?’
‘One kind of woman!’
‘But, Chef, I am serious.’
‘So am I,’ he said. ‘So am I. You see, Kirpal, the foods I don’t eat, the things I find disgusting, have more to do with my memories and less with religion. Take chocolate. I run away from rooms in which I sense its presence.’
‘Why so?’
‘Because of my father,’ he said.
‘Father?’ I said.
‘In the hospital on his deathbed my old man had desired chocolate,’ said Chef Kishen. ‘I hurried to the shop in the bazaar. By the time I returned he was dead. Since that moment I find the smell of chocolate repulsive. Sometimes I hear my father saying to me, Son, eat a chocolate, for my sake eat it. But the moment I see or smell it the desire gets crushed.
‘But the story I really want to tell involves my grandfather,’ said Chef Kishen. ‘Despite being a Brahmin my grandfather didn’t believe in caste. He did not believe in taboos, Kip. Grandfather rarely entered the kitchen. He was not a cook, yet he knew his food well. He didn’t care who cooked in the kitchen as long as the veg or non-veg or whatever it was was good. Grandfather was married to an old woman who was a bad cook and she believed in caste. She made it very clear that she would die if a low caste ever cooked for her. One day the old woman was unwell and a low-caste woman took over the kitchen, and the moment grandfather revealed the identity of the cook, the old woman died. Her head fell on the bowl of curry on the table. The whole table became yellow with stains. The low-caste woman, the cook, became my grandmother.
‘And yet, in the end,’ said Chef, ‘no matter how hard we try – we are low-caste peoples and we do not matter. Army belongs to officers, Kirpal. I am worthless. I feed them, serve them, take ardors. I endure the heat of the tandoor, and then I am let go, or I leave on my own. My life has come to nothing. My work has come to nothing. What will I do there on the glacier? They eat canned food on high altitudes. We are the people who do not matter. Bleedy bastards,’ he said.
This was one of the few English words he knew. He said it in a thick accent. ‘What is the meaning of ‘‘bleedy bastards’’, Kip?’ I told him the meaning, and he confessed that all along he had imagined it to be the equivalent of bhaen-chod or ma-dar-chod.
We are the people who do not matter, he said. Bloody bastards.
There was a single tortellini left on his otherwise polished plate. He picked it up with his thumb and first finger.
‘Kip, this thing reminds me of a woman’s belly button.’
‘A woman’s what, sir?’
‘Navel.’
‘I wouldn’t know, sir.’
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Hold it.’
I held the tortellini in my left hand for a brief second and touched it with the first finger of my right, and surveyed the curious irregular shape. Then I turned it and turned it again and without hesitation put it in my mouth.