Now add garam masala.
Cook for 2 or 3 minutes more.
Now add ‘liquid saffron’ and stir well. To prepare the liquid: Crush the saffron threads and mix with two tablespoons of hot water.
Rogan Josh is done.
Serves 6
Rogan Josh is done, I say to myself on the bed in the hotel room. Dinner is ready, Sahib… Drinks are served, Sahib… Applause… Shabash… Applause… I recall with absolute clarity that Sunday, five years ago, when the army honored me for my culinary contributions at the Military Academy in Dehradun. After the ceremony I delivered a small talk on Kashmiri cuisine for trainee chefs, jawans and officers and their wives, which was very well received, so many stood up and gave me genuine heartfelt applause. Standing ovation, as Sahib would have said.
During the little break (just before my talk) I wandered off towards the beautiful lawns of the Academy, and there under a tree I saw a cadet in uniform reading a book. I was filled with curiosity and inquired about the title, and he said it was a book of poems, and it was called In Different Hours. I flipped through the book, looked at the author’s name, and found myself saying out loud: So our Rubiya has become a poet.
‘You know the poet, sir?’
‘Of course. She used to taste my food. Rubiya was the taster of my preparations. I am so happy she has become a poet.’
‘I can’t believe you know her, sir,’ the cadet said again, somewhat stunned.
‘Yes, yes, General Kumar’s daughter has become a poet.’
‘Sir.’
‘Only yesterday she was playing with toys in the garden.’
‘I would like to write to her, sir. Please would you be kind enough to introduce me to the poet?’
So I wrote a little note of introduction for the young man, and jotted down my own address on a sheet of paper. I do not know how he got hold of her address or if he received a response, but to my surprise I received a response from Rubiya. She sent me two new poems as well, and a cutting of the newspaper article she had written after a recent trip to Pakistan. When I read the article I knew that the fate of Kashmir was going to change. I said to myself that this was the right approach. Not what Chef Kishen did. Chef’s approach was wrong. The path that Rubiya is following is the correct one, I had said to myself, and I say it again to myself, now, in this hotel room. When I read that article by Rubiya I knew that from now on the fate of Kashmir was going to change.
Before I flew to Pakistan, every day I had to deal with my fear of the border. The day I turned 5, Father drove us on a jeep to the border. It was a flag meeting, which is usually rare at that most unforgiving border. I was afraid, unable to articulate my fear. I found it difficult to cross the Line to Pakistan. ‘If you cannot make up your mind,’ said the guard on the Indian side, ‘then run back to the jeep.’ I still remember the paralysis I experienced standing in the gravitational field of the Line. Now and then I am able to recall the distance between the line (on the ground) and my foot (right above the line) frozen in air. My father had already crossed to the other side, the wrong side, and I was engulfed with strange and familiar fears. ‘Come, come,’ beckoned the enemy guard with a smile. But I could not overcome the terror, which kept swelling inside me. I ran back to the jeep. From the jeep I saw my father talking to enemy uncles and aunties as if they were his half-cousins.
Rubiya wrote a monthly column in the paper. I started reading her articles regularly. She never once mentioned me in her writings. I was a little bit hurt. Especially by the original article she had sent me in the letter. She had completely omitted me. I had accompanied her and General Sahib on that trip to the border. I had comforted her, given her her favorite badam kheer to eat. Not her ayah. The ayah was sick that day. And I had taken care of Rubiya that day. Only after reading the article the third or the fourth time I stopped feeling hurt. I know she did not mention me because it was to protect me. I was, it is safe to say, very important in her upbringing. I think she knows this so well she does not want to embarrass me with outwardly praise.
Rubiya and I, a long time ago, had developed a special understanding, which goes beyond words. (Am I repeating myself?) Sometimes when General Sahib was a little annoyed with my performance, Rubiya would wink or give me a look, which meant, I understand, don’t worry, my father is a bit out of his mind. He is a bit fussy, that is all.
I was not even seven when my mother died. At first things were difficult, she was absent and present everywhere I went, wounding me. Father was sad too and we would walk hours on end without talking to each other. Few months later he and I watched a movie at the open-air cinema in the army campus. Soon this became a ritual. He would accompany me to watch old Bollywood films. Seating at the cinema was strictly according to one’s rank. The chairs close to the screen were earmarked for officers and their families. Non-commissioned officers and combat soldiers and orderlies and cooks and gardeners could watch only from behind the screen. They sat cross-legged on grass, facing the projectionist, in strange lotus postures. Men in hobnailed boots guarded the border between the two sides. Once the heroine on the screen nearly drowned in monsoon rain. This scene was so intense, it left the guards leaning on their rifles, and I walked to the other side.
There were more insects on the other side and they bit me hard, but what struck me the most was that the image on the screen looked utterly different. Some mysterious power, I felt, had transformed the symmetry on the screen. Our ‘left’ was their ‘right’, and our ‘right’ was their ‘left’. Fundamentally, nothing changed; rain did not become saliva, the coin-sized mirrors on the heroine’s sari did not turn to fire, and yet after that incident never have I been able to look at moving images without hearing sounds of soldiers marching, and never have I been able to walk without thinking about the symmetry or the break in symmetry.
Now, many years later, I think the border between India and Pakistan is a bit like the white film screen that belonged to the open-air cinema. Both sides happen to be watching the same film, sometimes projected from India and sometimes from the Pakistani side, and our left is their right, and our right is their left.
Her bold articles in the paper gave me courage, a lot of courage, and perhaps that is why I finally wrote to her about Irem. After that I did not hear from Rubiya for a long time. She skipped her weekly column in the paper, and this made me worry. But a huge piece appeared three weeks later focusing entirely on Irem. In the article she had changed Irem’s name. She had called her Soofiya. She had found Irem in a prison.
I felt overjoyed and yet I felt very sad. Because I had written my note to Rubiya six years too late.
Rubiya’s article on Irem was very long. But there are fragments which keep coming back to me over and over again. She wrote:
Soofiya found that she was pregnant. She was offered an abortion, which she refused. She gave birth to a baby girl she named Naseem, which means the morning breeze.
Soofiya served out her sentence for ‘entering India illegally’ but no one told her that now she was free to go. The story got out because of an ex-army man’s anonymous letter to an Indian NGO. The letter was forwarded to the World Human Rights Protection Council. Because of the intervention, the Indian authorities sent Soofiya and Naseem on a police-escorted vehicle to the Line of Control. But the Pakistani border guards refused entry. ‘We will allow Soofiya in,’ said the guards. ‘But we will not allow the girl – she, like her “father”, is really an Indian citizen.’
Four more attempts were made. With similar results. In the meantime Naseem has started the prison school in Indian Kashmir. She is a bright kid brimming with curiosity. Soofiya fully approves of her daughter’s education; at times she brags before the prison immates about Naseem’s ability to read and write. The last few days all I have thought about is this… That time is running out… The rough muscular talk between the Hindu fundamentalist leaders of my country, India, and the Pakistani dictator, General Musharraf, has escalated beyond comprehension. Both sides are promising a ‘total’ war. In 1998 when the two countries had tested nuclear weapons in the desert sands the same leaders had promised that atomic weapons were really a deterrence… Last week the two armies marched to the border again, a million men in combat-ready positions. Anti-personnel and anti-tank mines have been planted all along the 1800-mile border. The air smells of the end of the world… During times like these it seems foolhardy to focus on an ordinary woman and her daughter.