Chef

by Jaspreet Singh

  The situation around the table grew tense. The imam looked as if he was about to vomit.

  General: Pork has not been used?

  Chef: Lamb meat was used, sir.

  General Sahib looked at the imams, then at the colonel of the regiment.

  Colonel: 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.

  ‘Congratulations, Chef!’ he said.

  Next day Kishen took the bus to the glacier.

  Two

  11

  So many things begin with an egg. Your tumor looks like an egg, said the doctor. Three months to a year, he said with alarming precision. Surgery might help. Chemical therapy is torture, but it might prolong your life.

  Doctor, I can’t afford the treatment, I told him. Just tell me what I am in for. Expect a few changes, he said. You are a cook, isn’t it? Cancer is an illness that cooks the innards of the body. It spreads from organ to organ eating itself, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. Time will come when you will not be able to hold a spoon or a pen. You will lose feeling on one side of your face. You will lose your hair, words, memories. Time will e-vap-o-rate. Space will con-den-se. Your nose will not be able to tell the difference between kara parshad and pizza. Appetite for food and sex will wither. Just like everything else, he said, food and sex reside in the brain. You will repeat yourself. You will confuse thoughts and words. You will try to say one thing but something else will come out of your mouth. You will speak your own language like a foreigner. Foreign words and accents will roll out of your mouth. People will get the wrong impression that you are trying very hard to become an Englishman or a Yankee. You will grow angry at yourself, but you will be more angry at others. You will use lots of foul, obscene words. Galis.

  He sounded like a fortune-teller.

  ‘Shit,’ I said.

  ‘Certain things can at best be delayed. But,’ he said, ‘don’t give up hope.’

  ‘Does my cancer really look like . . .’

  ‘Do not worry. Right now it is the size of a pinhead. Here.’ He pointed at the CAT scan the way palmists point at lines on one’s hands. Looking at that shape I felt dizzy and my head started cracking and throbbing and pounding and that was the precise moment when my transformation began, my dying.

  So many things begin with an egg, I say to myself.

  The train is roaring over a bridge. I feel dizzy on the window seat. India keeps passing by. The melancholy villages keep passing
by. How much I like these villages, and how much I am repelled by my fellow passengers. Civilians. We are racing at an alarming speed. The old engine is suddenly trying to make up for the lost time.

  I will miss the bus to the mountains if the train fails to cover time.

  There is one thing the doctor said which keeps coming to me. Cells, Kirpal. Our bodies, you see, are made of cells at the most fundamental level, he said. Cells are constantly taking birth and dying inside us. Every cell knows when to kill itself. But cancer cells refuse to do so, they keep giving birth to more and more cells, and refuse to die themselves. People with cancer die, Kirpal, because at the fundamental level their bodies start craving immortality.

  On this train I feel like a man who has already expired. Unable to endure so many civilians. I don’t desire to be immortal. Old passengers leave, new ones occupy the seats. They are all the same, no difference, and I am ashamed of them, all of them. The more I witness their lives the more ashamed I feel. Ashamed of my country. Is it for them my father died? Did we lose so many of our men in the army for such useless people?

  Eight people on my left are speaking at the same time, they are inebriated and discussing plans to immigrate to America; another group across the aisle prefers Australia. I have decided not to speak to them at all. If I tell them about my time in the army they will say: ‘We would like to hear stories about the heroism of our soldiers.’ These people think war is TV.

  Not far from me a man and his wife are sitting. It seems they have gone without sleep for nights. He is bald and she is on the plump side. They are a slightly older couple than the honeymooning pair I encountered last night. Not a word has been exchanged between us. But they are horrible. I had to endure them when the train stopped unexpectedly an hour ago.

  When we came to a halt, the man lifted the window shutter and tapped on the wife’s shoulder.

  ‘I am stepping down,’ he said.

  ‘It is a small station,’ she said.

  ‘Forty minutes halt.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  He did not respond.

  ‘Don’t go far away.’

  He wiped his shirt with his hand, and walked past other passengers, and stood by the open door. It was early in the morning, but already very hot. On the left end of the station there was a pile of dismantled army vehicles and a badly damaged MIG-21 fighter plane, with only one wing.

  The platform was animated with civilians and stray dogs and white foreigners in Indian dress. Cows were chewing on the garbage inside the bins and outside the bins. The man succeeded in making eye contact with his wife from the platform. She smiled and beckoned him towards her window.

  ‘What station is this?’ she asked loudly. He moved very close to the shutter of her window and leaned against the horizontal bars.

  ‘There,’ he said, pointing his finger. ‘I can’t read the sign properly.’

  He stood there sweating, and a long time passed before another word was exchanged. He unbuttoned his shirt and touched his bald head.

  ‘It is hot,’ she said. ‘Where is your hat?’

  ‘I am fine. Just fine.’

  The girl selling tea and pakoras stopped before the man. She looked like a gypsy. The man ordered.

  The girl produced two teas in earthen cones.

  ‘Should we get a plate of pakoras as well?’ the man asked.

  His wife didn’t respond.

  The silences were not awkward. I think this is how all married people eventually become.

  The gypsy girl looked at the wife while the man transferred a cone of chai through the window. The wife returned the gaze. There were blisters on the girl’s feet, red dots in the middle, and red circles around them. She wore bangles all the way from wrists to shoulders, they chimed when she lifted her arms.

  ‘Pakoras, Memsahib?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ the wife said. ‘No pakoras.’

  ‘Egg pakoras, Memsahib.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Take it, Memsahib!’

  ‘Go away,’ the wife almost screamed.

  The civilian man took the plate and started eating greedily.

  ‘Did you find out the name of the station?’ the wife asked.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘this is not Pokhran.’

  ‘Why did we have to take this train?’

  ‘Don’t start again,’ he said. ‘You have such a negative attitude.’

  ‘You started it.’

  ‘I don’t understand you.’

  She picked up the book she was reading and opened it randomly.

  ‘Listen,’ the man said to his wife, ‘the lady-doctor says she can do it quickly. Nothing goes inside you.’

  ‘But I don’t want to get it done.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I will go with you. The lady-doctor says it is safer than X-ray. Ultrasound is like taking a picture only.’

  ‘But I really don’t want to.’

  ‘Think about it.’

  His fingers were grubby with pakoras.

  ‘For you I will do anything. But not this thing,’ she said.

  ‘Please don’t do it if you feel like that. No one is forcing you.’

  ‘What if the picture isn’t right?’

  ‘It will be all right.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Have I ever lied to you?’

  ‘But how can one be sure?’

  ‘Because if it isn’t all right then we must find out a way to fix it. Don’t you want it to be all right?’

  ‘But what if it is a girl?’

  ‘Of course it will be a boy.’

  ‘You don’t like girls?’

  ‘I like you,’ the man said. ‘I go to work every morning because I like you. Have I done anything to show I don’t like you?’

  ‘I know you like me. But would you stop liking me if I don’t get this thing done?’

  ‘You don’t go to the lady-doctor, nothing will change between us. I assure you. But, it will make me unhappy.’

  ‘What if it is a girl?’

  ‘What can I do to make you think positive?’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  He took a coin from his pocket. He flipped the coin thrice, using his grubby fingers.

  ‘See,’ he said. ‘Three times sure. It will be a boy.’

  ‘Stop it. I want to read my book. Just stop it.’

  ‘Did I ever stop you?’ he said and moved away from her on the platform, and beckoned the gypsy girl and ordered more tea.

  The girl tried to hand him two orders, but he took only one.

  ‘Memsahib is not having,’ he said, and spat on the platform.

  He slurped loudly. She put a finger in her ear. He ate two more pakoras before the guard pressed the signal.

  Civilians, I say to myself. Civilians.

  And India started passing by all over again. The cows, the fertile fields, the dust. India picked up speed, started pacing in straight lines and curves to the highest mountains up north. Boulders of memories started echoing. Chug. Chug. Chug. I had thought travel would liberate me from the burden of memories. When one is neither here nor there, when there is so much space and so much sky outside the window, I had imagined time would finally liberate me. But exactly the reverse is happening.

  12

  There are two kinds of chefs in this world. Those who disturb the universe with their cooking, and those who do not dare to do so. I am of the last kind. I try to make myself invisible. Don’t get me wrong. Great satisfaction comes to me watching people praise my dishes. And yet . . . Food that draws attention to itself is not my idea of perfection.

  ‘Bad’ cooking, of course, draws attention, but so do dishes that are technically considered ‘good’. The ‘best’ preparation is the one that transports people elsewhere, far away from the table.

  Chef Kishen dazzled the table. I, on the other hand, transport people to dazzling places. But I have never been able to cook like him. His touch was precise. As if music. He appraised fruits, vegetab
les, meats, with astonishment, and grasped them with humility, with reverence, very carefully as if they were the most fragile objects in the world. Before cooking he would ask: Fish, what would you like to become? Basil, where did you lose your heart? Lemon: It is not who you touch, but how you touch. Learn from big elaichi. There, there. Karayla, meri jaan, why are you so prudish? . . . Cinnamon was ‘hot’, cumin ‘cold’, nutmeg caused good erections. Exactly: 32 kinds of tarkas. ‘Garlic is a woman, Kip. Avocado, a man. Coconut, a hijra . . . Chilies are South American. Coffee, Arabian. “Curry powder” is a British invention. There is no such thing as Indian food, Kip. But there are Indian methods (Punjabi-Kashmiri-Tamil-Goan-Bengali-Hyderabadi). Allow a dialogue between our methods and the ingredients from the rest of the world. Japan, Italy, Afghanistan. Make something new. Channa goes well with artichokes. Rajmah with brie and parsley. Don’t get stuck inside nationalities.’ I would watch the movement of his hands for hours on end. Once the materials stripped themselves bare, Chef mixed them with all that he remembered, and all that he had forgotten. Sometimes he would contradict himself, and that was the toughest thing to master in the kitchen.

  The day I discovered I had cancer something happened to my hands. They looked exactly the same, the same shape, but I tore a chapatti a little differently, and I picked up fruits from the bowl differently, gazed at them a little longer than I used to. Even the glass of water didn’t get lifted the usual way. It appeared as if time had expanded and was distorting into patterns I didn’t know. I felt the heat of a spoon, its coldness. I became that coldness.

  Before he left by bus to the glacier, Kishen asked me to take care of the nurse in the hospital. How was I to take care of her? She had already said no to my advances, and I felt humiliated. But our next meeting was inevitable. Eight days after Chef’s departure I noticed a dense fog building up outside. Standing by the window, peeling an onion, I felt an immense need to see her. It was as if a garden had grown inside me. I ordered my assistant to take over, and walked down the hill to the hospital.