Chef

by Jaspreet Singh

  The bus was coasting down. The tunnel disappeared behind us in the crack of the mountain. A few miles later it reappeared. I looked upwards from the window seat and noticed the arch of the tunnel. The happiness and unhappiness of so many people depends on the tunnel and the road, and the road to Kashmir is not so bad. The buses are, the drivers are, the checkposts are. If there is one thing right about our country it is the road.

  From my hotel window I can see the Hindu houses. They have been empty for so long, the roofs are falling in. It has been ages since someone burned fire in those rooms. No smoke rises out of chimneys. Time is mocking the chimneys. In one of those kitchens I would like to cook for both Hindus and Muslims.

  The difference between Hindu cuisine and Muslim cuisine is very easy to explain. In Kashmir the Hindus avoid sexy onions and garlic; they love the taste of heeng (asafetida) and the non-incestuous fennel and ginger. Muslims find heeng (and its sulphurous odor) unbearable. They adore garlic, green praans, garam masala, and on certain occasions, mawal flowers. So there is a ‘Hindu’ Rogan Josh, and a ‘Muslim’ Rogan Josh. Over the years I have developed my own recipe, a Rogan Josh inspired by these two great traditions. I have perfected the dish, and I can say without hesitation that it is my finest accomplishment. Rogan Josh is red because of Kashmiri chilies, which are ten times more red than the ordinary Indian mirchis. I know this from Irem. I must discuss the menu yet with Rubiya, but I will manage to persuade her to allow me to prepare this delicacy at the wedding.

  Rogan Josh

  900g lamb (shoulder cut, with or without bones), well rinsed and sliced into one-inch rectangles

  5 tablespoons ghee

  1 cup dahi

  6 cloves, crushed finely

  2 tablespoons Kashmiri red chili powder

  1 cinnamon stick

  ½ teaspoon turmeric powder

  1 onion, finely chopped

  1 tablespoon ginger-garlic paste

  4–5 garlic cloves, minced or finely sliced

  2 teaspoons ginger powder

  2 teaspoons fennel powder

  1 teaspoon cumin seeds

  ¼ teaspoon cumin powder

  ¼ teaspoon crushed cardamom

  1 teaspoon garam masala

  ½ teaspoon heeng

  14 strands of saffron

  Marinate the lamb for two hours. Coat the pieces with ginger-garlic paste, cumin powder, crushed cardamom, and turmeric. Sprinkle salt (to taste).

  Heat ghee on high flame in a large heavy-bottomed pot (for best results, use degchi).

  Add cloves, cumin, heeng, and cinnamon. Sauté for 2 minutes.

  Add onion. Sauté until golden.

  Add garlic. Sauté for 2 minutes.

  Add lamb. Sear until dark brown on all sides. Oily juice will come out of pieces.

  Stir till all liquid in the pot becomes vapor. Make sure the meat pieces don’t stick to the bottom.

  Add dahi (well whisked) one spoon at a time, stirring constantly.

  Cook for 15 minutes on medium heat.

  Stir constantly till the sauce becomes very thick. Make sure the meat pieces don’t stick to the bottom.

  Now add Kashmiri red chili ‘liquid’ (chili powder dissolved in 2 cups of hot water). Stir well.

  Switch to high heat.

  Add ginger and fennel powder. Stir and bring the pot to boil.

  Cover and cook on low heat till the lamb is tender (approximately an hour).

  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 talki
ng 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.

  And yet. I feel the story of Soofiya and little Naseem is the story of the whole of Kashmir.

  28

  What hurts a person into poetry? I ask myself. What made Rubiya a poet? The plane leaves? Snow, or night, or the death of her mother? Or the food she ate? What are the things one must do for the sake of a single poem? Where does poetry come from? As a child she was always hiding from grown-ups. She would make herself small, hiding under the bed or the table, hiding from her father. She sat under a dark table reading books. She played with the black dog. She tried to catch butterflies in the lawn, separating herself from the rest. She refused my meals. The ayah would not allow her to enter the kitchen. Was she becoming a poet then? Did she write her first poem when she first heard about the glacier?

  Where are you headed, Papa?

  To the glacier.

  Who lives there?

  Our men, the soldiers.

  It is funny, Papa. It must be so easy to slide down.

  When exactly does one become a poet?

  But, Dad?

  Yes, Rubiya.

  If the glacier is moving, then how do the two armies draw the line?

  What do you mean?

  How do India and Pakistan tell where the border is precisely?

  When exactly?

  Just before her wedding, when I would meet her alone I would ask her all these questions. I would tell her: Rubiya, your poems have made me happy. You will make so many people happy. Millions in our country, and also in the ‘enemy’ country, will be comforted by these words.

  ‘Are you going to write a poem about your father?’ I would ask her.

  ‘Chef Kirpal,’ she would respond, ‘poetry is not cooking. Poets do not get to choose. It is the poem that chooses the poet.’

  Afterwards

  Then you will go to Kashmir

  in no hurry

  and hear not a single fire

  The blessed women

  will paint

  saffron on your skin

  and you will build a house there,

  and weave a basket for pomegranates,

  and glaze pots in fire

  The jagged mountains

  will no longer weep

  slow muddy tears

  or tremble behind

  dwarf trees anymore.

  Sit. There on encrusted ice

  – they will ask you –

  Look how it gleams, feel it moving.

  Dust the nozzles

  of fountains in Shalimar Bagh

  in the ruined Nishat Bagh

  – they will ask you –

  Plant paisley

  in one or two cemeteries

  where shade bites

  the sun. The women

  will lead you to damp green

  shrines of Noor-u-din. There

  you will locate one or two eggs in nests

  and mounds of cricket balls

  and lost men, too, and

  schoolchildren.

  Bright smiles

  will mark them from the rest, just like

  the tattoo on your skin

  marked you. In autumn –

  you will write long letters

  addressed to your old self –

  a profusion of dots and dashes . . .

  Old photographs, defeats, loves, recipes

  you will move the entire attic

  to an unfinished room

  and hire

  a strong houseboat and help.

  Yes, your old forgotten self –

  the stranger will paddle you

  to the shadows of never

  pruned

  plane trees. There – in autumn in Kashmir

  the two of you would meet. By the roots

  and barks and

  Technicolor leaves

  and millions of dead.

  Don’t just sit there. Smell them.

  On the second day of my arrival – the eighth of December – when I woke up in the hotel room I read in the paper that just after eleven o’clock the previous night General Kumar had killed himself. He had eaten dinner with R
ubiya, and after saying goodnight to her he returned to his room. The servant served tea, and the General took his medication; half an hour later he shot himself. He used the defeated Pakistani general’s pistol from the glass cabinet, and fired only once through his left jaw to do the job.