The Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack

by HM Naqvi

  The drive home is fraught. Few realize that the roads of our city are most treacherous when clear. During the stretch between the village and the roundabout, the inevitable happens: avoiding a wobbly bicyclist, I swerve into an open gutter. The momentum carries the automobile over but we suffer a spectacular flat. “Changing a tyre,” I announce, “is one of the prerequisites for manhood.” Acting on my instructions, Bosco proceeds soldierly, raising the car with a rickety jack, unscrewing the lug nuts counterclockwise, dragging the spare from the dickey and installing it on the hub, drenched in sweat. The remainder of the expedition is uneventful save the ominous wheezing deriving from the chassis. But there is pandemonium in the morning.

  Upon discovering the flat, Babu barges into my quarters at half seven. “This is the height of irresponsibility!” he shouts. “You’re my elder brother—I should look up to you, but—but you behave like a child!”

  Listening to the harangue, hands clasped over my chest, I observe that the hair follicles forming the border of my brother’s hairline are stunted like seeds arrayed in a frosty trough. I would like to ask him how he afforded transplant surgery, an extravagance of the young, the vain, the wasteful, given his precarious finances. Instead, I declaim, “I’ll pay for the damages.”

  “Of course, you’ll pay,” he shoots back uncharitably. “And I’ll only accept cash. No cheques!”

  “Of course, partner, of course—”

  All the excitement must have roused Bosco: I notice him half-awake in the background. I signal to him with my chin to leave but he stands squinting idiotically, pyjama riding up the leg. “This is all because of this—this runt!” Babu screeches. “Who is he and why is he here?”

  “This is unambiguously my fault,” I reply. “You leave the lad out. He’s not your business.”

  “Then I will make him my business!”

  “No, partner, you will not.”

  “This is my house—”

  “No, it’s not!”

  Although things have been said that ought not to have been said, there is no sense in standing around like attendants at an asylum. Turning my back on my brother, I slide my arm around Bosco’s shoulder and usher him away. “That was a bad dream,” I tell him. “Poof!”

  My dreams come true one muggy evening perhaps a fortnight later: as the fiery sun is setting over the leafy horizon of the zoo, I notice a familiar figure on a bench, beedi wedged between fingers. Slipping Bosco a twenty, I say, “Why don’t you go feed the lemurs?” As soon as he disappears around the corner to purchase bags of choice popcorn, I head over and ask, “Is this seat taken?”

  Jugnu glances at me with quick black eyes, then looks away. Wearing the same canary-yellow kameez she was wearing the second time fate introduced us, she is looking even more striking than I remember her. “I waited for you that night,” I say, settling beside her.

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to thank you properly.”

  “You’re welcome, Abdullah Sahab.”

  She might be preoccupied, or worse, uninterested. I don’t care; I will not let her go this time. The hell with Babu, Nargis, the Dictates of Propriety! Sidling closer, I say, “I would like to invite you over for dinner.”

  “Why should I accept your invitation?”

  “Because … because I cook very well: I can make biryani with apricots that will make you teary with feeling … chicken heart karahi that will fulfill you in a spiritual way … authentic fisherman’s prawn masala and disco aloo—”

  “Acha, acha,” she says with a grin. “Main chakar maroon gi,” she adds, or I will stop by.

  “When?”

  “Soon—”

  “I’m taking you home with me now!”

  When Jugnu attempts to leave, escape again, I begin singing that world-famous ghazal at the top of my lungs that begins, “Aaj jaany ki zid na karo”—viz., Don’t insist on leaving tonight / If you leave, I will die / I will be lost / Oh, please don’t go.80

  Passersby stop in their tracks. Monkeys start turning cartwheels. “Okay, okay, stop it!” Jugnu laughs. “No hearts, no disco. You make me the best chicken karahi I have had in my life.”

  “Done, hai!”

  I have written a treatise on it.

  76. I always wanted a Godfather & later, what I would characterize as a Dogfather—somebody to introduce me to the underbelly of the city. But after my turn as the Cossack, I managed on my own.

  77. In ’58 or ’59, if I recall correctly, H. Alvi wedded S. Karambhai there despite the inclement weather.

  78. I recall crooning numbers from Madam’s Dopatta, and Ahmed Rushdi’s classic, “Bunder Road se Keamari.” The jaunty latter tune often plays in my head when I’m travelling in a rickshaw—my theme music on the move.

  79. I suppose nobody really knows how the universe functions but I don’t even know how magnets or dry cleaning works, much less air-conditioners or airplanes. Like Socrates, perhaps, I know what I don’t know.

  80. Recall the rest of the ghazal, first sung by my late neighbour, the bespectacled crooner Mohammed Wali Khan: “We are trapped in time’s prison / But during the moment we are free / If we lose the moment, we will regret it for the remainder of our lives / Don’t leave tonight …”

  ON THE CULINARY ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE REGION

  Any culinary survey of the region would have to accommodate the historical vicissitudes that have informed this vast and veritably varied land. During the Oligocene Period, for instance, the Baluchitherium (a large, long-legged mammal with the bearing of a hippo) tramped through Beloochistan.81 If there were any tribesmen then—by some accounts, Adam (RA) was tossed from the heavenly orbit during that time—one can wager a meaningful sum that they would have fashioned sajji from the ample flesh of the beast. Oh, just imagine the epic meaty succulence of such a speciality!

  Whilst the western swath of the country might not always have been arid, undular, recalling Mars, we know that the gushing Indus cut through the other half, leaving a verdant delta and a riverine civilization in its mighty wake. But since archeologists have not been able to decipher the pictograms on the tablets excavated from Mohenjo-Daro, the largest, most sophisticated city of said civilization, one is not privy to any primary source material on cookery during the Indus Valley Civilization. One can, however, divine the culinary ecosystem from the irrigation networks unearthed—the cultivation of rice and barley, for instance, can be presumed—and the proximity of the cities to rivers would suggest that the people of the valley complemented agricultural endeavour with fishery.82 One might speculate they were pescatarians. After all, fishermen have been trawling the waterways of the Interior for trout, palla, carp, and bekti since time immemorial, and the sea has yielded croaker, barracuda, and the sweetest crabs one has ever tasted (presently plucked for “lollipops” on barges and beaches in and around Currachee).

  One can also surmise that marine trade with Africa ensued along the Makran coast, though the exchange of silk, spice, nuts, ideas, bacteria was famously facilitated by the winding intercontinental terrestrial route known as the Silk Road. Globalization is not some recent phenomenon—it dates back three thousand years: laden quadrupeds from Central Asia, Han China, and as far as Ancient Egypt traversed the craggy Karakoram, facilitated in time by the avenues built by Ashoka the Great Bihari. (The Romans got involved only later.) Built by Chinese engineers, local labour, and the army beginning in 1959, the Karakoram Highway remains a vital trade conduit today between China and Pakistan. I know. In the spirit of commerce, I have traded a bottle of paracetamol for a bottle of Chinese vodka with the border guards manning the Khunjrab Pass. Verily, trade expands horizons.

  Cuisine, then, is contingent on factors that include climate, culture, trade, technology, movements of peoples, and indigenous flora, fauna, and foodstuffs. Rice and barley might be indigenous to the land as are pepper, cardamom, and ginger, but coriander and cumin arrived via the Mediterranean shipping routes and the Arab World, nutmeg and cloves from China. And wh
o would have known that the Portuguese brought chillies, tomatoes, and capsicum? Or that the British brought potatoes? Tea?

  One must also recall that Pakistan was the Mecca of Buddhism a couple of millennia ago. Taxila hosts extraordinary ruins & a museum that testifies to the fact, but there is evidence elsewhere, everywhere: stupas dot the land, and towards Kalam, Buddhist graffiti is scrawled on the sides of mountains—the work it would seem, of giants. It was, however, presumably the handiwork of ancient Pathans. I would wager that the famously fierce nation was once fiercely vegetarian. Although Buddhist cuisine is a misnomer—one cannot pepper supper with vinaya—the Eastern faiths developed elaborate dietary systems meant to achieve carnal & cosmic balance.

  Controversy might dog the issue of the Holiness of the Cow—When? Why? What the dickens?—but it’s certain that a hierarchy of foodstuffs was established based on Ayurvedic principles. Milk & coconuts were deemed pure, or sattvic, whereas meat, fish, eggs, onions & other tasty items were considered harmful, or tamasic. The classification recalls the peculiarly if not entirely arbitrary Judaic dietary prejudices which contrast with Islam’s strict but relatively straightforward system of halal & haram.83

  By the time the Bedouin faith took root in the Subcontinent, it had been tempered by the sensibilities of the Turks, Persians, and Magnificent Moors. Textbooks have only recently acknowledged that table etiquette, from forks to courses to general matters of hygiene, were imported by the Europeans in the Dark Ages from the Musalman Civilizations.84 Left to their own devices, the Gauls, Franks & other dirty denizens of the Cold World would be stuffing roasted offal into their maws with foul fingers.

  One of the most comprehensive primary source materials for regional cuisine might date back to the fifteenth-century court of the Sultan of Mandu.85 I have not been able to secure a copy of the Ni’matnama but have managed to procure an expert translation of the Nuskha-e-Shajhani (or Recipes from Shah Jahan’s Court) from a bright & comely PhD scholar in Musalman Intellectual History.86 One learns that the Mughals were preoccupied by rice, a Persian fetish: there are a hundred and thirty permutations of pulao in the Nuskha—one hundred and thirty!—each differentiated not simply by ingredients or technique but by presentation.87

  One has aspired, on occasion, to replicate the Mughlai processes—one would like to sample just a lick of the regal delicacies—but even as a reasonably able cook, the High Art of Mughlai Cuisine is outside the purview of one’s capabilities. But then, more experienced cooks are rarely up to the task: I have sampled poor Mughlai fare around the fort in Delhi—my fingers were caked with turmeric most foul after a plate of purported murgh Jehangiri—although some joints in the old city of Lahore approximate the experience. In any event, the Mughals were eventually done in by the British Colonial Enterprise.

  Of course, the Subcontinent was a collection of states then, not a cogent political entity. The centripetal forces that swept European nations into states in the eighteenth century were also sweeping through the Subcontinent from Bahawalpur to Hyderabad to the Maratha hinterland, but the insidious, Exogenous Shock of Colonialism jarred political development.

  Colonialism yielded only mildly appetizing culinary experiments that include the phenomenon of Mulligatawny Soup—daal served in a bowl. If only the French had won at Pondicherry, we might have been dining on curried escargots. Another staple of Anglo-Indian cuisine, Country Captain Chicken, is an academically interesting local permutation of a British maritime recipe. But it’s nothing to write home about.

  Although there is great variety in our cuisine, the national dish of Pakistan has arguably become chicken karahi. You will find it anywhere you venture—North, South, Left, Right. I have had it in Kaghan, Naran, Gujranwalla, Tando Mohammed Khan. The ubiquity of karahi is a function of many factors, from the Economics of Red Meat to the construction of the Grand Trunk Road by the brilliant Bihari, Sher Shah Suri. In Currachee, some of the finest karahi joints, from Bombay Restaurant in Cantt Station to Mecca and Medina along the Super Highway, are run by the Pathans catering to their trucking brethren.88

  I am a karahi cognoscente. I can contrive at least twelve different variations, some soupy, some dry, some with khara masala, some with bhuna masala; one involves onions, another eggs, and I could serve karahi avec beurre blanc sauce for French company. You have to work with what you have and if you do not have much, or much time, you can attempt the following:89

  A nice plump chicken, cut into pieces

  Four medium sized red tomatoes

  A handful of black peppercorn, cumin, and coriander seeds

  A heaping teaspoon of salt

  Boil the chicken pieces in a pot of water on high heat for ten minutes, throw in the tomatoes, sliced in quarters, and after grinding the peppercorn, coriander, and cumin seeds with a pestle, sprinkle them over the concoction. Salt to taste, of course, and cook for another twenty.

  That’s it. It’s done.

  81. There were others in other periods: Sulaimanisaurus, Marisaurus, and of course, the Pakisaurus.

  82. Further research must be pursued in an effort to understand the diet of the Indus Valley Civilization, employing the magic of biochemistry, or Scatological Anthropology.

  83. Shellfish, however, is considered neither good nor bad but discouraged, or mukruh, much like booze.

  84. The innovations of Ziryab the Blackbird of Cordoba, gourmand, musician and boulevardier, are documented in Mark Graham’s excellent How Islam Created the Modern World (1427AH/2006AC).

  85. Mangarasa’s sixteenth-century cookery book in verse, Soopa Shastra, must be mentioned. The coda sounds impressive, featuring snacks, drinks, deserts, and banana curries, but I don’t read Sanskrit.

  86. Known to me by her mother, SB, a famous beauty of her time, she is an understated, uncanny tour de force.

  87. I can furnish the following for illustrative purposes:

  The Cooking of Orange Pulao

  Meat:

  1½ āsār

  Rice:

  1 āsār

  Ghee:

  3 āsār

  Saffron:

  1 māsha

  Cinnabar:

  1 māsha

  Cinnamon:

  4 māsha

  Lemon:

  3 pāō

  Egg:

  1

  Onions:

  ½ āsār

  Ginger:

  2 dām

  Almonds:

  2 ½ dām

  Raisins:

  2 ½ dām

  Cloves:

  4 māsha

  Cardamom:

  4 māsha

  Sugar:

  3 pāō

  Pepper:

  1 tānk

  Pistachios:

  2 ½ dām

  Grain Meal:

  1 dām

  Salt:

  2 dām

  Caraway Seeds:

  1 dam

  Take 1/3 of the meat and mix in the ground spices with a stone. Take the roasted chickpea meal and the white of the egg and a little ghee, onions and ginger [and] mix with the juice of one lemon and knead together. Make flat cakes out of this then put the fruit/ground-meat into the belly of the cakes and close them up to look like oranges. After having hardened them in hot water and baking them in ghee, throw them into ¼ āsār of sugar syrup. Throw over it the colour of the saffron and vermillion leveled, such that it has the colour blue of coriander … When the syrup dries up, take the remaining meat and make yakhni. Strain the shorba through a muslin cloth. Garnish the meat and shorba with cloves fried in ghee, then mix in ½ āsār of sugar syrup. Pour the caraway seeds into a pot, layer the meat in and add the spices and 2 wooden ladles full of the sweet shorba, and put it all on the fire until the shorba is absorbed into the meat. After that bring the rice to half boil, soften in the shorba, then add it over the layer of yakhni [and] give it a flame for about 6 min (¼ gha) and then let it cook in its own steam. Pour some ghee from above. When presenting the pulāō in the dish, pla
ce the “oranges” on top.

  88. The best this connoisseur has sampled is from the Interior—from Hala.

  89. I am not certain of trademark laws but I ought to mention in no uncertain terms that I would like to formally trademark the recipe as the Cossack’s Quick Karahi.

  ON THE CONVENTIONS OF MODERN COURTSHIP

  (or HAD WE BUT WORLD ENOUGH)

  Under cover of darkness courtesy of summer loadshedding, Jugnu and I repair to the Lodge for a candlelit soiree—Babu and I cannot agree on the modalities of restoring the generator.90 The gloom would have been exasperating at any other moment in history but I am grateful to the power shortages—the electricity typically goes for two hours—because Jugnu cannot perceive my corrugated brow or the archipelago of sweat across my chest; I have not had a dame over since the Signing of the Maastricht Treaty. Abandoning Jugnu in the verandah—“One minute,” I beseech, “just one minute”—I change into my flimsy filigreed mauve Batik before groping my way to the kitchen where I locate a taper and a bottle of Roohafzah, and mix a tablespoon into a glass of water. But the saccharine sherbet will not suffice; no, the success of the evening hinges on Master Bosco securing from the butcher a nice plump cut of chicken for my quick karahi, as Barbarossa is AWOL (participating, I would suspect, in a cockfight). It’s a winning recipe, strategy, but what to do, ad interim, what to say? Mercifully, Jugnu initiates small talk: “Big place,” she remarks.

  Situated on a four kanal plot, the Lodge is indeed vast by present standards, and from our vantage, rather transcendental at night: we can perceive the swaying silhouettes of the peepal & jungle jalebi trees, and the lone ashoka in the moonlight. But the bright light of day reveals that the grass is wild and yellowing and the boundary wall is cracked at intervals. Jugnu may or may not realize that a house does not come apart suddenly, dramatically—it goes chip by chip, not brick by brick: you reckon you will attend to the masonry when you have a moment and sufficient currency, but then a fixture in the facilities snaps and the wiring in the pantry rots and the window becomes unhinged, but you make do. I have to make do with myself: I notice the gibbous flesh bulging in rolls through the shirt I have decided to wear for the occasion. “Big,” I mumble, “very big.”