Indian Takeaway

by Hardeep Singh Kohli

  ‘When are you going?’ I asked.

  ‘Tuesday.’

  ‘Don’t fancy going again in a couple of months, do you?’ I was half joking.

  ‘Hold on …’ He wandered off and shouted his son’s name upstairs. ‘Carlos! Carlos! When are your holidays?’

  I remember thinking at the time how strange that there were Indian people with names like Orlando and now Carlos. Orlando returned, smiling. But then Orlando was always smiling.

  ‘We will be there. Kids’ half term.’

  ‘Can I come and cook for you?’

  Orlando looked a little confused. ‘You can cook for me here in London … ’

  I explained my quest, my journey, my attempt at selfdiscovery. ‘I really want to come to Goa.’

  ‘Then please be my guest.’

  Orlando is East African, like my mother. His father had worked with my maternal uncle and my maternal grandfather on the railways that the British seemed to construct wherever they colonised. Orlando came to the UK in 1975 with a view to studying science, but life so very often impacts on aspiration and he found himself working at British Airways by day and spannering the odd car by night. Such was his reputation for automotive alchemy that the night job started paying more than the day job. His plan was clear: he would work all the hours the cosmos sent and he would rebuild his father’s house in Goa. This he did all the way through the 1980s, fl ying to and fro to supervise works. Then in 1993 he decided to buy his own place in Goa. Back then no one knew or was particularly interested in Goa apart from the soap-dodging, lank-haired hippies.

  Orlando greets me warmly in front of his house. This is his home in Goa, a two-storey villa in a gated community abutting the beach at Carmona. It could not be more different from his life in Heston. Perhaps it’s the contrast with the slate, rain-laden skies of west London, the chill in the air, the general sense of greyness of the capital of England that suddenly makes Carmona seem not just the other side of the world but an altogether different galaxy. Orlando’s villa is beautiful. Bougainvillea stretches upwards and around the powder-pink exterior. Inside it is cool and airy with four good-sized bedrooms and two terraces. I stand on the back terrace looking out to the Arabian Sea and I wonder why Orlando ever leaves. I ask him. The answer is obvious.

  ‘Gotta work, man. Gotta make the money … ’

  The house is part of a wider resort. There are maybe another seventy or so villas and there’s a pool and a badminton court; but this is Indian Goa, not Costa del Goa. These holiday homes are owned almost exclusively by Goans or Indians who spend a few weeks or months of the year here. A handful of retired Indians live here year round, for whom the sun and the pace of life are simply perfect. Low season it may be, but for me the heat is almost intolerable.

  Goa is a unique part of India for many reasons. In the last ten years or so it has developed from hippy hang out into India’s most visited tourist location. Paradise is becoming more easily attainable with numerous five-star hotels and leisure complexes being developed on the coastline. Orlando tells me that in the old days fresh fish was much easier and cheaper to get hold of; now all the best stuff is sold on to the restaurants. He remembers when he was a child his family would give freshly caught fish to western travellers and ask them to cook it; then they would all sit together and enjoy the meal. But that was then.

  ‘Do you feel Indian?’ I ask, almost at the end of my first cold beer in days.

  Orlando reaches for another before answering. ‘I’m Goan, man. I never call myself Indian. I’m Goan.’ His reply is a little fiercer than I think he intended it to be. He sips his beer before looking at me again with his kind eyes. ‘We’re different, us Goans. Different, man.’

  That there is a marked dichotomy between the Goan sense of identity and the Indian isn’t altogether surprising. Until December 1961 Goa was still Portuguese. It was only after armed conflict that the Indian army forcibly reclaimed the state. Goa had been a colony for almost 500 years, one of the world’s oldest recognised colonies. The Portuguese influence is still evident: Orlando Mascarenhas is evidence enough, surely! Orlando remembers his parents speaking Portuguese and he himself remembers understanding the language.

  Orlando is keen to take me out and about, proud to show me his Goa.

  ‘We never cook at home, man. We get food in for lunch and then go out and eat in the evenings. My friends run a few good places.’

  ‘I want to try pork. Is that OK?’ I ask tentatively. There’s still something very strange about asking for pork in India.

  ‘Should be fine. We’ll go to the Traveller’s.’ I like Orlando’s confidence.

  We drive out to a place called the Traveller’s Tavern some fifteen minutes away. I notice that although the sun set some hours ago the heat has hung around. It’s not warm; it’s hot. When we arrive I feel rather alarmed at the state of the place. To say the Traveller’s is a shack would be unfair on shacks. A four-foot-high brick wall traces the outline of the space; every few feet a wooden post rises up, upon which rests a thatched roof. It’s basic in the extreme. One only wonders about the kitchen which remains unseen and unheard in a separate hut at the back. They say one should judge the quality of an establishment’s food by the quality of its toilets: if that were the case at the Traveller’s I would have been leaving there sharpish. But this is India, albeit Goan India. My mind and my bowels are open to new experiences.

  This place is run by an old friend of Orlando’s, and there’s another guy hovering around the bar; he seems to have one leg longer than the other and a moustache that wouldn’t look out of place on the set of a low-budget spaghetti western. Orlando thinks it a good idea that we have a little pre-prandial stiffener. I would kill for a vodka tonic but that would appear not to be on offer. Instead the local spirit arrives at the table. A clear spirit, cashew fenny is made from the fruit of the cashew tree. Each fruit bears only a single pair of cashew nuts (hence the expense of the nut). The nut is attached to a fruit, and this fruit, in time old tradition, is fermented and turned into alcohol.

  ‘Have some, man. It’s the local speciality.’ Orlando is not the sort of guy you want to disappoint. Neither are the owner of the bar and his friend. They stand watching as I grasp the glass in my hand.

  I am compelled to have a taste. I decide to down it in one; I am from Glasgow after all.

  It’s harsh.

  ‘Lovely,’ I say, forcing a smile where a smile ought never to belong.

  It’s like lighter fuel. Or grappa. I just don’t get grappa. And I’m not loving cashew fenny either. I’m hopeful that the lining on my throat will eventually grow back. I have never understood why people drink alcohol that doesn’t taste nice.

  I let Orlando order the food. The pork-free food. I can’t believe I have come all this way and they’ve run out of pork. The owner explains.

  ‘The pork we have to order in the morning. It’s low season so we don’t get so much. The pork we ordered was all sold by lunchtime.’

  ‘Get some for tomorrow night, OK?’ Orlando looks sternly at the owner, who demurs.

  Orlando asks what I like to eat.

  ‘Food,’ I reply, cheekily. ‘Anything and everything.’

  Twenty minutes later the table is heaving with dishes. It all looks amazing. There is fresh mackerel cooked with a rechard masala. The gutted fish are filled with the spicy red sauce and fried. King fish curry in a thin, soupy sauce; very oniony and sweet. Then we are sent a plate of spicy sausages – chipolatasized pork sausages wrapped in beef intestines and then deep fried; they are rich and fatty. These sausages are the only pork in the restaurant since they are cured and can keep for days. Finally a plate of masala beef tongue which is much tastier than it sounds. It is cooked in a coconut, vinegar and chilli sauce and is best accompanied by the Portuguese bread.

  A few hours later, having successfully avoided any further adventures with the cashew fenny, we drive home in the dark. The complex rich flavours of the spicy, vinegary masalas an
d the fatty sausages warm me from the inside, colliding occasionally and uncomfortably with the harsh paint-thinning taste of the cashew fenny. And while the Goan food warms my insides, my outside is being toasted by the temperature which seems somehow unaware of the fact that it is approaching midnight, refusing to get any cooler than the low thirties. The windows open, the wind in my beard, I look forward to the air-conditioned comfort of my friend’s home. That is something about Orlando that I really admire. Systematically, piece by piece, he re-designed his little corner of paradise within India’s little corner of paradise. While he lives modestly in Heston, he lives like royalty in Goa.

  We arrive back and I yearn for bed. Orlando yearns for more cashew fenny. It would be impolite to refuse. Again. We decant drinks and turn on all the fans and AC units.

  ‘It’s going to be a hot night.’ Orlando wipes a bead or two of sweat from his brow.

  We down our drinks and I make for bed. I am cooking tomorrow and I need to have more than my usual number of wits about me. I lie in bed, enjoying the cooling breeze of the conditioned air, the hum of the machine like a lullaby.

  I am moments away from the sweetest of sleeps when suddenly the world seems to grind to a silent halt. The AC falls quiet. The night lights fail; there is darkness everywhere. I hear noises in the hallway and the unmistakeable light of a torch, flitting under the door. Orlando is up and one of the kids, Carlos, is moaning. I stagger out of my room to find out what’s going on. It transpires that the generator has failed. Being a mechanic, Orlando feels he can fix everything, but even his resolve is insufficient in the pitch dark of a Goan night. He apologises profusely.

  ‘No problem,’ I say nonchalantly. ‘I like the heat.’

  I am plainly quite stupid. The temperature feels even hotter at one in the morning than it has done all day long. The air is still and oppressive. Have you ever tried to sleep in a breeze-less thirty-six degrees? It’s impossible. Even my sweat is sweating. I doze lightly rather than enter the full body embrace of sleep. By four in the morning I feel almost hallucinatory.

  Orlando has arranged for a taxi to come and collect me in the morning and take me to shop for food. The driver’s name is Rosewell; he knows his way around the markets. Orlando rarely visits the Margao market. He has no need to. He never cooks when he is here. They simply go out and eat.

  ‘Are you sure you want to cook, man? We can bring food in or go out and eat.’

  Orlando hasn’t quite grasped the point of my journey.

  ‘I am here to find myself. To try and discover who I am and how I fit in to all this.’ I make a non-specific hand gesture out of the window.

  ‘OK. But why cooking?’ He looks genuinely quizzical. His kind eyes search for an answer.

  ‘Because I believe in food. I think food is the way to people’s hearts and souls. Understand someone’s food and you understand them.’ I feel enthused by my eloquence, robust in my rhetoric.

  ‘OK, man.’ Orlando is less than convinced.

  Rosewell comes with his Ambassador to take me shopping. It is a twenty-minute drive from Orlando’s place to Margao. The Goa I’m seeing on this trip is very different to the Goa I have seen before. Since the moment I landed I have seen the real Goa, with real people, living real lives. I have seen but one westerner in the day or so I have spent here.

  Goa is a conundrum, a contradiction. There are miles of the most beautiful beaches, homes to the hedonists, the winter sun-seekers. Yet drive inland, as I am now, and there are still vestiges of the commercial history of the principality. Large municipal buildings, shabby now with the passing of time, which were once administrative offices of the Portuguese authorities; warehouses that look as if they belong in Lisbon or Porto rather than by the Arabian Sea. Goa was one of the most important trade hubs of the Portuguese empire. Churches and Christianity seem to be ubiquitous and this doesn’t feel like any sort of India I have witnessed before.

  This Portuguese and Christian influence brings a rather unique culinary proposition. Given that a quarter of India is Muslim, not only is it hard to find pork in an Indian restaurant in the UK, it is very difficult to find pork anywhere in India, too. This is compounded by the fact that Hindus are not particularly fond of pig meat either. The state of Goa is the honourable exception. With its overwhelmingly Christian population and fierce sense of independence, pork is the staple dish wherever you venture. A local delicacy is stuffed piglet which roasts for five hours while the men fish in the backwaters for snapper and crab. By the time they return the piglet is cooked.

  So there appears to be only one thing for me to cook in Goa. I love pork. And my favoured cut of pork has to be belly. The crispy crackling hiding the tender fatty flesh, deep with flavour. I shall cook roast pork belly, mash and peas, all to be served with home-made apple sauce. What could be more British?

  MMC New Market does exactly what it says on the tin: it’s a market that’s quite new. After a challenging ten minutes or so finding parking in what seems a veritable vehicle free-forall, Rosewell turns the engine off, taps the steering wheel and smiles that enigmatic Indian smile (the Goans may not think of themselves as Indians, but when it comes to enigmatic smiling, boundaries seem to disappear). It is earlier in the morning than I hoped after a night of little sleep, much sweating and borderline hallucinogenic dreaming. But early morning is the only time to procure pig in Goa. They are freshly slaughtered as the sun settles into the sky and then disappear into the homes and kitchens of Goan locals. This place is as real as Goa gets, no white faces. You might think that I blended into my surroundings perfectly, but no. The locals could be staring at me for one of two reasons:

  1. I am the most devilishly handsome man they have ever laid eyes on. The women all find me highly desirable and the men all wish to be my best friend.

  2. I look like an outsider and do not fit into contemporary Margao life.

  I think both you and I, reader, know which is more likely. My lilac turban and clashing pink kurta top might seem to be quintessentially of the subcontinent, but I now realise it is clearly more sub-fashion. I am dressed the way white people dress when they wish to make a statement about how they are embracing India. Indians don’t really dress in the way I do. That much has become painfully apparent. I stick out like two sore thumbs.

  The market itself is unremarkable, brisk and businesslike. There are four roads, forming a square and it is within this area that the market functions. Each road has an entrance. I walk in through gate four; this is where the pork is to be found. It is rather ramshackle, a place that has grown organically through use rather than a business that was planned and structured. As many stalls are empty as are being used. There is a smattering of vegetables, some clothing and a few cheap plastic toys, no doubt imported from China. This is not a tourist market. I turn a corner away from the street and suddenly my world has changed: all I can see is pig and pig entrail. But before you see it, you smell it. I’ll let you work out for yourself the smell of freshly slaughtered pig. Unlike a character from a Coppola movie, I’m not so fond of the smell of new pig in the morning, and I’ve never in all my life seen so much freshly killed animal. It’s still warm to the touch. It seems that every part of the pig is available for purchase, including the oink. Offal is tied in bundles and hung over the portioned legs. The belly remains uncut and looks too like the animal for me to feel wholly comfortable about purchasing it. But purchase I must.

  On closer examination the belly is very fatty, too fatty. More than half the joy of pork belly is in the exact science that melds fat and meat so that after cooking it becomes crispy and earthy all in one mouthful. I fear this belly may be too crispy and not earthy enough, but it would appear to be too late. I have no option. I take three pieces of pork belly, which causes no small degree of consternation to the vendor who only seems set up to sell one kilo or two, nothing in between. Since he only has the 1kg and 2kg weight to balance his scale, he forces me to buy a fourth piece, the equivalent of an entire pigle
t belly costing me a king’s ransom of £2.20. The pig is wrapped in what I hope is yesterday’s newspaper. I fear the ink from the page may transfer its story onto the pork.

  I now wander the market looking for potatoes for the mash, peas and apples. Apple sauce and pork are like Astaire and Rogers, Gilbert and Sullivan, Morecambe and Wise; some things are simply meant to be together. It’s a strange sort of market, a blend of food and fancy goods. Now you probably take for granted the phrase ‘fancy goods’. Fancy goods however are the most troubling sorts of goods for me. Their very description is oxymoronic and deceitful. These goods are bad and they’re anything but fancy. Rovi, my beloved cousin, is an expert on fancy goods. He has travelled the world sourcing fancy goods; buying fancy goods; selling fancy goods. He is the king of fancy goods. Quite how to define fancy goods is a challenge. They are curios or trinkets, made in bulk and more often than not plastic or acrylic or otherwise manmade. There isn’t a good that’s fancy that Rovi hasn’t an opinion on. Even Rovi would survey these fancy goods and question the platonic essence of their fanciness and their goodness. A small multi-coloured, plastic monkey with a ball attached to its hand by an elastic string? Not fancy and not terribly good.

  I leave the market potatoless, pea-free and without apples. Panic sets in. What is the point of roast pork belly without mash and apple sauce? Rosewell, through the gift of broken English combined with my irreparable Hindi, tells me there are some roadside stalls where we can purchase vegetables and fruit. We extricate the Ambassador from the mayhem of ice delivery, which seems to be turning into a full-blown musical outside the market, and escape, the pork warm against my leg (there’s a phrase I never thought I’d find myself writing).

  Now, you would think it would be relatively unchallenging to purchase potatoes in a country that does more things with potatoes than the National Association of Potato-growers on International ‘Do something different with a potato’ Day. You would think. Or perhaps this is my ignorance of pan-Indian vegetables. Given my Punjabi ancestry, I assume all of India is the same when it comes to food availability. The Punjab is rich in agricultural resources. There’s nothing the Punjabis can’t grow. Potatoes are a staple of the north Indian diet. Potatoes with everything. That would appear not to be the case in Goa.