Four stalls later I am still bereft of carbohydrate. The good news is that I’ve managed to purchase some peas; at least I think they’re peas. If projected at high velocity, one can imagine these green spheres becoming military missiles of mass destruction, perforating any person who would dare to come into its path. They’re bloody hard. Nonetheless, they are, technically, peas. I have also acquired apples. Fifty rupees for four apples; it is not much cheaper than British prices. This is explained as we drive away. Rosewell tells me these are imported apples. Even India thinks other people’s apples are better than theirs. I return to Orlando’s tattie-free.
‘Don’t worry, man,’ Orlando says. ‘We got some sweet potatoes somewhere.’
But sweet potatoes are nothing like potatoes at all. In fact, I’ve often wondered why grocers and supermarkets are not prosecuted under the trade descriptions act for wilfully misleading us into thinking that a sweet potato is a potato that’s a bit sweet. With the pork belly being too fatty, what I really need is the floury mouth-filling comfort of a real potato. Don’t get me wrong, I love a sweet potato like the next man. There is nothing finer to accompany Caribbean goat curry than a deep fried sweet potato. Roasted in the oven with thyme and honey, sweet potato can be a significant launch pad to any sort of main course experience. Even mashed with chilli, garlic and spring onion (a sort of Caribbean champ), it is a meal in itself. But it simply won’t work with my over-fat piglet pork belly.
In the late-morning light of Orlando’s first-floor kitchen, my suspicions about the fat to flesh ratio of the belly are confirmed. Not only is it too fat, the skin still has nipples on it. Thankfully, the nipples make the hair seem more palatable, unlikely though that seems. I’ve clearly been sold a pup. Before I spiral downward into a porcine nightmare, Rosewell returns, a bag of potatoes in his hand. Never before have I felt the desire to kiss a man full on the lips. Rosewell knows he has done a good thing and I ask him to stay for lunch. Unfortunately he can’t, such is the life of a freelance cab driver in Goa. At least I have potato now to assuage my issues with the pork.
I decide the best course of action is to trim the belly as much as I can. The problem with fatty belly cuts is that fat is by its very nature slippery, and grabbing hold of the fat before gently divorcing it from the flesh is trickier than one might think. Thankfully some of the fat allows itself to be removed but in amongst the nipples and hair, there seem to be mud marks on the belly; the sort of mud that even Ariel at sixty degrees would struggle to shift.
In amongst shearing nipples, slicing fat and removing hair I find myself thinking of Keith in Waitrose. I never have to do this to the pork belly he sells me. But then Keith and Waitrose on Finchley Road feel like a million miles and many lifetimes away from here. Short of an oven to roast the belly, I have to rely on an old north Italian method. They are renowned for twice cooking their pork belly. First they poach the pig slowly in milk, then roast it to a crisp finish. I will poach and then fry, keeping my fingers crossed for the selfsame crispy finish.
Orlando’s kitchen is not a cooking kitchen, it’s a kitchen to be looked at; he can’t remember the last time they didn’t eat out. The de-haired, de-nippled, de-fatted and de-mudded pork fills Orlando’s biggest glass pan. I can see, through the smoked glassware, the defiant pork, insolent in its milky bath, willing this recipe to fail. If I’m to be honest, I can’t say I’m feeling so confident myself. As the milk starts to warm, I peel and chop the apples. I chop half the apples very finely with the hope that these will break down and dissolve more readily, forming the sauce around the larger chunks of apple; it’s my intention to give Orlando and the kids a two-textured apple sauce. The apples sit in a large pan with a dash of water and more than enough sugar to help the process on its way, bearing in mind Indian sugar for some reason seems to be significantly less sweet that Tate & Lyle. My pork and apple sit hob by hob, side by side and I watch and sweat. Inspiration takes hold of me. I add a healthy slug of cashew fenny into the apples. When in Goa … I peel the potatoes and the trinity of pans in front of me suggest a meal may well be served. As to the quality of the repast …
I can’t help but wonder about Orlando’s wife stuck in London miles away from her family and then I realise the parallels with my own family. My mother was stuck in that Sinclair Drive shop while my father showed his sons his India. Are Orlando and his family any different?
The milk comes to the boil and I turn it down to simmer. The apples look about as saucy as they’re going to get, which doesn’t look nearly saucy enough. When you read the ingredients on the side of Bramley apple sauce, you wonder how difficult it can be to make yourself. I suggest you try it and soon you will know the alchemy of apple sauce. I hope that having turned out the apple sauce and refrigerated it, the sugary syrup will thicken, and it might just work. The pork has been simmering now for twenty minutes. I know I keep banging on about the fat content, but you have to understand, the very composition of this Goan pork has rendered my every calculation meaningless. I’m not sure whether I should boil fattier pork for less time or more time; I’m not even sure whether I’m meant to boil it at all. Too late because I have. I turn off the heat and allow my piggy friend to sit in its milk bath for a little longer. There’s one thing I’m sure of; I’d rather have overcooked pork than undercooked pork. I am also acutely aware that this evening we are to return to Travellers for that elusive pork vindaloo. My pork offering had better be good.
I kill the fifteen minute wait by phoning my brother-in-law Unni in Bombay. His wife, Anu, is my wife’s cousin; they’re very close. Unni is a commercials director who has started making movies in the new vibrant, modern India. His love of European cinema and my love of modern India seem to be a happy intersection in our lives. He holidays annually in Goa.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks me.
I explain to Unni where I’m staying.
‘We are buying a place there. There, in that complex.’ Unni is incredulous. That makes two of us.
Now I am aware of the dimensions of the globe, the circumference, the radius, the surface area of the planet. No matter how one looks at it, this world is many things but small. It transpires that the house he has made an offer on is four houses away from Orlando’s. You travel halfway round the world but coincidence is never far away.
I bring the robust peas to the boil in heavily salted water. I don’t know what it is about these peas but they really scare me. My fear is well placed. I have never in all my life witnessed peas emit so much green to the water they boil in. Now, when I say green, let me explain. At the start of the cooking process, the peas were green (correct) and the water was clear (correct). By the end of the cooking process, the peas are less green (not right) and the water is radioactively green (very, very wrong). I am really not sure whether I should serve these peas, but on balance I’m serving the peas and not the radioactive water, so I feel a little more comfortable about their presence on the plate.
It’s time to bring everything together. A frying pan with oil is heated on the hob. I dry the milk-soaked pork belly in the vain hope that the oil, like some biblical miracle, will manage to crisp up the skin. It’s never going to happen. I place as many pieces of pork belly into the hot oil as will fit and genuinely pray. I’m not quite sure who I’m meant to be praying to, given my own personal confusion towards the supreme being and the fact that I happen to be in the most Christian place I have ever been to (including the Vatican). Nevertheless, I find myself almost audibly uttering the words, ‘Please God, make them crispy.’ I distract myself by mashing the now boiled potatoes, embellishing them with luscious Indian butter and a little milk. I retrieve the apple sauce from the fridge. Now I’m muttering, ‘Please God, make it saucy.’ Clearly, if there is a God, she or he is otherwise occupied since my apple sugar and fenny mix is sticky rather than saucy. I’m hopeful that Orlando and the kids will have very limited experience of proper apple sauce.
We eat. Carlos, being Carlos, feels it is too hot
for mash and rightly deems the pork belly too fatty. Having said that, I can’t ever remember seeing him eat anything. He would have been very happy with a bowl full of Coke. Charlene likes the fat when it is crispy and loves the mash. Orlando leaves nothing, but then again, Orlando is a lovely man, so I wouldn’t let that be any sort of reflection on the quality of the meal.
The meal over, the afternoon heat descends and with bellies full, a kip is required. So we sleep, with the promise of a drive down to the beach for sunset.
It takes no more than twenty minutes to drive to the beach, chasing the sunset full of pork for the second time in one day. A few hundred people gather at Colva to watch the sky darken, to eat ice cream and to paddle through the ebbing, incoming waters. I would have thought that coming to Goa, the very epicentre of the traveller’s journey of self-discovery, might have offered me a few more answers. But I am feeling that I am leaving with yet another clutch of questions. The last thing I expected to find on this quest was an Indian duality like my British duality. Orlando is a proud Goan, but does not regard himself as Indian. Is Orlando any different from me? He is, in so far as I am engaged with my dual heritage, my Britishness and my Indian past. For Orlando, life in that regard is very simple.
Perhaps that is why Goa doesn’t really feel like India. This is an alien land, a mini-nation of fiercely proud and independent people that bears very little relation to India herself. I am almost halfway through my journey and I seem to have seen a hundred different Indias and a hundred different Hardeeps on the way.
Perhaps my dad was right. Maybe I should not have bothered with Goa. And maybe cooking British food for Indians is futile. The journey is beginning to feel futile. I am not at all sure what I am learning.
The waves crash and the sky is incarnadine, the multicoloured bodies slowly become monochrome as the glorious gloom of night descends. Suddenly, for a moment, my whole journey becomes clear in fading twilight. I have travelled halfway around the world to find myself. But I now realise that I cannot truly do so until I lose myself in the experience of India.
All the while I have been travelling, from Kovalam through Mamallapuram, Mysore and Bangalore I have been trying to relate everything to what I already know, as if I were some sort of scientist. Standing on this beach, feeling the sand between my toes and the grains of time slipping silently through my fingers I begin to understand. The darkness brings light.
Then I hear in the distance an all too familiar sound. A broad Lancashire accent.
‘Have we missed the sunset? Bloody hell. My feet are bloody throbbing …’ A fat, sunburnt tourist is waddling towards the beach, wholly unaware of her own volume and blissfully unaware of her terrible dress sense.
‘My bloody feet … ’
And in an instant, clarity, like the sun, has vanished.
8
DELHI BELLY
‘Hi, Dad.’
‘How’s it going? Where are you now?’ He was clearly happy to hear from me. ‘Left Goa this morning. I’m in Bombay now and heading for Delhi,’ I said. The bus from Goa had been remarkably unremarkable. It had been the single journey I was dreading the most. Yet I have arrived in Bombay rested and relaxed. It promises to be a smooth onward journey all the way up to the north. But promises can easily be broken.
‘You flying?’ my dad asked.
‘No, Dad. Train. Change at Bombay.’
‘Are you not stopping in Bombay, son? If you are you have to meet Joggi Saini.’
‘No, Dad. I’m not stopping here. Can’t do everything. I’m going straight up to Delhi. I’ve done Banglore. How many cities can I see?’
‘OK.’
‘Dad, quick question. When you left India, did you know who you were, or were you trying to find yourself?’ No sooner had I asked the question than I knew the answer.
‘I never understood this finding yourself nonsense. Maybe it’s a cultural or generational difference. I always knew who I was. Finding myself was never a luxury I could afford.’
‘OK. Sorry, Dad.’
‘Now, have you told Manore Uncle you are coming to Delhi? I spoke to him yesterday and they are expecting you. Rovi will look after you.’
‘I’ll call them today. Everything else OK, Dad?’
‘Yes. Fine. How’s the cooking?’ he asked.
‘You know …’ I allowed my answer to tail off in a noncommittal sort of a way.
‘Son?’
‘Yes, Dad?’
‘When you come back …’ He paused.
‘Yes?’ I prompted.
‘There are some documents to sign. Call me from Delhi.’
I hung up.
I’ve been to Delhi many times. When I was a boy, Delhi was the gateway to north India. To get to Ferozepure we had to fly into the capital. Delhi was also the last Indian city my dad lived in. His wanderlust was nascent even when he was a young man. The vista of Ferozepure was never going to be enough to satisfy him, much as he loved the place of his birth. He was bound to seek his fortune elsewhere. My father as a man in his mid-twenties left his physical and spiritual home for a short placement in New Delhi; he planned to be there just for a few years. That was more than forty years ago.
He ended up never returning home. Home. This echoes with my own life. I too left Glasgow – my home – at the tender age of twenty-two. My plan was to leave for three months. That was in 1992 and I have never returned there to live.
Delhi to me is a strong and shining beacon from my childhood. I remember with astonishing vividness the fun that my dad always seemed to have whenever we were there. He would be relaxed and smiling, even though we were always in transit to another place. He knew the city intimately, despite the changes it had gone through since he’d lived there. He very much loved Delhi. We would venture out on a Vespa, hugging him tightly for dear life; such journeys were probably memorable for those very hugs, stolen from a loving but non-tactile father. Delhi felt like my dad’s city and because I loved my dad, admired him, I too wanted Delhi to be my city; I wanted to be just like my dad.
The thought occurred to me as I prepared myself for the last few stops on my journey that my emotional energy was increasing. Maybe this entire journey I was undertaking was actually about me and my dad. Maybe, in launching myself on this quest of self-discovery, all I really wished for was my father’s approval. After all, he sprang to life when I had suggested the possibility of such a madcap escapade. And although he expressed his reservations, as only he could, about my desire to share British food with the Indians, he was nonetheless supportive of my endeavours. Wouldn’t it be the sweetest of ironies if I was going halfway around the world and enduring thousands of miles of travel around the Indian subcontinent in order that I might seek the approval and blessing of a 74-year-old man in the West End of Glasgow? Maybe this whole trip was about the big fella …
Twenty-one colours of turbans I have seen my dad wear
Lime Green
Sky Blue
Burnt Orange
Sunset Pink
Soft Peach
Mint Green
Chocolate Brown
Rose White
Midnight Blue
Deep Purple
Verdant Green
Shocking Pink
Electric Yellow
Dried Earth
Tonic Grey
Soft Heather
Strawberry Red
Unripe Satsuma
Military Khaki
Storm Grey
Lemon Curd
My father was a customs officer at New Delhi airport. He planned to spend only a short period there, enjoying the metropolitan buzz of city life while he surveyed his options. He ended up making a home for himself and living a bachelor lifestyle. His best friend, Manore Kapoor, had settled there with his wife, so my dad was as happy as he could possibly be. Manore Uncle’s wife, Kapoor Aunty as we affectionately call her, was a legend in the kitchen, even in the sixties. My dad had the best of both worlds: all the fun of bachelor
dom with great home-cooked food from his best friend’s wife.
I think in many ways Delhi was the making of my father. He was a small-town boy with aspirations. Delhi gave him a flavour of a life less ordinary. It nurtured his aspirations. It was the start of a journey he has yet to complete. And how poignant for me that I am on an as yet incomplete journey and I find myself in New Delhi. As I arrive in the city I think back to the beach in Goa, to my moment of clarity when I realised that I would have to give myself to India rather than hope that India had anything to give me. As you know, I have visited India many times, for many reasons, but never have I travelled here seeking knowledge through the prism of myself. That is what is making this journey so significant and so daunting.
I feel I should be learning about myself, I should be acquiring new information about who I am and why I am here. The problem is that stepping off the plane in Kovalam all those weeks ago was an entirely different man. Now I’m in a city I have known for most of my life and I feel like I barely know who I am; this quest has changed me. I am sure of very little, except that the notion of Indianness for me is utterly meaningless. I am not Indian; not in the slightest. Did I feel Indian in Kovalam or Goa or Mysore? I felt Scottish, British and Punjabi. Here, almost in New Delhi, I feel Punjabi. I am a Punjabi Sikh Glaswegian who also feels some empathy with being British. That’s how I feel today, on my way to New Delhi.
Indian Takeaway Page 16