Indian Takeaway

by Hardeep Singh Kohli

  There are eight, maybe nine tables neatly laid out in the space and an assortment of different chairs and benches. It has the feeling of a place that has organically developed slowly through time into somewhere to eat. As if the stove-based aromas aren’t enough, a handsome young man beckons potential customers in with his mantra-like chant of ‘rajmah chawal, rajmah chawal, rajmah chawal …’ I need no beckoning. I am sitting down and have already ordered. Moments later a steel plate arrives: a bed of rice upon which lies a blanket of kidney beans and the cursory ladleful of ghee. A small dish of pickle and sliced onion accompanies the main event. It’s not much to look at but it smells amazing. The complex richness of the ghee blending with the bold earthiness of the kidney beans and the virginal simplicity of the rice. I steel myself; by rights I shouldn’t be here. This is not the sort of food a western traveller should eat. And that is what I am. This could be a massive intestinal mistake. My stomach thinks it’s from Glasgow; it has grown up eating food in the west, food prepared to an altogether different level of hygiene. I have not familiarised myself with the bacteria of Indian street food and therefore haven’t had the opportunity to build any resistance. I cannot vouch for the cleanliness of this place or indeed the provenance of the ingredients. I still have a four-hour, rough-road journey ahead of me without the guarantee of a toilet, and I am about to fill my stomach with potentially dodgy lentils and clarified butter. I have only just recovered from the bowel-thinning nightmare of the journey between Bombay and Delhi. The last thing I want is another bout of subcontinental diarrhoea. But I’ve waited twenty-seven years for this …

  Was it worth the wait? Certainly it was the finest rajmah chawal I have ever had the privilege of eating. Words alone cannot do it justice; its simplicity, its richness. No doubt memories enhance flavour, but it was a deliciously satisfying plate of food. All that for twenty-five rupees, about thirty pence.

  I get back into the Sumo and wait the long wait. A belly full of beans and the depth of my fatigue soon become apparent. My stomach seems to be holding up, but the rest of my body is flagging rather gloriously. I fear that I will fall asleep sitting upright and suffer whiplash as the driver swings left and then right, braking hard in the face of oncoming traffic. I now appreciate the price I have paid to take an empty car up the mountain. I ask the driver to pull over so I can get into the back and lie down to sleep, perchance to dream. How much more enjoyable this journey would be in a leather-seated, air-conditioned Range Rover … This would be the perfect terrain for its four-wheel drive engineering. Instead they clog up well-kept boulevards and smooth-surfaced roads of Hampstead, Kelvinside and Didsbury. I doze in the back; there seems to be some unwritten law of physics that the further back you are in an erratically-driven vehicle, the more the forces of acceleration and deceleration have an impact on you. My body is yet more battered and bruised; my right knee has been cut red raw with the constant banging against the unforgiving steel of the seat in front. After an hour of unsatisfactory napping, we stop for tea and I resume an upright position.

  The sun seems to be setting for the millionth time, elevating the beautiful valley to another level of luminescent splendour, a splendour that lasts but a few moments, as it gives way all too quickly to a sudden and definite darkness. And with the darkness comes a chill, a chill that reminds me of home, of Glasgow and of soup. I can feel we are nearing our destination and a milestone confirms my hunch; 39km, 25 miles. I would normally expect to do that in twenty minutes up the M1, but here it’s at least an hour’s drive. Roadside fires light our path like beacons guiding us into the town.

  And then, without fanfare or accolade, we arrive. Srinagar, nondescript and dark. The Sumo pulls into its depot and I am met by Rovi’s in-laws who couldn’t be happier to see me. They take me home, drown me in their generous hospitality and then take me to Dal Lake where they have booked me a houseboat for my stay. The darkness has got darker and the chill chillier. I wrap myself in my well-travelled and rather chic black pashmina (a man very comfortably in touch with his feminine side, I think you’ll agree) and board the shikara, one of the legion of small boats that ferries folk around the lake. In fifteen minutes I am on my houseboat; within twenty I am in bed; half an hour or so after gliding across the lake I sleep the sleep of champions.

  Twelve names of houseboats on Dal Lake

  Cheerful Charley

  Tehran

  Prince of Vales [sic]

  New Lucifer

  Texas

  Neil Armstrong

  Mughal Palace

  New Good Luck

  Bostan [sic]

  Kings Rose

  Kookaburra

  Helen of Troy

  I wake up refreshed. Ten hours of blissful sleep. But it is cold, properly cold. Scottish cold. I have never been this cold in India before; never. It must be just below freezing at seven in the morning. Three quilts and I still feel the chill. I gather myself and remind myself that I am hale and hearty and have endured sub-arctic temperatures during my working life as I leap, gazelle-like from bed.*My plan of action is simple: I will take a trip around the lake and see what potential cooking opportunities there might be. I bathe in surprisingly hot water and add an extra layer or two of clothes. I then set about having a wee explore of my surroundings. The boat consists of two palatial double bedrooms, a dining room, a reasonably sized galley kitchen and a lounge that would not be out of place in one of the better appointed Hyndland tenements, the massive sandstone Victorian apartments Glasgow is so famed for. Sizewise Merry Dawn can only be described as capacious and well proportioned.

  The houseboat’s interior design on the other hand is an altogether different matter. Might I describe it as quaint? Actually that is unfair on the word quaint. Put it this way: if the National Association of the Lovers of All Things Quaint wanted to enjoy a week’s break in the Kashmir Valley, they would book this houseboat, and even they would comment on its quaintness. The rooms are full of brocaded 1930s style furniture; there are curios and trinkets and bits and pieces everywhere. A faded flag of Canada sits on the bureau; a tapestry showing a prince fighting a tiger; nine pots of plastic flowers in the lounge alone; a black and white photograph of Brigadier Bourke, a military man I have never heard of; a woven basket in the shape of a duck; and a cuddly sky-blue toy dog. The ceilings are beautifully ornate; hand-carved wood in every room. Undoubtedly Merry Dawn is charming; but most of all it is mine, at least for the next couple of days.

  It feels very strange to be on a houseboat in Srinagar. It is as if I am not in India any more. Dorothy-like, I feel I am somewhere over the rainbow. This is very different from my childhood recollections of Srinagar and jars with what I was expecting. As far as I can remember, I have never spent a night sleeping on water. Yet here I am. And the fact that I don’t feel like I am in India makes me feel even more self-conscious about my cooking quest. Having just left Delhi, a place brimming with childhood memories, and heading for my final destination, my home at the house of my grandfather, Srinagar feels very alien. It also feels very lonely, very quiet.

  Every stage of this quest has seen me fighting my way through crowds. Whether I was in Madras train station, taking the coach to Bangalore or walking through the streets of Bombay, I have never had much time alone. My time for reflection seems always to have taken place in the company of Indians. And this is the way I like my life. I like to be with people. While I may be among them I don’t always feel part of them. There is a comfort about being alone in a crowd. I am slightly fearful of the solitude of Srinagar, the solitude at this stage of my journey, the penultimate stop before having to find some definitive answers. The last thing I need is three days pondering whether the whole trip has been a complete and utter waste of time and that when I return my life, my sense of self will remain exactly as it was before I left. Perhaps I should have planned that my second from last stop be in a town with lots of nightclubs? Instead I am alone, on a massive houseboat on Dal Lake.

  I feel tha
t I should take in a tour of my surroundings, begin to appreciate the much-spoken of beauty of the Kashmir Valley. I venture out onto the pontoon at the front. As part of my hire agreement I have a shikara on standby all day and it was duly waiting for me.

  A shikara is a boat unique, I think, to this part of the world. It is an elongated banana-shaped shard of wood, flat bottomed, almost too simple to be water worthy. Yet with seemingly effortless aplomb these boats glide the lake’s tranquil surface. Regular shikaras are no more than a basic wooden structure; the drivers sit either on the very front or the very back in a buoyancy-defying position as they methodically break the water with their heart-shaped paddles. A romantic touch the heart-shaped paddle. My shikara is the deluxe version, with a canopy and a cushioned seating area, resplendent in red velour.

  The sun has been coaxed out from behind the mountains and the Kashmir Valley looks beautiful this clear crisp morning. As we push off from the mini jetty, I look back at my houseboat, Merry Dawn. It is the first chance I have had to properly appraise it since arriving under the canopy of darkness the night before. Merry Dawn is perhaps forty metres long and nearly five metres wide and is one of scores of similarly sized houseboats that stretch across the lake.

  The lake beneath, the sky above and the comforting monotony of the shikara man’s paddle on water; he guides us across the lake’s polished surface with the minimum of fuss. We pass water lily and lotus fields as women harvest the crop. We pass floating vegetable plots, growing everything from carrots to spinach to white radish. We paddle through a small fl oating market, shops on stilts selling anything and everything. It is an effortless journey, made more effortless still by the warming rays of the Kashmiri sun.

  As we round the final bend heading back to Merry Dawn I see a most peculiar sight. Smack bang in the middle of the lake, standing proudly and independently on its own is a small convenience shop/boat. Milkshakes, confectionery, cigarettes, cold drinks are all on display. This floating grocery outlet is astonishing. It is exactly like numerous other Indian style kiosks but on a boat. It even has a small gas-fired hob where the owner is frying some potato-based snacks. I ask my shikara man to pull up alongside. This place could be the answer to my dreams. Where better to cook in Srinagar than on a lake in the heart of the Kashmir Valley? And who better to cook for than the shikara drivers? There is a beautifully complete circularity to it. In my best broken Hindi I explain to the understandably sceptical owner, Khalil, that I would like to requisition his boatshop-cum-snack bar for a couple of hours later today.*

  It takes a little time and the offer of some money to compensate for loss of earnings but I think he gets the message. I have a place to cook and a constituency to cook for. All I need work out now is what to cook? I instruct my shikara man to take me to the nearest market so I can best establish what to cook in my newly requisitioned kitchen. My boatman tells me that I have missed the sabzi mundi, the floating vegetable market, which operates early in the morning in the very heart of the lake from about six and is finished by eight. Luckily Kashmiris like their meat and fish so I don’t feel compelled to offer much in the way of a vegetarian option. As we glide off to the roadside market instead, a thought occurs. I am currently on a lake; lakes often have fish in them; what could be more perfectly British, and indeed Scottish, than fish and chips? Since the majority of customers at Khalil’s are shikara drivers, it feels right to serve the lake men some lake food. It has to be fish and chips.

  The first meal I ever ate in Scotland was fish and chips. It was from the Philadelphia chippy in Kelvinbridge, wrapped in the Sunday Post.

  In the Spring of 1973 we packed up our entire lives, my parents, my two brothers and I, and we stuffed it all into our mint-green Vauxhall. We drove the eight hours up the motorway and, bleary-eyed, we arrived in the street-lit darkness of Glasgow. Before we even went to my uncle’s flat we feasted on fish and chips. I can still taste the salt and vinegar. There seems to be something poetic about the fact that the first meal I ever ate in my adopted country should be the meal I serve in this place, a place that wishes to be part of a different country.

  I am indebted to my father for making the choice to move to Scotland, since I think being Scottish has improved my life immeasurably. I am funnier, wittier and better looking for it, and am far more likely to invent things and educate the world about the philosophy of economics. That is what it is to be Scottish.

  My journey through India has brought me into contact with more markets than I would ever see in a year in Britain. And here I am, another destination on my quest, another market. This roadside market offers a couple of varieties of fish, mainly pomfret, a round flat fish, and a few Kashmiri trout which look similar to the British version. I go for the pomfret option; a delicious fish that isn’t easy to get hold of back home. It seems churlish to pass up the opportunity to cook it today. In the Punjab it is cooked in a tandoor, the silver flesh cut and rubbed with spices. It is also filleted and curried. It is often found in Thai cooking, deep fried whole and served with a sweet and sour and chilli sauce. I intend to batter and deep fry it and served it with potatoes. Time is of the essence since night falls abruptly at around 6 p.m. and not much happens thereafter; in fact nothing at all happens after nightfall. This, in some part, is a result of previous military curfews. Although no such curfew is in operation now, people have fallen into the habit of staying in of an evening.

  I have limited choices for my batter. In a perfect world I might have opted for a tempura-style coating, light and airy, the corn flour mixed with soda water to add an effervescence to the batter. Or perhaps a beer batter, malty and slightly sour. Neither is an option in Srinagar. The most interesting option would be gram flour, flour made from chick peas.

  My mother was amazing. The drabbest store cupboard staples could be reinvented into a new and delicious snack. In the kitchen she rarely disappointed such was her resourcefulness. She worked this alchemy on the budget of a working-class immigrant. And how did she do this? With gram flour. Oh yes. Welcome to the world of the pakora.

  Growing up there was one snack that was the staple of our household. Should we be hungry mid-afternoon: pakoras. Should we be visited by unannounced guests from Romford on the way to the Highlands: pakoras. Should my dad, gregarious party lover that he is, invite half a dozen work colleagues round for dinner: pakoras. Pakoras were the panacea to food emergencies in our house. Maybe that’s why my mum got so very good at making them.

  The recipe is beautiful in its simplicity. Gram flour is seasoned with salt, pepper and chilli powder. Water is then added to form a thick batter. Into this batter you can throw all manner of things. As carbohydrate-loving Punjabis, my mum opted for sliced potatoes. The raw flat discs cook in the steam created within the gram flour covering. This is something that people don’t always appreciate about battering and deep frying food. Much as the outside is fried, the inner delight is actually steamed, protected from the harsh oil by the batter jacket. Once they were ready we would devour them with the essential accompaniment to the pakora experience: ketchup. My dad would plead with my mum to make mint chutney, a plea she never failed to bend to. But those were in the days before my dad developed an allergy to vinegar and tamarind. He’s never felt the same about pakoras since.

  We would have diced potato, pea and onion pakoras. Fish pakora was a favourite with my dad. Paneer pakora is particularly delicious. Or patra pakora, patra being a spinachy type of leaf that comes tinned and ready to use. Chicken pakora is served to this day in Indian restaurants across Scotland. There have been haggis pakoras, pizza pakoras, and it being Glasgow, Mars Bar pakoras. My favourite however was when my mum had fried all the vegetables and there was a soupcon of the gram flour batter left, coating the bottom of the bowl. Never one to waste, my mum would take a slice of bread, halve it and clean the bowl out with it, removing every last drop of the spicy gram flour mix. This piece of bread would be fried and invariably eaten by my mum since we boys would have consumed most of the
pakoras by the time she sat down to eat. By its very definition there was never more than one or two pieces of the bread pakora to enjoy; maybe that’s why I loved it so much. Absence made my culinary heart grow fonder. Or maybe it was because I loved to eat with my mum.

  I manage to get hold of gram flour easily enough at the roadside market and also pick up a couple of bottles of soda water. There isn’t going to be space to prepare everything at Khalil’s place, and given it is only a five-minute shikara ride from Merry Dawn I decide to go back and prep everything there. The pomfret turns out to be easy enough to fillet, each fillet offering three pieces. I reckoned I would only need four fish in total. I mix the gram flour and the seasoning and add the soda water. Obviously the Indian way would be to use plain water but I want to see how the gram flour reacts with the soda water. It seems fine. I peel some potatoes and rush out to my shikara. It’s getting late into the afternoon and I know I am up against it.

  We arrive at Khalil’s. He is wearing that look of ‘I’m not sure that I want to go ahead with this’. I counter with my look of ‘Here’s a thousand rupees, we had an agreement’. He begrudgingly lets me onboard. His oil pan is not massive so I will have to cook a couple of fillets at a time, and gauging the heat of the oil will be challenging since Khalil only ever fries the same mashed potato ball snack. I ask him if he will consider changing the oil. This really annoys him. He starts muttering in Kashmiri and throws his hands about the place. I decide to lubricate the situation with money. Again. I have learned much about diplomacy thanks to my western upbringing. It seems however that the more money I offer him, the surlier he becomes. He hands me a tin of oil. It appears that I will have to change the oil myself. Fine, I think.

  First things first I need to dispense with the old oil, oil that looks like it is ready to celebrate an anniversary, so long has it been used to fry with. I pick up the karahi, the steel-handled frying pan, and look around the tiny space for somewhere to discard it. I feel like Harold Lloyd, shuffling about on the spot, turning one way then the other looking for something that clearly doesn’t exist, being watched by a man and his friend who clearly think I am one pakora short of a mid-afternoon snack. Obviously Khalil isn’t getting it. I ask him what to do with the oil. He motions to tip it out into the lake. I am obviously not going to pollute an already over-polluted lake. I am seriously flummoxed. I can’t just tip it into the lake; that would be wrong. But then how am I going to change the oil? I feel like I have been caught in one of those riddles; the farmer has a chicken, a fox and a sack of grain type riddles. I have to work out how I am going to change the oil. The potatoes are the answer. They are in what looks like a watertight plastic bag. All I need to do is remove the potatoes, pour the old oil into the bag, the new oil into the karahi and then pour the old oil into the empty oil drum. Easy. Yeah right.