The Cambridge Curry Club

by Saumya Balsari

  ‘C’mon loves, you can do better than that! Give us a smile, will yer?’

  Durga murmured, ‘Imagine Lady Di’s face when she sees her little “Cambridge Curry Club” in the papers!’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it. Perfecto,’ grinned the photographer.

  As Swarnakumari coyly adjusted her sari over her shoulder, she spotted her prayer book nestling among a set of wine glasses in the shop window and leaned across the others, screaming, ‘Who put my Guru Ma prayer book for sale in the window?’

  The photographer clicked. ‘Lovely. Now ladies, if you’ll excuse me, gotta rush, gotta get back to work. You’ll tell Mrs er … Willington-Smith, won’t yer? Any problems, ask her to contact me, she’s got my number. Cheers, take care now, bye!’

  Swarnakumari retrieved her prayer book, pressed it gratefully to her bosom, looked heavenward and mumbled reverently, ‘How my prayer book landed up in the window God only knows, but I have got it back now, that is the main thing.’

  ‘I thought the jolly Germans had nicked it,’ said Durga. ‘Come to think of it, we had so many odd characters in the shop today, it could have been anyone. Anyway, I’m off to get myself something to drink. I’ll get the milk, too.’

  ‘But Heera, what if Mrs Wellington-Smythe gets angry because we did not ring to tell her the photographer had come early?’ asked Swarnakumari as the door swung shut behind Durga.

  Heera inspected a lime-green cardigan lying on a chair. ‘Let’s have lunch first. She could still be riding that stallion of hers in a mucky field. I don’t want her telling me off again. I’ll ring later.’

  Swarnakumari hastily discarded the prayer book. ‘Let me see that cardigan. Oh, Laura Ashley. Good quality. My Mallika does not like that colour, otherwise I would have bought it. Give it to me, I will put a price tag and hanger. Oh, it’s size eight, it would never have fitted her. We only have size sixteen and size eighteen hangers left. Never mind, who is going to notice in the window? Heera, you must tell Mrs Wellington-Smythe we must have correct size hangers. We are facing such a big shortage. It was so embarrassing last week, na?’

  The previous Thursday had passed uneventfully except for an incident at closing time. A tall, broad-shouldered woman had approached Swarnakumari while the others were at the back of the shop.

  ‘It says size fourteen on the hanger, but it’s not a fourteen.’

  ‘Yes, madam,’ agreed Swarnakumari.

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  ‘Do you think I’m lying?’

  ‘No, madam.’

  The customer had raised her voice, and Heera ran out. Noticing the green stubble marks on the upper lip and chin, the broomstick eyebrows, and hearing a manly voice, Heera was flustered.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’ she said.

  ‘You may call me madam, or I am leaving this minute.’

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  The confusion over the customer’s gender was never satisfactorily resolved, and Swarnakumari blamed it on the hangers. As she scribbled a price on a label and placed the lime-green cardigan in the window display, she continued, ‘You know, my Mallika is very choosy about her clothes. She’s put on a lot of weight, na. But what to do? She tells me, “Ma, I feel very hungry when I study.” I think she is not happy about the way she looks, but she does not talk to me about it, so how to help her?’

  Heera moved to the small table and chairs in the Staff Area as Swarnakumari followed. ‘If you want Mallika to stop looking like a rosogulla, don’t feed her rosogulla!’ she said plainly. ‘Stop feeding her so much food. Simple. Look, there’s a story about Kabir – you know the famous poet, right? A woman asked him how she could stop her child eating too much sugar. He asked her to return after a few days for the answer. When she came back, he simply told her that she should tell her child to stop eating sugar because it was no good for her. The woman agreed, but was surprised, and asked Kabir why he hadn’t said so in the first place. He told her he had to go away and stop eating sugar himself to see what it felt like before he could advise. Arre, what I’m saying is: practise what you preach. If you yourself are eating too much – of course, I’m not saying you are – but if you are, then how will Mallika stop?’

  Mallika was battling more than the bathroom scales; she was breaking out, and not just in spots. Her parents had been indulgent, for Mallika had been prematurely born. Swarnakumari had desperately wanted a son, but once she had suffered two miscarriages after Mallika’s birth, she had submitted to a humble acceptance of God’s plan and turned to prayer. In the meanwhile, her culinary efforts had harvested happy results: the frail baby had become a plump, dimpled girl with stubby legs bursting out of her frocks. At school, Mallika was teased and bullied, and during PE lessons it was evident that forward and backward rolls would pose a grave challenge.

  Coupled with the excess weight was the problem of hirsutism, leading to concealment of more than one kind. The hair on her head tumbled thick around her shoulders, her eyebrows met above her nose, the thick downy hair on her arms, back, stomach and legs triggered school nightmares. She squeezed her underarms together during gym lessons, tugged the swimsuit desperately over her thighs, but Swarnakumari appeared not to notice the severity of her ordeal. Her response was to buy Mallika a pumice stone, put chickpea flour mixed with turmeric in a bath bottle for application as a body paste, and instruct her to rub her skin harder. Fluffy English towels were discarded, and special thin white towels available only at the Khadi Gram Udyog emporium were sent for the purpose by an aunt from India. As time went by, Mallika developed a hairy upper lip and sideburns, too. She was eventually left to her own devices; experiments with the pumice stone left her in a dotted rash like a Madhubani painting, and she reached for her father’s blunt razor instead.

  Growing up on Newton Square, Mallika, like her father, had stared furtively at the covers of magazines. She longed to have the pale, translucent skin, pinched, aquiline noses, light eyes and long, fair legs, not only of the models but of her own classmates. Mallika stopped looking in the mirror; she was convinced it would crack. Black, black hair and skin, she wept as she contemplated a life of unremitting ugliness.

  An English friend had once stayed the night when Mallika was eight. Swarnakumari had run the bath, and the two girls had splashed happily with their Barbie dolls. As Emma rose to dry herself, Mallika had stared at her friend’s hairless, pale body and the velvet sheen of her skin, the golden curls of her shoulder-length hair clinging damply to her flushed neck.

  Mallika’s spots soon followed, dotting her face, competing with her eyes for size and luminosity. They never arrived singly, only in hordes, unannounced and inopportune, always staying the night, littering her forehead and both cheeks. If squeezed, an exposed spot like a lone student demonstrator resorted to angry retaliation, rallying support until it was a red army of protest.

  While the boys were merely bullying Mallika, three of her classmates in Year 11 had become pregnant. To the proud approval of her parents, Mallika, the ‘boffin’ and ‘swot’, topped the school and Sixth Form College, breezing into Cambridge University. She had dutifully followed her parents’ advice and earned the respect of her peers; the rest, thought Swarnakumari, was best left in the hands of God, although of late she had been wondering whether Weight Watchers could accelerate the divine pace.

  The arrival of the African family next door was the opening of a new world for Mallika, piercing the boredom of her cottonwool existence. Joseph had lived outside Sydney, and he described Bondi Beach and the surf, the Blue Mountains and the colours of the sunset, Australian dreaming and four thousand years of aboriginal history, the Great Spirit, the Wandjina and Ngalyod, the Rainbow Serpent, and the sun as a woman wandering across the sky spreading light and warmth. He told her of the legends of the lizards, wombats and emus, of waratah stems and watering-holes, of desert oaks and manburrangkali lily roots and the aboriginal belief that all life, whether human, animal, fish or bird, is deeply connected to
a vast, unchanging web of relationship through the universe.

  The discovery of a stubby funnelweb spider in his mother’s slipper on a wet day precipitated the family’s hasty departure from the continent. Mallika had listened open-mouthed in Joseph’s bedroom decorated with boomerangs and aboriginal and African paintings and a didgeridoo and African drum.

  It was an innocent friendship whose beat slithered its insistent way in colours of red ochre and white pipeclay into her modest, neat room a few feet away. A torrent of yearning to discover new worlds took hold, refusing to shake and fall to the ground like the graceful yellowed leaves of the lilac outside her window. Mr Chatterjee had been right: Joseph was a danger to Mallika; but not in the way he had imagined.

  Swarnakumari was still lost in thought as Heera unpacked her lunch at the table and observed, ‘You know, Swarna, every day we eat cold lunch just because Lady Di says the shop should not have food smells. We are not allowed to eat warmed-up Indian food in here. Arre, what nonsense! Such a bloody hypocrite, setting up this shop to impress her fancy friends like that Vicky woman and calling it IndiaNeed! Tell me, does India need her? What feeling does she have for India? The only connection is that her father was born in some cavalry cantonment in Shimla in 1933. So what? He’s not bloody Rudyard Kipling, is he?’

  Durga entered with the milk and flipped the shop sign to Closed as Heera continued, ‘And why does she call her Siamese cats “Jaipur” and “Udaipur”? D’you think I will ever name my goldfish “Manchester”? Anyway, it’s a big name discussion again, so forget it.’

  ‘Raj nostalgia,’ ventured Durga.

  ‘You know, I was just telling Swarna, it’s so stupid that Lady Di doesn’t allow us to heat up our food here. All that nonsense about Indian food smells! I know I should have told her right away from the beginning, but from next week we’ll use a hot-plate, all right? I’ll tell her straight on her face if she says anything, “You call us your ‘Curry Club’, don’t you, so then we are going to eat our Indian food.” Let it smell, who cares? Arre, in fact, if we started serving Indian snacks in here, the customers would come running because of the smells.’

  ‘Including those on crutches.’ Durga set the milk on the tea tray. ‘The natives are getting restless. Mutiny. The subaltern speaks.’

  ‘Where did you get the milk from? I hope you went to the Co-op. Lady Di knows it’s cheapest there. I can see your guilty face – why didn’t you walk that bit extra? Anyway, put the receipt at the till before you forget. Now have some samosas, girls. I got them from Sangeeta Chopra on the way here. I’ve not been feeling that well, but never mind, can’t resist. Did you see her photograph in the paper yesterday? She was standing next to the Mayor at some college do, posing in front of the big samosa she had made. It was twenty-seven inches long. How she made it, I don’t know.’

  ‘Or why,’ said Durga.

  ‘She does the catering for many Cambridge colleges, and she makes those children of hers roll out the pastry – small kitchen. I think her husband has gone for good; someone saw him at Yarmouth sitting in a car with an English girl. Why are you not eating? There’s chutney too.’

  ‘I am fasting – my Guru Ma’s birthday, na – but I am just thinking, could it be this Sangeeta has sold you some part of the same big samosa? It could be so stale, na?’

  Heera considered the possibility while sniffing a samosa. ‘Hmm, all right, don’t eat it, girls, you never know. I tell you, no offence, but we clever Indians are like spring water in a well. The deeper you dig, the more you find. By the way, I was thinking we should meet outside the shop sometime. We should all get to know each other better. Durga, I know nothing about you. You never talk about yourself, and Eileen, you’re always rushing about. So I was thinking, why don’t we have a Diwali get-together? I would have invited you to my place, but it’s in a mess. Shall we go out? Any suggestions?’

  ‘What type of food? Indian?’ asked Eileen.

  ‘Arre no, are you mad, or what? What sort of treat would that be? D’you know, the other day some of us neighbours met for dinner at an Indian place near Castle Street. The food was not bad, I must admit, but I spent the evening thinking how much better my own cooking is.’ Heera chortled.

  ‘And cheaper, too,’ Durga reminded her.

  ‘You know how I am, girls. I have to talk, so I told the meek little waiter he must be shivering in his pants when he sees Indian customers like me, because he must know we won’t like the dishes or the prices. Poor chap, what could he say – he just smiled politely.’

  ‘I never eat out,’ said Durga.

  ‘Arre, you’re not missing anything. I once went with the Essex wife of Bob’s colleague, you know how these goras are – they always want to go for an Indian – we were in London and we went to a place called “Curry in a Hurry”. First of all, what a name! Arre, how can you have curry in a hurry? And that in a place looking like All Bar One? I ordered special Kashmiri dal, and I’m not joking, girls, the waiter brought a huge white plate with dal put only in the middle – the same size as a doughnut. There was a big coriander leaf stuck on top, and paprika sprinkled all around the empty sides of the plate.’

  ‘What did you do?’ asked Swarnakumari, her curiosity aroused.

  ‘I ate it, of course. Jacqui was tucking into her tikkas and korma, but I felt like a fool because I was thinking of my mother and my childhood. The pot of dal at home used to be huge, and my mother always made extra in case guests dropped in. She loved to cook lots of good food for everyone. That’s the way we Sindhis are, you know.’ Heera blinked furiously and her voice faltered. ‘Sorry, girls, I’m just remembering my mother. I never knew the last time I saw her that it would be the last time.’

  There was silence; sharp, fragile, a laden cloud threatening to burst sutured skin.

  Swarnakumari said with finality, ‘Dal is dal.’

  The others nodded.

  ‘Shall we try the noodle bar on Mill Road, then?’ asked Eileen.

  Heera spoke slowly, ignoring Eileen’s question. ‘You know, girls, there is a big difference between being an Asian born here, coming from East Africa and coming from India out of choice and free will. When you come here from India, even if you try, India doesn’t let you go. It’s funny, but after all these years I still automatically convert English money into rupees sometimes.’ She chuckled. ‘And I keep a rupee coin in my purse for good luck. Shall I tell you something else? Sometimes I go into the Grafton Centre on a Saturday just to be in a crowd again. Not for shopping. I want to be pushed and shoved by everyone, but then I start searching for the old faces that I know I will never find there. And in any case, no one pushes me, and if I push them by mistake, they say “Sorry” to me! It must be the same for you, Swarna, we both came here only because of our husbands – but maybe it’s difficult for Durga to understand.’

  Had Durga spoken, the words would have stretched all the way round the room, each letter bold on a fluttering white square, boxed row upon row until, forming a chain, they seized an open window and trailed behind a plane soaring in the distance. Letters in the sky appeared smaller, but lived longer.

  ‘So when are we going out?’ persisted Eileen.

  ‘I will ask Your Uncle and let you know, hanh. Lunchtime will be good, evening time is difficult for me.’

  ‘Before I forget, anyone interested in buying my friend Rama Prasanna’s book on South Indian cooking? She’s giving a discount – normally it is £6.99. If you buy two, then it’ll be £5.99 for each,’ said Heera.

  ‘Why to take two? It’s the same book, na?’ Swarnakumari was puzzled.

  ‘Like crutches,’ said Durga helpfully.

  ‘Arre no, what’s this nonsense about crutches all the time, Durga? I mean two copies in case you want to give someone else a Diwali or Christmas present. I promised her I would ask you girls, but I also told her straight, no Asian will spend money on cooking books. At the most, one bakra – one sucker – will buy and then everyone else will borrow. A friend of h
ers called Aparna even bought the book and then gave it back and coolly took a refund the next day. What a cheeky monkey! Poor Rama was quite upset, but I told her, “Straight case of book photocopying by Aparna’s husband in the office. Nothing you can do about it.” Eileen, you must be thinking we are all mad. Even when we’re not eating, we still talk about food.’

  Diana had previously attempted to manoeuvre Eileen out of the Thursday shift and into the Monday slot with Betty and Mary, but Eileen had refused, a steely edge to her voice. She would work on a Thursday, or not at all.

  ‘Has Mrs Wellington-Smythe said anything about the Christmas decorations for the shop? We must start soon, na.’ Swarnakumari deflected the conversation away from the cookery book she did not plan to purchase.

  ‘Relax, it’s only October. What’s your hurry? Who feels Christmassy in the wind and autumn leaves? Arre, let Diwali come first. Why would anyone want to buy Christmas wrap just now?’ Heera paused. ‘Actually, I could be wrong. A cheap and cheerful nine-metre roll might interest a few early birds,’ she said meaningfully.

  ‘Present company excluded, of course,’ retaliated Durga.

  ‘We should be the first with the Christmas window display,’ continued Swarnakumari earnestly.

  ‘By the way, I put the blond wig in the window on the way out, Swarna. Don’t worry, it won’t disturb your display,’ said Durga reassuringly, as they cleared the lunch table.

  ‘No prizes for guessing who it is this time,’ laughed Heera as the telephone rang. ‘IndiaNeed, good afternoon … Yes, Mrs Wellington-Smythe, it’s Heera here … Yes, we just had a photograph taken for the paper … But you told me not to disturb you and that’s why I didn’t ring … You’ve already told the photographer not to use it? Yes, I understand … Yes, I’ve been here all the time during shop hours … Yes, I’ve locked up every Thursday this month … Yes, of course, I’m here all the time, and the rest of the volunteers come and go … Yes, sometimes I do buy things from the shop, but I always … I always pay. Yes, I remember we talked about those thefts … No, I didn’t realise it was always on a Thursday … Yes, I know it’s a Thursday today … Yes, I will tell everyone to look out for anything unusual today … Yes, of course I’m closing at five … No, I’m not leaving early. Yes, I will call if …’ She replaced the receiver in a daze, turning to the three women. ‘Did you hear that? Did you hear that? She thinks I’m the thief.’