Indian Takeaway Part 9

A one-legged man carrying a newly boxed Tefal electric steamer on his head.

A woman falling backwards out of a slowly moving train, perhaps realising it was heading in the wrong destination. She takes with her several fellow travellers who were more than happy with their direction of travel.

Three hundred rats across ten metres of railway track (big fat rats, as big as small cats, which is technically even bigger than a kitten).

From my Indian train experiences, I've learnt by now that there seems to be some unwritten code, some unspoken convention whereby at the appointed hour all the pa.s.sengers in the compartment stand up and start to prepare their beds for the night. This is in no small part driven by the fact that if one person is preparing their bunk it renders the rest of the compartment useless to casual nut chewing and gossip. On the train from Delhi to Jammu, I have luckily been booked on the lower bunk and unfurl my two white sheets and thick wool blanket.

Soon I am off to sleep, even before the carriage lights are extinguished. But it is a short-lived visit to the land they call nod, and after a couple of hours of blissful ignorance I am again in a state of wide-awake consciousness as the train rocks gently northward into the night.

Signs on the train from Delhi to Jammu HARa.s.sING WOMEN Pa.s.sENGERS IS A.

PUNISHABLE OFFENCEObscene remarks, teasing, touching, stares, gestures, songs and unwanted attention are all forms of s.e.xual violence punishable by up to two years or a fine under section 354A, 509 and 294 of the Indian Penal Code.HELP THE RAILWAY SERVE YOU BETTER Travel only with the proper ticket and show it to authorised personnel on demand Secure your luggage with the rings/wire provided below the seats. Pa.s.sengers themselves are responsible for security of their luggage Please switch off fans and lights if not required Please keep surroundings clean and do not spit in coach Please do not use transistor or radio without earphone Please secure doors and windows properly, particularly at night PREVENT FIREInside the compartment:Do not throw lighted match stickDo not carry explosives and dangerous goodsDo not carry inflammable articles like kerosene and petrol etc.Do not light up a stoveDo not celebrate with fireworksHelp the Railways Reach You Safely The interminable night eventually pa.s.ses. I feel like the only man on the planet still awake. The train has started pulling into stations where a few pa.s.sengers alight. The delay has caused an air of uncertainty in every quarter of every compartment in every carriage. There are no announcements and not all the signs in the stations are particularly clear. A young man, still half asleep, jumps from the third bunk, dervish-like collecting his belongings and simultaneously tucking in his s.h.i.+rt for fear that the train may depart with him still on it. I have no idea how late we are since I have no idea where we actually are; there's no point in asking the name of the station since it bears no relations.h.i.+p to any geography in my head. It's already past 8 a. m., so we are definitely late; it's simply a question of how late. I doze a little for the next couple of hours, and we eventually arrive in Jammu a little after ten.

Only five hours late. I console myself with the notion that it could have been worse.

Srinagar is a place I must visit on this journey for a number of reasons. I once spent an idyllic summer here on one of the trips my father brought me on. My dad's sister Harminder, or Minder as she is colloquially known, married Pritam Singh, a fiercely proud member of the Indian Army. Pritam rose to the heady rank of colonel, and in reaching such heights found himself and his family stationed in Srinagar. The summer of 1981 was spent with Pritam Singh and Minder Aunty and their three kids Sonu, Jonu and Monu. (Their real names are Jaspreet, Harpreet and Mandeep respectively. Quite how the nicknames of Sonu, Jonu and Monu were arrived at is a dark art of familial nomenclature of which I have no understanding.) Srinagar is possibly the most disputed city of Part.i.tion, which in one sense puts it at the very heart of the nation of India. Soon after Part.i.tion tribal warlords from Pakistan, backed by the newly formed Pakistan Army, invaded the city and tried to claim it. Indian troops were flown in and eventually the invading hordes repelled. Since then, Srinagar has always been regarded as a cause celebre by the Indians, a city freed from aggressive Islam, the jewel in the new crown of India. The reality however belies such a reason for celebration. More than three quarters of the city's population wish to be Pakistani.

If I am searching for some sense of myself, for some sense of home, then Srinagar might be a place to begin to understand my confusion over the collision of my ident.i.ty. Srinagar is a mirror to my soul when it comes to matters of duality. If I am trying to understand what part of me is Indian and what part British, is there anywhere better to understand that than in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir? This is a place where people have fought and died for their sense of self, and continue to fight for their right of political and cultural self-determination. Maybe I can learn a little of my Indianness here; and maybe that might help me grapple with my Britishness.

I don't know what I was expecting when I arrived in Jammu. My overriding memory as a child was of driving up through the mountains, listening to Queen's Greatest Hits Greatest Hits, which had just been released. Thinking back now it seems hilarious that we thought Queen were so quintessentially British; little did we know that Freddie Mercury's real name was Farrokh Bulsara and he was in fact from a north Indian family. He a.s.siduously kept his ethnicity, his ident.i.ty, secret. Yet we should have known; all those tight white vests and the oversized moustache: others might have interpreted it differently, but to me he was so very obviously Indian! Freddie Mercury presented a version of himself to the world, a version that belied his heritage. I can't help wondering whether I am a little guilty of a similar crime.

My dad speaks with great fondness of the stunning natural beauty of the region; he has spent much time in and around Srinagar, walking the foothills of the Himalayas and trekking on religious pilgrimages. He's not actually at all religious: I think he just really likes travelling and walking. I am now here as much for him as for me. It's as far north in India as is safe to travel; by safe I mean war-zone safe. Politicians are geniuses at the art of euphemism 'conflict', 'troubles', 'border disputes' employing all sorts of language to cloak the reality that India and Pakistan are still at war with each other about the line of control. Things have improved discernibly of late, but nonetheless, the two countries have hundreds of thousands of troops lined up, facing each other. Every now and again it kicks off. It is sad that the stage for this quiet war happens to be one of the most beautiful places on this planet. But then, as Colonel Pritam Singh used to say, 'No one fights for anything ugly, do they?' He had a point. Not much of one. But he did have a point.

And this is the first thing that hits me in Jammu station. Wherever I turn, wherever I look, there are soldiers. The station itself seems to be run by the military. It is said that more than half the Indian Army is stationed in this state. It is also said that the generals refuse to countenance any deal for autonomy with Pakistan or with the people of Jammu and Kashmir since any such change would leave the Indian Army with very little to do, thereby eroding its power base within the political sphere. Such is the world of politics. It seems crazy to me, a Scot who has some sympathy for the ever more vocal voice of Scottish independence, that India forces the overwhelming majority of a state to be part of a country they have no desire to be part of. But what do I know? I still hope Scotland will march over the River Tweed and liberate Berwick from the Englis.h.!.+

I have been instructed to find a Sumo to drive me to Srinagar. A Sumo is the brand name of a seven-seater Jeep much used in India and is exactly the sort of vehicle that can deal with the mountainous terrain ahead. I like the notion of being inside a j.a.panese wrestler. The Sumo system is quite simple. They charge 300 rupees per traveller for the journey; 2,100 for a full load. They then proceed to fill their Sumos with all-comers on a first come, first served basis, whether individuals, couples or entire families with luggage. To maximise s.p.a.ce within, the luggage is placed on the roof rack, in best Indian tradition. Think of it as a tombola taxi you may get lucky, you may not. I am feeling lucky; I am quite taken with the idea of making the journey with an a.s.sortment of Kashmiri strangers, overhearing conversations and sharing my own monosyllabic Hindi stories.

Wandering out of the station I ask a soldier where the Sumos are to be found. He points me down some stairs to the car park where there are indeed scores of them; but no drivers. I walk around looking like a lost tourist when I happen upon a small taxi office, fiendishly hidden behind a hut, underneath a weeping tree, as if intentionally to escape observation. In my best broken Hindi/bad Punjabi I find out that only a handful of Sumos are prepared to make the trip to Srinagar. Two have already left, the supervisor chappie tells me. I have paid the price for not sprinting headlong out of the station and making immediately for the Sumos. Obviously the few moments I lost asking the soldier where the Sumos were has proved costly. It's irritating but nothing can be done about it. I will need to wait for more pa.s.sengers to make up the numbers. How many more? Six more. I am the only chump still looking for a ride to Srinagar.

I find the next Sumo allotted to leave and sit in the front seat, making myself comfortable. The driver places my small suitcase on top; it looks so lonely up there on its own. I sit and I wait. If a Kashmiri crow were to fly from Jammu to Srinagar, it is probably no more than a 200km journey, if that. But I have chosen to give over the next eight hours of my life to a journey that will take me round and round, up and down through mountains in ever-decreasing circles until I finally arrive in Srinagar. It will be an epic journey; I am quite keen for it to start.

But half an hour later my case is still the only case on the roof rack, and I am still the only pa.s.senger. The driver busies himself preparing the rickety old Sumo for the journey. He notices that my fulsome Punjabi Glaswegian a.r.s.e is warming both the front pa.s.senger bench seats. He tells me that someone else will be sat next to me on the journey. I tell him not to worry since I am happy to pay for both; there's no way I could have another individual sat so close to me for that length of time: not without first having bought them dinner, or at least a c.o.c.ktail. The driver tells me that he has to wait for pa.s.sengers from more trains. Given the unreliability of service and the fact that I am keen to complete my journey up the side of a steep mountain on a narrow, badly built road peopled by maniacs driving in daylight, I consider my options. I will wait a little longer ...

From the pa.s.senger seat of the Sumo I am but yards from the water supply. I have seen at least fifty men and boys fill buckets, wash rags, clean their faces and hands and feet, and generally ablute. Here is what I have seen: 1. An octogenarian holy man with his full white, ZZ Top-like beard, hiding most of his face and chest, bless the water supply, dressed top to toe in faded yellow robes and retro Adidas trainers on his feet.2. A middle-aged man purchase seven shawls from a nearby vendor, paying for only six.3. A small boy clean the ears of a much older man, using a twig, a tissue and a small bottle of palm oil.

These are all things I have seen. What I haven't seen is a single other pa.s.senger wanting to share my Sumo to Srinagar.

The one thing I have on my hands is time; time to think. It is difficult to believe that I am less than a week away from the end of my odyssey. Kovalam seems like a lifetime away, the coconut warmth of the south of India. I laugh to myself as I think about how strange and faintly ridiculous I must have seemed asking to cook British food in a five-star hotel.

Then the move to the simplicity of Mamallapuram; the ridiculous to the sublime. Something profound happened to me as I watched the Indian Ocean crash against the beach on India's east coast. The time spent with Nagamuthu, son of Mani, made me realise that I am just a man; my search was as simple as it was complex. Mamallapuram started me thinking that I was not going to get answers, just some different questions. Mysore further fed the idea of a new set of questions and I continued to pose those questions to myself, all the way to the North.

I don't think I could have planned the gamut of experiences that my third location gave me. Mysore and Jeremy: the contemporary soul-seeker, who came to find his own solace in India, and ultimately turned out to be the modern-day colonialist. Jeremy seemed to give so very little to India but felt free to take. But how different was I? What was I giving back? I wondered.

It was another leap from the yogic idyll of Mysore to the burgeoning modernity of Bangalore. Maybe the fact that I felt so comfortable in the globally welcoming city of Bangalore says more about the city than me. There is a new India that will welcome and work for all-comers. The question is what is the sense of Indianness that resides in this new India? There I found myself asking myself the same sort of question about my own Indianness.

Goa: biscuit-tin India, the cliches and stereotypes, the home of the hippy, the place where people go to find themselves. What had I found? It was there that I learnt that I was very, very British.

Bombay was an adventure as much for the gastric part of me as the spiritual. Delhi was full of the memories of my dad, of his life and his times. There I realised that maybe this journey was all about me trying to please him as his son, to show that I am worthy. Maybe.

And here I am, sitting and waiting to travel to Srinagar. And why? Because my dad wanted me to visit the Kashmir Valley. The more I think about this quest for self-discovery, the more I realise that it has all been about my dad. That is no bad thing. He's my dad. I am more than a little elated that this journey has become a homage to the most incredible man I have ever had the pleasure to know: Parduman Singh Kohli.

These thoughts rush through my head. I feel clarity and confusion in equal doses. And I am still waiting for fellow pa.s.sengers to buy the remaining seats in my Sumo. Perhaps, like the answers to all the questions for which I am searching, these pa.s.sengers will not arrive. It's been an hour. I decide to give up waiting. It looks like I will be buying all the seats. I offer the driver the 2,100 rupees that his supply and demand economics requires of me. He smiles; it is a charming smile, the smile of deep satisfaction, of money earned.

Had I known that it would be both his first and last smile of the day, perhaps I would have taken a moment or two longer to enjoy its rarity.

We start a series of gradual inclines, followed by less gradual declines, as we wend our way through the trees and mountains of the Kashmir Valley. The road has been hewn out of the side of a mountain, a tiny lip of connectivity through an otherwise untenable and untravellable landscape. It feels like we are spinning on the groove of the mountain, neither halfway up nor halfway down. Our progress is clear since whenever I look back I see the last few kilometres of road we have covered; this gives me both a sense of progress and a sense of hopelessness, given the time it has taken to make these meagre miles.

The driving is interesting to say the least. I have become accustomed to Indian driving, which is based firmly on the karmic cycle and a deeply held belief in G.o.d. This fatalistic approach to road safety, since it is almost universally shared, results in a system of traffic management that, despite its precariousness, does seem to work. It's never dull driving in India. But this journey brings another set of challenges to those of us from the 'mirror, signal, manoeuvre' school of lane discipline. This mountain road is barely wide enough to accommodate two opposing streams of traffic; that is when there is a road. For some of the journey there is no road at all; just rubble and the occasional stream. Despite its limitation the road carries a myriad of coaches, buses, trucks, cars, military vehicles and cows in both directions, each trying to overtake the other. Through a complex code of hand gestures, beeping horns and flas.h.i.+ng headlights my driver overtakes in the face of oncoming juggernauts, swerving at the last moment as the blare of their horn cuts across and through us. At times we are but inches away from a metal on metal moment. All this two or three thousand feet above the valley on a badly made road with no protective barrier. I am never more than a metre from death. It feels like a video game, without the amazing graphics. Or an on/off switch.

My driver clearly knows how to pace an eight-hour conversation; he has chosen to take the 'enigmatic silence' approach for the first couple of hours, punctuated by the odd burp, spit or other venial bodily function. Some might mistake his singular lack of conversation for taciturnity, but I enjoy his willingness to allow our relations.h.i.+p to grow and unfold with time. And time is one thing we certainly have plenty of.

In the lower reaches of our ascent we pa.s.s numerous monkeys who gather by the side of the road. I'd forgotten about the monkeys. How could I?

My three cousins, Sonu, Jonu and Monu were roughly the same age as Raj, Sanj and me. Whilst I was regarded as the tricky troublemaker in my family, coincidentally so was Jonu. The extent of my tricky troublemaking was the infamous Victoria Sponge Cake Theft incident that I have mentioned. That and some occasional rude language. Jonu's tricky troublemaking was in an altogether trickier and more troublemaking league. Jonu stole a monkey. I laugh when I think about it. On the way home from school as an eight-year-old, my cousin Jonu showed up at his house in Srinagar with a baby monkey under his arm.

As a parent this is clearly a challenging situation. A monkey has been stolen. Yet it is a baby monkey. It cannot simply be left to fend for itself. Quite how Jonu managed to extricate the monkey from its family group remains unclear to this day. My aunt, Minder, was at a loss. She felt obliged to allow the money to stay in the house. All seemed fine for a while. The baby monkey was cute and adorable and after a few hours even Minder found herself endeared to the newborn primate, feeding it milk from an old baby bottle. Everything was hunkydory.

Or it was, until the rest of the monkeys got wind of the fact that the baby was missing; it only took them a day and a half to notice. Somehow they managed to trace the baby monkey back to my aunt's house. They gathered in some sort of parliament of protest around the complex; bear in mind that my uncle, Colonel Pritam Singh, was one of the more senior Indian Army officers in the state. He had an armed guard who was also rather freaked out by what seemed like a Bollywood remake of Planet of the Apes Planet of the Apes. Then, all of a sudden, as if in a rehea.r.s.ed manoeuvre, the monkeys started banging on the roof and the doors and the window, screeching and wailing in a cacophonous bid to save their child.

This may sound funny now, but one can imagine how alarming it must have been at the time. The baby monkey was as alarmed as Jonu and the family. It clung onto Jonu for dear life. There was no way it was letting go. Catch 22: how were my aunt and uncle going to return the baby monkey when the baby monkey seemed to want to do anything but be returned?

Day became night and the monkeys would not abate. After much deliberating and planning, Minder hit upon a genius idea. They fed the baby monkey paracetamol which made it drowsy and eventually made it sleep. They then placed the slumbering primate carefully in the porch, hurriedly retreating behind the wire screen. The baby monkey was s.n.a.t.c.hed back and the screeching and wailing stopped almost instantly. The hordes of monkeys were gone in a moment, melting into the night.

Suffice to say that as we drive along I am content to only look at these monkeys that line the route.

Signs on the road from Jammu to Srinagar Speed is a knife that cuts LifeSlow Drive, Long LifeSpeed Thrills but often KillsDrive Like h.e.l.l, End up ThereSpeed is a Demon; Life is a Reason I'm looking forward to Srinagar. I have arranged to stay on a houseboat on Dal Lake. This was dad's idea. He and my mum, accompanied by Manore Uncle and his wife, spent a few days there a couple of years ago. They had a great time, by all accounts. I am meant to be staying on the same boat they stayed in. Before leaving Britain this detail seemed just that, a detail. Now, given my epiphany that my entire quest is actually about my dad, the fact that I will be on the selfsame houseboat he was on brings a whole new significance. I really am following in his footsteps.

I am left to work out what I will cook and who I will be cooking for when I get to Srinagar. There seem to be no obvious candidates to feed and no particular dish to cook. I'm running out of ideas having cooked some of my best dishes earlier on my journey. Perhaps I could cook for the Sumo drivers? I look at the face of my driver and quickly disabuse myself of that notion. But I realise that I do need to make some arrangement with Mr Chatty for lunch.

After a little negotiation, the strong silent driver and I have agreed that we should stop to eat halfway through our eight hour journey, which at this rate would be about two o'clock. I am hugely excited about stopping to eat. One of the strongest food memories of my entire life is from the first time I made this journey. It is a meal that has stayed with me for nearly three decades. And the irony is that I never actually tasted it! As a twelve year old I remember seeing locals tucking in to plates of rice, topped with curried kidney beans smothered with a ladleful of clarified b.u.t.ter or ghee. This dish is known as rajmah chawal. I can see it as vividly now as I did nearly thirty years ago; a small, basic concrete shack teetering on the edge of the road, a sheer drop of a few thousand feet below, serving plate after plate of rajmah chawal to lots of happy diners. We three boys were forbidden from partaking of the food since our tender, westernised stomachs would be sure to react badly to the local standards of hygiene. Instead we ate crisps. I suppose that is what made the event so memorable for me. Falling in love with the sight, the sound, the smell, the very story of this food; everything but the actual taste.

No doubt in the decades that have followed I have elevated that meal of rajmah chawal to an altogether more ethereal place in the panoply of great foods. Of course I have had many bowls of rajmah since, from my sister-in-law Surjit's (which, like all her cooking, is truly delicious), to that available at the famous Khyber restaurant in Bombay. Each has been tasty in its own way, but none has been close to the rajmah perfection of that roadside shack on the way to Srinagar.

So it is with boyhood excitement and intestinal trepidation that I count the minutes down to lunchtime. We arrive at a place called Peeda a little before two o'clock. I cast my eye and my mind over the place, trying to match it to my memory; perhaps the place has changed in the intervening decades; besides how reliable could the memory of a twelve-year-old boy be? But my memory is surprisingly intact; this could only be that selfsame place, teetering precariously a few thousand feet above oblivion. Now, I would like to say that my certainty is based on something romantic: the same, now considerably older, man serving the rajmah chawal who catches my eye and recognises me after nearly three decades; or perhaps I find the tree into which I had carved my initials, knowing somehow preternaturally that I would one day return and actually try the food. Neither of these are the case. The reality is that one of my abiding memories of the place is the fact that it had no toilets, and when I had to relieve myself as a boy my father sent me around the side where I p.i.s.sed down into the valley a few thousand feet below. How often are you allowed to p.i.s.s thousands of feet down a valley as a child, with parental blessing?

So here we are. A small smattering of concrete shacks with steel-shuttered fronts. Simple and functional and to the point. At the front a square concrete stove, wood-fired. Upon it sit four pans of varying sizes. The largest, nearly a metre in diameter, is half full of rajmah; the next largest is full of rice; the third pot has aloo gobi, cauliflower and potato, and the final smallest pot bubbles with clarified b.u.t.ter, ghee.

There are eight, maybe nine tables neatly laid out in the s.p.a.ce and an a.s.sortment 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 ma.s.sive 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 b.u.t.ter. 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 s.h.i.+kara s.h.i.+kara, 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 CharleyTehranPrince of Vales [sic]New LuciferTexasNeil ArmstrongMughal PalaceNew Good LuckBostan [sic]Kings RoseKookaburraHelen 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 ma.s.sive sandstone Victorian apartments Glasgow is so famed for. Sizewise Merry Dawn Merry Dawn can only be described as capacious and well proportioned. 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 a.s.sociation 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 Merry Dawn Dawn is charming; but most of all it is mine, at least for the next couple of days. 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 br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 ma.s.sive houseboat on Dal Lake.

I feel that 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 s.h.i.+kara s.h.i.+kara on standby all day and it was duly waiting for me. on standby all day and it was duly waiting for me.

A s.h.i.+kara s.h.i.+kara 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 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 s.h.i.+karas s.h.i.+karas 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 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 s.h.i.+kara s.h.i.+kara is the deluxe version, with a canopy and a cus.h.i.+oned seating area, resplendent in red velour. is the deluxe version, with a canopy and a cus.h.i.+oned 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 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 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. 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 s.h.i.+kara s.h.i.+kara man's paddle on water; he guides us across the lake's polished surface with the minimum of fuss. We pa.s.s water lily and lotus fields as women harvest the crop. We pa.s.s 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. man's paddle on water; he guides us across the lake's polished surface with the minimum of fuss. We pa.s.s water lily and lotus fields as women harvest the crop. We pa.s.s 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 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 astonis.h.i.+ng. 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 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 astonis.h.i.+ng. 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 s.h.i.+kara s.h.i.+kara 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 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 s.h.i.+kara s.h.i.+kara 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-c.u.m-snack bar for a couple of hours later today. 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-c.u.m-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 const.i.tuency to cook for. All I need work out now is what to cook? I instruct my s.h.i.+kara s.h.i.+kara 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 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 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 s.h.i.+kara s.h.i.+kara drivers, it feels right to serve the lake men some lake food. It has to be fish and chips. 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 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 pa.s.s 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-cla.s.s 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 patra pakora, pakora, patra 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. 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 s.p.a.ce to prepare everything at Khalil's place, and given it is only a five-minute s.h.i.+kara s.h.i.+kara ride from ride from Merry Dawn 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 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 s.h.i.+kara s.h.i.+kara. 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 ma.s.sive 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 karahi, the steel-handled frying pan, and look around the tiny s.p.a.ce 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 karahi and then pour the old oil into the empty oil drum. Easy. Yeah right. and then pour the old oil into the empty oil drum. Easy. Yeah right.

It is actually relatively straightforward to remove the potatoes from the plastic bag, but I somehow have to hold the bag and tip the oil in. Khalil is clearly not up for helping although he can't help but demonstrate a begrudging interest in my machinations. Eventually I manage to hold the bag and tip the oil and I allow it to pour slowly, leaving a residue of burnt shards behind. I carefully put the karahi karahi down and very delicately tie the handles of the bag together. So far so good. Next I need to wipe the karahi of its detritus. Instinctively I hand the bag of old oil to down and very delicately tie the handles of the bag together. So far so good. Next I need to wipe the karahi of its detritus. Instinctively I hand the bag of old oil to Khalil Khalil. Instinctively he takes it. Instinctively I smile at him. Instinctively he throws the bag and the oil into the lake. Not only have I polluted Dal Lake with oil, I had also managed to add a plastic bag to the numerous contents that line its floor. But I don't have time to discuss it with him. I clean the karahi karahi, turn the flame on underneath to dry it and pour in fresh oil. Meanwhile I slice the potatoes and then chip them. Once the oil hits the required temperature I slip in the first two battered fillets of pomfret. Never overcrowd a deep fat fryer: the addition of anything to hot oil reduces the temperature of the oil; the more you add the lower the temperature becomes and that is how you end up with greasy or undercooked food. Cook less and cook more often. G.o.d I'm boring, aren't I?

My first two fillets turn out perfectly. I decide to fry my chips. Now, I am a firm believer in the twice-fried method of chip-making. Fry the chips at a lower heat first, ensuring the inside is cooked. Then return them to a higher heat to crisp the outside and impart that lovely golden-brown texture. I even know some who will bake their chips first, feeling that this gives them a fluffier inner consistency. I have no such luxury. I simply hope and pray that I have judged the thickness of my chips correctly to harmonise with the uncontrollable temperature of the oil. I haven't. The chips cook far too quickly, the outside browning while the inside remains hard and uncooked. (It has to be said that Indian potatoes seem to take much longer to cook than your regular Maris Piper.) I make an executive decision to dispense with the chips. I am now serving fried fish with Khalil's ketchup. And do you know what? It isn't bad at all, even if I say so myself. Khalil even eats a piece, although I can tell he can't quite work out why I have gone to all that bother.

It's difficult to describe how I feel at this point in my journey. I have travelled almost the entire length of the country yet it has taken me until this point to feel truly proud of the food I've cooked. Admittedly the chips are an unmitigated disaster, but the fish is good. More than that, the fish is the perfect fusion of an Indian and a British recipe, combining my first meal in Glasgow, a meal I have eaten regularly ever since, with my mum's Punjabi food, food I grew up eating every week at home: these are the two halves of my life that make the whole.

I think it is the first meal I've cooked for myself rather than others. To be honest I don't really care what the boatmen think of my deep-fried fish. (I know it would go down a storm on Byres Road.) I think I also very much feel a sense of disconnection with the boatmen of Dal Lake. I don't consider them to be Indian because they don't consider themselves themselves to be particularly Indian. They are Kashmiris. I can relate to their plight as a people exercising their right of self-determination. And I have to confess that by this point I am clear that whatever I am, I am most certainly not Indian. Yet I am more than just British. I realise, at this moment in time, that I am a complex blend of both, a blend that changes depending on who I am with, where I am and how I feel on any given day. to be particularly Indian. They are Kashmiris. I can relate to their plight as a people exercising their right of self-determination. And I have to confess that by this point I am clear that whatever I am, I am most certainly not Indian. Yet I am more than just British. I realise, at this moment in time, that I am a complex blend of both, a blend that changes depending on who I am with, where I am and how I feel on any given day.

For the bulk of my life, ever since that day as a five year old in Bis...o...b..iggs, when I was singled out and not allowed to play with the rest of the kids, my life has been defined by how I am perceived by others, by my appearance. I have been, I am and I will always be a brown-skinned man, with a turban and a rather p.r.o.nounced belly. I cannot change that, although perhaps a few weekly sessions at the gym might help with the belly. I am who I am, as far as people perceive me. What I feel inside however is another matter altogether. Inside I feel British. British and proud. Yet I am completely at one with my Indianness. It's not about trying to define myself exactly. I am not 70 per cent Indian and 30 per cent British. Those percentages change constantly. They ebb and flow, like the Dal Lake around the s.h.i.+karas s.h.i.+karas. But at this very moment, watching the darkening sky, my nostrils full of the smell of deep-fried fish, whatever that balance of Indian and Britishness is within me, it feels right. And it is this feeling I carry with me onward to my final destination: Ferozepure and my grandfather's house.

*This is a book; I am writing it; you know and I know that my leap from bed was more of an uncoordinated stagger and shuffle, and if I resembled any of G.o.d's creatures I was surely more elephantine that gazelle-like. But if I cannot be allowed a modic.u.m of literary licence to portray myself as fleet of foot and elegant in my own prose then what hope is there for me?

*I obviously don't know the Hindi word for requisition; I don't even know the word for boat shop.

10.

ALMOST HOME.

I should tell you about my grandfather's house. In its day it was quite palatial, but its day has long since past. The house sits in the middle of a bazaar, a straight row of shops on street level with residential accommodation on the floors above. We have three storeys. Our ground-floor room is accessed by a large sky-blue, double-arched doorway; in the old days we had a water pump in that room and we would have the most excellent baths imaginable. The room has now been rented out to some shopkeeper or other. By the left-hand side of the arched doorway is a small sky-blue doorway, leading up some narrow high stairs. These unremarkable steps lead you to the first floor of 22 Moti Bazaar. This is the main living level. Two public rooms, three bedrooms, a small kitchen and a couple of bathrooms are peripheral to a central uncovered courtyard. This courtyard used to be the focal point of the house. The men would drink their whisky and eat their kebabs here, the was.h.i.+ng would be put out to dry here, kids would play here, ladies would gossip here. It all happened here, under the canopy of an ever-changing sky. It was where we would sit and gather in the summer evenings to eat, drink and be merry. The next level up is what we call the should tell you about my grandfather's house. In its day it was quite palatial, but its day has long since past. The house sits in the middle of a bazaar, a straight row of shops on street level with residential accommodation on the floors above. We have three storeys. Our ground-floor room is accessed by a large sky-blue, double-arched doorway; in the old days we had a water pump in that room and we would have the most excellent baths imaginable. The room has now been rented out to some shopkeeper or other. By the left-hand side of the arched doorway is a small sky-blue doorway, leading up some narrow high stairs. These unremarkable steps lead you to the first floor of 22 Moti Bazaar. This is the main living level. Two public rooms, three bedrooms, a small kitchen and a couple of bathrooms are peripheral to a central uncovered courtyard. This courtyard used to be the focal point of the house. The men would drink their whisky and eat their kebabs here, the was.h.i.+ng would be put out to dry here, kids would play here, ladies would gossip here. It all happened here, under the canopy of an ever-changing sky. It was where we would sit and gather in the summer evenings to eat, drink and be merry. The next level up is what we call the cotee cotee, the terrace. Back in the day, before the introduction of the western-style 'flush' toilet, it was on this level the tattia tattia, the latrines, could be found. No matter how Indian we might feel in our hearts, no matter how much love we felt for the country and how much we enjoyed being here, the single factor that separated us British-born Indians from our Indian-born family was our inability to utilise their different and challenging toilet system. I have never been able to enjoy a squat toilet. My leg joints have never achieved that extreme position of stretching; I have never been clear as to how best gather my garments lest they become involved in my ablutions; and my balance has never been honed to accommodate a pa.s.sive body position whilst simultaneously evacuating my bowels. Even if I had mastered these complex ways of the east I am most definitely a toilet paper kind of a guy. No matter how compelling an argument is made for the added cleanliness and advanced hygiene of a manually washed a.r.s.e I still prefer some sort of paper-based barrier between my hand and my faeces. I'm sorry, I just do.

To say the tattia tattia were medieval would be doing a disservice to medieval plumbing. There was only one thing worse than having to take a dump in these communal latrines and that was to watch the girl who came in to clean them out every morning. The heaven and h.e.l.l paradox of the terrace upstairs was that alongside the latrines was this fantastic open area with views over the entire city. We would fly kites, we would play football, we would generally lark around; but whatever we were doing, we were having fun only very irregularly interrupted by someone or other needing to take a dump. were medieval would be doing a disservice to medieval plumbing. There was only one thing worse than having to take a dump in these communal latrines and that was to watch the girl who came in to clean them out every morning. The heaven and h.e.l.l paradox of the terrace upstairs was that alongside the latrines was this fantastic open area with views over the entire city. We would fly kites, we would play football, we would generally lark around; but whatever we were doing, we were having fun only very irregularly interrupted by someone or other needing to take a dump.

I remember with vivid clarity as if it were yesterday, sprinting up to the terrace one morning, only to be confronted by a goat tied to the bal.u.s.trade. It seemed a little strange to me that the day before there had been no goat, but I thought it best not to question its sudden appearance. To me, this wasn't a goat, this was a friend. My imagination being what it was, I decided to name my new friend Goaty after some hours of deliberation, and for the next few days, still chewing the last mouthful of breakfast, I would race upstairs to play with Goaty. Perhaps I was at an impressionable age or perhaps Goaty and I had known each other in a past life but I felt some deep almost cosmic connection with Goaty; I think it's the closest I've ever come to loving an animal.

Again, it's with vivid clarity I remember that morning, tucking into a delicious breakfast of pickled meats and parathas. I forced the last mouthful in as I turned the corner onto the terrace looking for my soulmate but Goaty was nowhere to be seen. My emotions were mixed, part of me upset that my companion was gone, another part of me thinking that perhaps in escaping during the night Goaty had at last achieved his freedom. I felt it only right and proper to inform the grown-ups of Goaty's disappearance. Strangely they didn't seem shocked. Their lack of shock soon became apparent when they told me that far from not being present that morning, Goaty had very much been there. On the breakfast plate. The pickled meat I'd so enjoyed for breakfast that morning had in fact been Goaty, my dear, dear friend. Given that I was only ten years old it seems a terrible irony that whilst enjoying Goaty for breakfast, I had been looking forward to enjoying Goaty after breakfast. And so it is clear what I am going to cook when I get to my grandfather's house. It has to be goat. Curried goat. What else? It was what Goaty would have wanted ...

To say my father has wanderl.u.s.t would perhaps not fully convey his love for travel, his need to explore. He was born in 1934 and brought up in the city of Ferozepure. If I am anything with regard to India then I am a Punjabi. Regardless of religion and caste my family were Punjabis and I have always felt that that means more than anything else. Then they created Pakistan.

My father was twelve years old when India was torn asunder. The Punjab was slashed into two and Pakistan was ripped away from the wider subcontinent. Borders were hurriedly drawn and redrawn and then drawn again. A man-made line cut through the Punjab and separated people that had lived together, identified with each other for hundreds of years.

The creation of this new nation, the separation of Pakistan from India, defined my very existence. Ferozepure sits but a few kilometres from the border. Given its strategic importance, it was the centre of horse-trading when it came to deciding which side was to be given the city. It is incredible that people, places, histories and families can become the subject of third-party intervention. That third party was of course the British, the Raj, working in concert with self-interested Indian politicians and their apparatchiks. Someone had to draw a line somewhere. That's how man-made borders are created: by men. It's not about rivers and mountains; it's all about politics. Sir Cyril Radcliffe was that someone. A young lawyer with little knowledge or interest in India, he was brought over by Mountbatten in order to effect the impossible: to create a clean line of demarcation that would keep all parties happy and disappoint none. Impossible. The theory was simple: Muslim majority towns and villages were to be given to Pakistan, the land of the Pure, and the rest would remain Indian. Impossibly simple.

At first Ferozepure, with its marginal majority Muslim population, was to be in Pakistan. Then, a few days before the 14 August 1947, the Radcliffe Line was re-sketched, Sir Cyril's pencil heading to the north of Ferozepure, enclosing my father's birthplace and returning it to India. Therein lay my grandfather's fate, my father's fate and mine. Ferozepure became a city defined by its proximity to the border with the newly created Pakistan of 1947, a microcosm for all the chaos of Part.i.tion. More than half the city left, their lives on their backs and headed across the still wet ink that marked this new, artificial border. Muslims he