Chef. Part 5

Colonel: 'If I may say so, sir. Each b.l.o.o.d.y Kashmiri has a b.l.o.o.d.y second wife.'

Colonel's wife: 'This means there must be twice as many women in Kashmir?'

General: 'Your wife does have a point.'

Colonel: 'No, sir. The brides come to Kashmir from b.l.o.o.d.y Bangladesh. And they bring along b.l.o.o.d.y men from b.l.o.o.d.y Islam, who are in touch with militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and they have occupied the b.l.o.o.d.y mosques, sir. They want b.l.o.o.d.y azadi, sir.'

Colonel's wife: 'The girl! Rubiya is listening.'

Her husband stands up abruptly and walks to the window.

Colonel: 'Outside it is very dark, sir. Array baytah! You sing soooo well. You are a big girl now Array baytah! You sing soooo well. You are a big girl now If I may say so, sir, the way the b.l.o.o.d.y b.a.s.t.a.r.ds think ' If I may say so, sir, the way the b.l.o.o.d.y b.a.s.t.a.r.ds think '

Colonel's wife: 'Shhh! The girl.'

Colonel: 'Sir, I love my India, sir . . . Array baytah! What will you become when you grow really big? Tell me? Array baytah! What will you become when you grow really big? Tell me?'

Rubiya: 'Suicide.'

Colonel: 'Jokes apart, baytah baytah. What will you really do?'

Rubiya: 'Go to Amay-ree-ka.'

Colonel's wife: 'Why so?'

Rubiya: 'Papa says so.'

Colonel: 'America is an astonis.h.i.+ng country, sir. The doctor's daughter studies there at NYU. She loves it.'

Colonel's wife: 'Let's leave. We all love a good night's sleep. Don't we, darling?'

She giggles.

Colonel: 'Let me tell General sir one last thing, darling. I have found the perfect solution to deal with Pakistan, sir! Now that we've the N-weapon, it is very simple . . . I shared my idea with Mr. Ghosh, sir, but he didn't seem to get it . . . Few nights ago, sir, I woke on my bed thinking the idea. Why don't we and I am just thinking, sir why not drill a hole in the glacier, bury the bomb inside, the way we do it in the desert sands, sir, and blow it up? The glacier would melt and millions and billions of liters of water will flow to their side and flood our enemy out of existence, sir?'

General: 'But, colonel. The enemy too has an N-weapon.'

Colonel: 'We'll do it first, sir.'

Colonel's wife: 'Darling, you and your ideas.'

'Please allow us, sir, to take our leave.'

'It was a delight.'

'Delighted, sir.'

'Good night.'

'Good night, sir.'

'Good night, uncle. Good night, aunty.'

'Good night, baytah baytah!'

'Good night.'

The colonel and his wife departed. It took them a long time to say bye-bye, but eventually they departed. The General waved them off from the verandah. They lived close by, and they used torch lights walking on the narrow pebbled path. I was standing outside the kitchen taking a little break to try and settle myself, and overheard their conversation. The colonel's ideas about the glacier had made me very worried.

'Come on, darling, I know there is something else else bugging you.' bugging you.'

'Now you have spoiled my chances of getting promoted.'

'Don't say that.'

'Why did you say the thing about the knives?'

'Darling don't you get the point?'

'You have destroyed me.'

'Darling, come on.'

'Don't say dar-ling war-ling. Did not you see the General was silent after you said that nonsense?'

'He likes you.'

'Now I will never become a Brigadier.'

'But, darling, why did you run to the window so abruptly?'

'The view.'

'Don't lie. Do you think I do not know? You disappeared because . . . Do you think I do not know why you ran to the window and laughed so loudly and banged your fist against the table?'

'There is nothing wrong with concealment.'

'A fart, darling? One must simply say excuse me excuse me the way one says before sneezing, and do it.' the way one says before sneezing, and do it.'

'Like the General? I must say he is more honest.'

'Down to his farting. Darling.'

Their voices receded and the torch lights became little dots and were gone. Sounds of crickets took over. Bats and wolves reclaimed their territory. I saw the night humming with stars. I had never heard a married couple talking privately. They talked like civilians. Of farts and farting.

The kitchen was still filled with her nice smell. I found it difficult to express my feelings to Chef, so I made tea quickly and thanked him as he was waiting for it for saving my a.s.s. To make up for my error error, I shared the conversation with him, the exact exchange that took place between India and Pakistan. I mimicked the memsahib in English. But he grew unusually silent.

'Something wrong, Chef?'

'No Inglish.'

He started slurping tea noisily.

'What is wrong with English?'

'No Inglis.h.!.+' he yelled at me.

Normally he lost his temper in the kitchen when the a.s.sistants licked their fingers or picked noses while marinating. I will ban you from the kitchen, he would yell. He banned Biswas, who was dumb like a cabbage, and Thapa, who scratched his groin while preparing dough. Ramji left because he was caught reading p.o.r.n. (Later we found that he would also frequent the red-light district of the city to sleep with Muslim women.) Barring a few exceptions Chef was very lenient with me. But that day he simply lost it. He started cursing me. All because of Inglish. English came, and became a wall between us.

I had made a minor error, nothing in comparison to the error he had made. I refused to serve tea to the Muslim officer I refused to serve tea to the Muslim officer. He would repeat the story often when in an exceptionally good mood. In pure Hindi he would brag: I refused tea to that man I refused tea to that man. Several times when I was his apprentice I intended to ask why he had really really done so. Was it just because of the done so. Was it just because of the smell smell? Would he still do so? What about the gardener, Agha? Did he dislike Agha, too, because he was a Muslim? But I could never gather the courage to pose the question.

I must be a weak character, I say to myself on this train.

9.

In Srinagar whenever Colonel Chowdhry was away on border duty, during his long absences I would go out of my way to walk past his residence. There was an old plane tree in the garden with a rope swing attached to a high branch. Sometimes the convex swing would move on its own in the wind, and sometimes Memsahib would make it move with enormous force, her feet touching the ground now and then. To this day I can't forget her perfect feet, stained a little by the soil of Kashmir.

But there was something that troubled me whenever I looked at her or thought about her in my room. The sound of a guitar would echo in my head. I would try to conjure up the guitarist and his chopped fingers making love to the memsahib. A chill would go through my spine. Before her I had not experienced such a combination of fear and desire, and because I am a weak man the fear started swelling and the desire started shrinking. What saved me from that fear was a sudden bout of indigestion. The diarrhea took me to the hospital and there I encountered the nurse again, and all my desire towards Memsahib transferred towards the nurse, now that I think about it, just like a few months earlier all my desire for the nurse had transferred towards the memsahib. The nurse's feet resembled the memsahib's, her hands, her entire body was almost like Memsahib's. Only difference: the nurse was a little dark, the color of ca.s.sia.

But.

I am jumping ahead of myself.

I did gather courage once, I did walk into Colonel Chowdhry's house once. I was under the impression he was away, but the man was home. Both he and his wife received me on the lawn. She asked me to sit down in the chair, but I looked at the colonel and his face didn't approve that I accept her offer. Lower ranks are not supposed to sit with commissioned officers, even if one happens to be the brother of the officer in question. I kept standing, hands clasped behind my back. It is good you came, said the wife. She was also standing. The reason I came, I said, looking her in the eye, is because I would like to hear Father's Part.i.tion story. Father never told me the details.

Yes, I thought so, she said. I think about you often since our meal at the Gen's.

'Who? This boy Kirpal?' interrupted the colonel.

'No, no. Major Iqbal,' she said. 'He was the silent type, he rarely opened up. This happened before I met you. Once my ex-husband and I invited Iqbal for dinner. G.o.d knows what it was really, perhaps the combination of food and drink and music made the Major open up that evening, but when conversation turned to the Part.i.tion he grew silent again. I poured him another drink.'

The colonel's wife stopped briefly and sat down in the chair. Why don't you two sit down as well? she said, hitting her forehead with her delicate hand. The colonel sat down immediately, and I sat on the ground. But she stood up and stepped towards me and extended her hand and helped me move to the empty chair. The colonel looked in the other direction. At first I felt uncomfortable in the chair, but it became increasingly clear to me that she wanted to treat me like a son. This is how she related my father's story to me in the colonel's angry presence.

Month of August, 1947. India had just been part.i.tioned by the British. Thousands of Sikhs in the city of Lah.o.r.e suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of the new border, your father, Major Iqbal, told me. I was nine, he said. I used to tie my long hair into a knot on my head; I had not started wearing a turban yet. I used to cover the knot with a tiny patch of muslin (my mother had devised a rubber band mechanism to hold the patch tight). Breakfast was ready, and my uncles and aunts and grandparents were all gathered in the living room. I can see the carpeted floors, I can see the velvet sofas, and through the window I can see the mango tree in the yard. Grandmother had prepared aloo-parathas in the kitchen, she tried to persuade Mother not to send me to the cla.s.s because of tension between communities, but Mother said education was important. I ran all the way to the school with my heavy satchel only to find a big notice at the gates. School was cancelled. The city was on fire. The cinema halls were closed, and there was fire and smoke all over and Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim bodies were burning everywhere, and I ran back to our house through charred streets. When I got home, I found all the doors open and the water faucet running for no particular reason. In the living room, on the velvet sofas and on the red carpets, I found the chopped-off heads of my grandparents and mother and siblings and other family members; the killers had gathered them up, and piled them up neatly, as if they were market fruit.

That evening, I boarded the train to India. But it ended up it was the wrong train, said your father. It was filled with Muslims. The train had come to the newly created Pakistan from India and it was not returning to India. He said, I cannot forget the look on the faces of my fellow pa.s.sengers, it was as if they were worried for me. I was very afraid, but I tried not to show it. I kept staring at the woman sitting on the seat across from me. She stood out from the human ma.s.s around her, she was eating a mango, sucking it (that is the right word), and now and then drops kept falling on her green toenails. She was wearing heels, and three layers of her clothing were touching her feet, the innermost circle or the hem belonging to her white petticoat, the second hem belonging to her red sari and the outermost belonging to her black burqa. Her face was not covered, but her head and the rest of the body was covered by the black burqa. Her hands and feet were not covered, and they appeared so liberated. The three circles or the three hems of petticoat, sari and burqa were swelling and shrinking in the wind, the train window was open and the wind was. .h.i.tting us all a bit violently.

The train stopped at a crowded platform. The wind stopped as well; now the air in the carriage grew hot and stagnant and oppressive. Through the window another train was visible on the other side of the platform. The carriages were painted red or simply rusty, with as many people inside as there were on the roof. On the platform five or six Muslims with naked swords were asking regular pa.s.sengers if they had seen a Hindu or a Sikh on the train. The woman stopped eating her mango. She started staring at me, so hard it appeared her eyes were going to explode. Suddenly she grabbed my right wrist and pulled me towards her and shoved me quickly under her seat. I was not a very tall nine-year-old, so the squeeze was all right. The voices were now moving up and down the aisle of our train demanding Sikhs and Hindus. The woman started on the mango again. Drops started falling down, she was sucking it. The men were now extremely close to our compartment. For a moment I felt the woman was going to hand me over to them. She began tapping her heels and this terrified me under the seat. Why was she tapping? Why was she drawing attention? Were the heels trying to convey something to me? She tapped forcefully one last time and lifted the three hems of her burqa-sari-petticoat a bit in the air, then higher, and it was then I understood. I crawled inside. She immediately lowered the garments; now they touched the floor again. Suddenly it grew very dark around me.

Where is the Sikh boy? demanded the mob. From the platform we definitely noticed a boy on this train, said a voice loudly.

What Sikh? said a pa.s.senger.

The men were suspicious and opened up several suitcases and looked under the seats. I heard them, I could not see a thing. I was trapped inside absolute darkness. It was like being in a movie theater alone, wrapped by the white screen, and no movie on. It was as if the real movie was happening in the world outside the theater. The woman kept eating her mango. Drops kept falling. No other pa.s.senger in the compartment said a word. I imagine they simply turned their heads in the other direction. They all were Muslims. When the train stopped again it was very dark and I crawled out from under her and she quickly untied the knot on my head and made my hair tumble down to look like a girl. This is all I can do, she said, I can do nothing more for you. Allah will protect you now. He will protect you. She kissed me on both cheeks, gave me a little food and walked me to the refugee camp on the edge of the city.

This story, said the colonel's wife, I don't think I would have shared with you if you had not asked me the details. I will not be able to sleep tonight, she said.

Memsahib was shaking now. My gaze remained fixed on her shoes. To this day I don't understand, Kirpal, why your father shared this painful story. I recall when he was sharing the details it was as if he was not there, it was as if he did not care if we were there or not. Normally men censor certain parts of a story when in the presence of a woman, but Iqbal was elsewhere that evening and to him it did not matter if I was listening or not.

'Listen, my boy,' said the colonel, 'it is time you go back to General Sahib's residence.'

'Sir.' I stood up and clicked my heels.

Memsahib ran indoors. I could not, therefore, say a proper shukriya to her. I have never been able to do what I really wanted to do. I am so weak.

10.

Being a Sikh I am interested in hair. Some of my most sensuous memories are not connected to food at all. They are about hair. The way my mother would wash it, oil it, ma.s.sage it, comb it, braid it, and tie a knot on top of my head. My hair was long and black and curly and whenever I dried it outdoors the wind would turn my head into a vortex. I cut my hair short fifteen years ago. But, during my time in Kashmir (the first four years) I had it long and used to tie a black turban. Sikhs believe in the holy book, the Adi Granth, and ten masters, Guru Nanak the first one and Guru Gobind Singh the last one. No one knows what the gurus really looked like, but in calendars they appear as if lost in deep meditation, unaware of the bright halos behind their Sufi-style turbans. Their beards are black or gray, but always long and flowing gracefully.

In Kashmir I tried to buy the Prophet Mohammed calendar. There was no such thing, I was told. It was hard to conjure him up. Every time I tried he would resemble one of the Sikh gurus.

In Srinagar, in the mosque with a single minaret, there was a strand of the Prophet's hair. It had been transported in a vial to Kashmir (in the luggage of a holy man) two or three centuries ago. Thousands of people gathered every year on a special day to be blessed by the holy relic. At first I thought the hair in the vial belonged to the head of the Prophet, but Chef corrected me. It comes from the Prophet's beard, he said.

If I have forgotten certain details from that time it is because I rarely got any sleep those days. The mosque was the holiest in Kashmir, but it had been hijacked by a group of militants, who used to gather in the hamaam to talk azadi azadi.

The vial was kept under heavy security. But one day it disappeared. We read about the theft in the papers. The Kashmiris took to the streets in millions demonstrating against our country, blaming our leaders. Government buildings and vehicles were set on fire and the situation got out of hand.

My thoughts during those days of demonstrations kept turning to the colonel's wife. On the third day of the demos I gathered the courage to walk again to her residence, but the orderly told me that Memsahib was in the living room taking dance lessons from an instructor. I waited on the lawns. Their dark forms, visible through the window, whirled and spun, but I could not hear the steps. 'Kip,' she beckoned me finally on the verandah.

I folded my hands by way of greeting.

'Why did you come?'

'Are you disappointed?' I asked.

'No, no.'

'I have come to talk to you.'

'Talk to me?'

'Yes.' I hesitated for a moment. 'You don't look happy,' I said.

'Perhaps you have come to look at my kitchen?'

'Yes, yes, Memsahib.'