Amit Chaudhuri - Odysseus Abroad

The restaurant was secreted away in the basement. The moment they’d descended, a waiter greeted them with a “Table for two?” in a Sylheti accent. Careless with the “b,” pushing table close to te-vul . Ananda felt he was near home. Not home in Bombay: his parents didn’t speak Sylheti in that large-hearted peasant way; their accent was slightly gentrified. Not Warren Street of course. Not Sylhet, either — he’d never been there and didn’t particularly regret it. Maybe some notion of Sylhet imparted to him inadvertently by his parents and relations — as an emblem of the perennially recognisable…And the perennially comic. Sylhet, and Sylheti, made everybody in his family laugh with joy.

“Yes, please,” said Ananda sombrely.

The waiter said, “Follow me, please!” and promptly commandeered the way.

He seated them not too far from a table of thirteen or fourteen people. A vocal, exultant group. Someone would make a remark, another add their bit, and laughter would spread from one end of the table to the other. A few, by turns convulsed by gaiety and introspective, bit into poppadums; some jabbed shards of poppadum into mango chutney. They are so happy , thought Ananda. Why shouldn’t they be? It’s their country after all. What they do and how they behave is law . Then: But are they happy? Sometimes their laughter’s like an assault on the surroundings. It’s a form of aggression . His uncle was examining the menu with a faux pedantic air. It was more a performance of menu-reading — he’d leave the actual ordering to Ananda. Ha ha ha ha ha. They do like a weekly Indian meal, don’t they?

“Sir.”

The dapper waiter.

“Would you like to order?” Now embracing the cockney style. Oh-dah . Chameleon.

“Uh yes, thank you.” Ananda turned to his uncle. “What do you think?”

“Oh let the young man here do the honours. Right?” said his uncle to the Sylheti. “The young should lead the way!”

The waiter chortled.

“Chicken jhalfrezi?” said Ananda, letting the question hang.

“Jhalfrezi!” said his uncle, with the exaggerated enthusiasm of one who has no clue what his interlocutor’s proposing. It was the same principle — over-compensation — that fuelled righteous indignation. “Mouth-watering!” He’d involuntarily checked the price, and was much enlivened that it wasn’t one of the expensive dishes.

“Would you like it hot or less hot?” the waiter asked. “It is very hot.” An oft-repeated caveat that he clearly relished. He sent forth a surreptitious glance, briefly on tenterhooks for their reply.

“Hot is fine,” said Ananda in a casual-grand way. The waiter nodded, and made a note.

“Daal?” Ananda said. Sooner or later you had to pronounce this word — you could not evade it.

“One tarka daal?” chimed in the waiter, pencil poised, accustomed to being two steps ahead of everyone. He barked the words like a command.

“Oh daal is a must, innit!” agreed Rangamama. He imported colloquialisms in company whenever he became intolerably expansive. Then, realising he was being a nuisance, but admitting to his ineluctable love of the potato, he said, needing the green signal from his nephew, “Pupu, can’t we have potatoes? What is life without potatoes?” Ananda had never been able to figure out his uncle’s supplication to the potato; but there was nothing insincere about the light in his eye. “Bombay potato?” his uncle said.

“Bombay alu?” asked the waiter in return.

“Please,” said Ananda. Be done with it.

“Would you like naan bread or pilau rice?”

“Pilau rice,” replied Ananda gravely — it was the inevitable choice. Driven by obscure racial characteristics handed down over millennia, Bengalis might flirt with bread but succumb, at the end of the day, to rice.

After issuing a cheery “Thank you!” about to race off like a man whose real job was about to begin, the waiter checked himself: “Would you like some poppadums?” Ananda and his uncle contemplated each other; Ananda was no great fan of the poppadum, but it was graceless to admit this. “Not really, don’t think so.”

The waiter hurried away. In the meanwhile, trolleys of food had been navigated towards the boisterous table nearby.

“Wonder if it’s a birthday party?” said Ananda, glancing at the multiple vessels of curry and the effervescent grilled platters. “Quite a banquet. I wish they wouldn’t make such a racket!”

“Oh they’re all right!” His uncle made it a point to be magnanimous when Ananda was carping. In retaliation, Ananda plotted to be equable or indifferent when his uncle carped, but forgot each time to execute the plan. “They’re just living it up a bit!” Living it up! Clichés that his uncle plucked from the air according to his mood.

“I can’t stand the English — especially when they’re being sociable,” whispered Ananda.

Two small men were holding pans above blonde and brownhaired heads that almost came up to their shoulders.

“Oh they’re human too!” his uncle said with some conviction. “And,” here he very sadly expressed a historical truth that he knew might wind Ananda up, “they do belong to what used to be the ‘master race.’ ” At other times, when it suited him, he’d argue otherwise, saying that Europeans, with their blue eyes that were discomfited by the sun and their rapacious history, were suspiciously “different.” “By the way, English women can be very kind — much kinder than Bengali women.”

“They may be kind,” said Ananda. Neither Hilary Burton nor the Anglo-Saxon teacher had struck him as particularly kind . He’d sensed a sweetness in one or two of the girls in college he’d never had the time or will to talk to — mooning as he fruitlessly was over his cousin. “But for some reason the English emanate unpleasantness in groups. You see a bunch of Englishmen talking loudly on the tube and you feel uncomfortable — even threatened. If it’s some loud Italians, you don’t really notice them.”

“That’s to do with drink,” said his uncle. “There’s an unwritten law in this land that you can’t criticise drinking. All the propaganda — the surgeon-general’s health warning etcetera — is about smoking.” He spoke bitterly. When Ananda first met him, he’d smoke serially, with little self-consciousness or sense of apology. Then, despite his defiance of the dark anti-smoking conspiracy, the “propaganda” must have got to him, because he’d defected to Silk Cut, which was low-tar. His smoking was petering out. Today, despite the stub floating in the toilet in Belsize Park, Ananda hadn’t actually seen him smoke a cigarette. “They keep saying smoking kills you. It’s a lie. What they won’t say is that drinking is far more lethal than smoking — and it changes the personality too.”

In response, a cheer went up at the big table. His uncle, distracted by the mood, clapped his hands in glee. Someone glanced back for a second.

“What are you doing ?” asked Ananda.

“Just joining in,” said his uncle. “Everyone’s feeling jolly.”

Ananda shook his head in reproach at this disloyalty.

“It’s certainly not Christmas,” he said. “And it doesn’t seem to be anyone’s birthday either — or they’d have been singing by now.”

In fact, they were soon quieter, making a hubbub as they ate.

The waiter appeared with a plate of poppadums. Poppadum after poppadum had floated down, settling on top of each other, making a low tower. “On the house!” he said.

Ananda felt an onrush of emotion. “Thank you!” He was tempted to communicate — to share their common ancestry. But he held back. Maybe the waiter had guessed, or had some half-formed inkling? He was no fool.