Rohinton Mistry - Such A Long Journey

Dilnavaz decided to be of no help to Gustad, not while he was embarked on his mad and wholly impractical scheme. A live chicken in the house! Whatever next? Never had he meddled like this in her kitchen. It was true he came sometimes and sniffed in her pots or, especially on Sundays, cajoled her to make a kutchoomber of onions, coriander and hot green chillies to go with the dhansak simmering on the stove. But in twenty-one years this was the first time he was interfering in kitchen-and-cookery in a very fundamental manner, and she was not sure what it meant or where it was leading.

‘Where did we get this basket from anyway?’ asked Gustad, covering the chicken with the wide wicker basket that had hung for ages on a nail near the kitchen ceiling. He did not really care to know, just wanting words to flow again between them, get rid of the chill she had been exuding since he got back from Crawford Market with the throbbing, unquiet bulge in his shopping bag.

‘I don’t know where the basket came from.’ Curt and frigid was her reply.

He suspected that Miss Kutpitia may have been advising her about omens, but prudence made him return to his peace-making voice. ‘At last we have a use for this basket. Good thing we did not throw it away. Where did it come from, I wonder.’

‘I told you once, I don’t know.’

‘Yes, yes, you did, Dilnoo-darling,’ he said soothingly. ‘Now, for two days it will be a roof over the chicken’s head. They relax and sleep quietly, put on more weight, if they are covered with a basket.’

‘How would I know? In my family a chicken was always brought home slaughtered.’

‘You will taste the difference, trust me, when it is swimming in your brown sauce in two days. With onions and potatoes. Ah ha ha, that brown sauce! So perfect you make it, Dilnoo.’ He smacked his lips.

The entire plan had come to Gustad yesterday. He had dreamt of his childhood the previous night, and remembered the dream in detail on waking: it was a day of great gaiety and celebration, of laughter ringing through the house, flowers filling up the rooms — in vases, in strands of tohrun over doorways — and music, music all day long: ‘Tales From the Vienna Woods’, ‘Gold and Silver Waltz’, ‘Skater’s Waltz’, ‘Voices of Spring’, the overture to Die Fledermaus, and much, much more, playing non-stop on the gramophone, playing in his dream, while his grandmother sent the servants out repeatedly to buy special herbs and masala for the feast cooking under her supervision.

There was such excitement and happiness filling his beloved childhood home, the sadness in his heart was acute when he awoke. He could not remember the exact occasion being celebrated in the dream — probably some birthday or anniversary. But live chickens had been brought home from the market by his father, and fattened for two days before the feast. And what a feast it had been.

When Gustad was a little boy, live chickens were standard procedure in his father’s house. Grandma would have it no other way. Not for her the scraggy fowl brought home slaughtered and plucked and gutted. Gustad remembered them arriving in a covered basket balanced on the head of the servant who walked behind his father, sometimes two, sometimes four, or eight, depending on how many guests were invited. Grandma would inspect the birds, invariably applauding her son’s choice selections as they clucked away, then check off the packets of spices and ingredients against her list.

But spices, ingredients, were only half the secret. ‘Chicken if you buy,’ she would say when praised for her delicious cooking, ‘then you must buy alive and squawking, jeevti-jaagti, or don’t buy at all. First feed it for two days, less will not do. And always feed best grain, the very best. Always remember: what goes in chicken-stomach, at the end comes back to our stomach. After two days prepare the pot, light the stove, get masala ready. Then slaughter, clean, and cook. Quick-quick-quick, no wasting time.’ And what a difference that made to the taste of the meat, she would claim, juicy and fresh and sweet, and so much more than the stringy scraps which clad the bones of the scrawny, market-fed birds two days ago.

Gustad’s dream about those blissful, long-ago times stayed with him all through the day. For once, he was determined, just once — for one day at least, this humble flat would fill with the happiness and merriment that used to reside in his childhood home. And that day, he decided, would be Saturday. Invite one or two people from the bank for dinner — my old friend Dinshawji for sure — just a small party. With chicken, never mind the extra expense. To celebrate Roshan’s birthday and Sohrab’s admission to IIT.

As the basket descended over the bird, it peered curiously through the narrow slits in the wickerwork. Safe under the protective dome, it began to cluck intermittently. ‘A little rice now,’ said Gustad.

‘I’m not going to touch the chicken,’ snapped Dilnavaz. If he thought she could be tricked into looking after the creature, he was sadly mistaken.

‘Boarding and lodging is my department,’ he had joked earlier, to win her over. But there was an edge in his voice now. ‘Who is asking you to touch? Just put a little rice in a small pan and give me.’ His peace-making voice was flagging in its efforts. He had gone straight from work to Crawford Market, and was still in his office clothes: tie, white shirt, white trousers. White except for where the chicken soiled it while he was tying it to the kitchen table-leg with a yard of bristly coir twist. It had been a long day, and he was tired.

Besides, Crawford Market was a place he despised at the best of times. Unlike his father before him, who used to relish the trip and looked on it as a challenge: to venture boldly into the den of scoundrels, as he called it; then to badger and bargain with the shopkeepers, tease and mock them, their produce, their habits, but always preserving the correct tone that trod the narrow line between badinage and belligerence; and finally, to emerge unscathed and triumphant, banner held high, having got the better of the rogues. Unlike his father, who enjoyed this game, Gustad felt intimidated by Crawford Market.

Perhaps it was due to their different circumstances: his father always accompanied by at least one servant, arriving and leaving by taxi; Gustad alone, with his meagre wallet and worn basket lined with newspaper to soak up meat juices that could start dripping in the bus, causing embarrassment or, worse still, angry protests from vegetarian passengers. Throughout the trip he felt anxious and guilty — felt that in his basket was something deadlier than a bomb. For was he not carrying the potential source of Hindu-Muslim riots? Riots which often started due to offences of the flesh, usually of porcine or bovine origins?

For Gustad, Crawford Market held no charms. It was a dirty, smelly, overcrowded place where the floors were slippery with animal ooze and vegetable waste, where the cavernous hall of meat was dark and forbidding, with huge, wicked-looking meat hooks hanging from the ceiling (some empty, some with sides of beef — the empty ones more threatening) and the butchers trying various tacks to snare a customer — now importuning or wheedling, then boasting of the excellence of their meat while issuing dire warnings about the taintedness of their rivals’, and always at the top of their voices. In the dim light and smelly air abuzz with bold and bellicose flies, everything acquired a menacing edge: the butchers’ voices, hoarse from their incessant bellowings; the runnels of sweat streaming down their faces and bare arms on to their sticky, crimson-stained vests and loongis; the sight and smell of blood (sometimes trickling, sometimes coagulated) and bone (gory, or stripped to whiteness); and the constant, sinister flash of a meat cleaver or butcher’s knife which, more often than not, was brandished in the vendor’s wild hand as he bargained and gesticulated.