Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

This new lesson, though, was devoted to nothing but the techniques of enjoyment. It was like being let loose with the paint box after years of dutiful copying and colouring inside the lines.

No ‘curry’ Mum had ever made at home prepared me for the benign blast of taste. One of my fellow patients at CRX, Sarah, claimed that curry would kill anyone who hadn’t been exposed to it in infancy (as she had, having been born in India). Now, despite my wayward choice of birth-place, my palate was being naturalised.

I consoled myself for any ineptness in my eating manners with the thought that at least my hands were clean. What sort of state must Raghu’s right hand be in by now! All sticky and foul. As if he was reading my mind, he said:

‘Observe, John, and remember well how to tell the mark of an educated Indian. A country person will get the food smudged all over his hand but … Observe!’ Here he flourished his hand like a magician. ‘Look at my hand. The fingertips have food on them, but the palms are perfectly clean and dry. Go on, take a look … Feel.’

I looked. And then I felt. Raghu’s palms were perfect, not only clean and dry but smooth and warm. My pleasure in the food and the way my hosts approached it was intensified by the good fortune of having Kashi sit opposite me. Raghu was distinguished, but Kashi was — the verbal chime made the assessment even more irresistible — dishy. I spent much of the meal making (I dare say) sheep’s eyes at him (though the phrase in my mind, thanks to a loving German physiotherapist at CRX, was Kuh Augen ). It doesn’t count as ogling if you just look at what’s in front of you. If he’d been badly placed at table I wouldn’t have been able to see him at all without much furtive wriggling or manœuvring of the wheelchair.

Kashi for his part flashed his eyes at me. I don’t mean that he flashed them with knowledge and purpose, but he flashed them just the same. That was the sort of eyes he had, the flashing sort. He couldn’t help it, and it would hardly make him unique if he had a dash of the flirt in his make-up, and the reflex or habit of making conquests socially. His slim fingers deftly raided the carousel of delights.

I managed to notice, out of the corner of my eye, despite the visual and culinary distractions of dinner, that Sumati waited until we had finished eating before she put even the first morsel in her own mouth. I wondered whether this was a formal etiquette prompted by my presence, or if the same submissive routine governed every family meal. If so then it was part of the same etiquette that made her accept an unannounced guest without a murmur. Travellers in strange lands must take care not to end up like those cartoon characters who cheerfully saw through the tree-branch they’re sitting on.

The whole exhausting, exhilarating evening made me realise that if the word ‘family’ was enough to describe the doings and feelings of the Cromers, then I would have to find another one to describe the Gaitondes.

I had been relieved to discover that in this mixed household the plumbing was as Westernised as Raghu, rather than as Indian as Sumati. Mum had warned me to expect nothing but holes in the ground buzzing with flies, and until I had seen for myself I couldn’t altogether laugh off those baleful sanitary prophecies. I paid little visits to the lavatory with help from Kashi, who would wait tactfully outside.

I wouldn’t have dreamed of going abroad without being able to administer the business of defæcation properly. By now I fancied myself something of a Zen master at the relevant origami, and I could make myself perfectly clean with a single lotus blossom of folded tissue (four leaves intertwined). If I enjoyed repeating the process with a fresh flower when I had time, it was partly because I was imagining the rapt admiration of an audience, in a bathroom version of Raghu’s demonstration at the meal-table.

Now I asked if I might be given some extra help in the bathroom before I went to bed. Raghu frowned and said, ‘I wonder who would be the right person to help you with that.’ He seemed to be running through a list in his mind, of people whose possible duties might include helping with the bedtime preparations of a surprise guest. There were servants in the household, and I imagined one might be detailed to help me, but Raghu’s hesitation made me think again.

For one heart-stopping moment I thought the choice was going to fall on Kashi. My heart would stop because we would be alone in an enclosed space, and I would be able to smell the traces of sambhar on his elegant fingertips. On the other hand he would be able to smell the after-odour of my bowels, perfumed by spices which my body had no history of processing.

Raghu’s brow cleared and he said with great good humour, ‘The right person seems to be me. It is I.’ Once we were in the bathroom, he lit a joss-stick, wetting it first. When I asked why, he explained this enhanced the fragrance, made it more aromatic. The sweet smoke gave the hygienic proceedings an overtone of luxury and ritual. It had the added benefit of combining two of the smells of Dad’s garden, for which I felt an unexpected pang: roses and bonfires. Then Raghu asked me what to do, and managed remarkably well. I can’t think there was any area of his life in which similar chores were expected of him. I very much doubt if he had ever performed the same offices for Chu-cha.

Of course the novelty was symmetrical. I myself was used to being tended to by women. Dad didn’t greatly involve himself in this aspect of my life, bodily maintenance from day to day.

Raghu washed me very tenderly. I told him I had brought a flannel, but he said very decisively, ‘There is nothing filthier in the whole world than a flannel. Take my word for it. Direct washing is the only way.’

At first I was embarrassed and made small talk, very much for my benefit rather than his. At any moment I felt I was going to come out with the hoariest Queen-of-England question of all — ‘And what do you do?’ As if the Queen had ever really tried to answer that question herself.

I complimented Ragu on the excellence of his English. ‘I too have travelled, you know, John, and even to England. In fact I was “pulling pints” in a pub in the North of England when you must have been a small boy. If you put a bottle of White Shield in my hand this moment, I would still know how to angle the neck in order to keep the sediment back from the glass. Some things you don’t forget.’ It was splendid that he knew what he was talking about, even if I didn’t. ‘The locals couldn’t get their tongues round Raghu, so I was “Reg” for the duration. Then my father had a stroke and that was that.’ He didn’t go into details, and I didn’t know whether to ask any further.

Did I have a defective social picture of India? Truer to admit that I had no social picture at all. For me the subcontinent held equal numbers of Maharajahs and untouchables, clustered round that single point of light which was my guru — the double star made by the guru and the mountain as they pooled their cosmic fire. Raghu and his family didn’t seem to fit in with this scheme. They seemed to be prosperous merchants of some sort. I managed to cast my question in marginally more refined terms than the Queen’s. ‘What is the family business, if you don’t mind me asking?’ I was balancing against the basin at the time, while he washed me.

Raghu didn’t look up. ‘Naturally I don’t mind. Gaitonde and Company are well-established as manufacturers of leather goods.’

It was good that Raghu was taken up with his chosen task, or he would have seen a look of utter bafflement on my face. The Indian leather manufacturer seemed the stuff of jokes, the equivalent of the contraceptive machine in the Vatican basement.