Jaspreet Singh - Chef

She stood next to the fridge and I next to the sink.

‘We don’t have much time,’ she said. ‘Now tell me -’

‘Yes, Memsahib.’

‘What have you heard about me?’

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘Tell me.’

‘Nothing.’

‘Liar,’ she said. ‘Your father was different.’

‘So far nothing, Memsahib.’

‘In that case soon you will start hearing things.’

‘Yes, Memsahib.’

‘I am like your Aunty,’ she said.

‘Yes, Memsahib.’

‘Understand?’

‘I do.’

‘What did you hear?’

‘If I hear things about you I will shut my ears.’

‘You will shut your ears?’

‘Yes, yes, Memsahib.’

‘Show me how.’

I put fingers in my ears. I felt like a child.

‘Shut your eyes as well,’ she said.

I did exactly as I was told. I closed my eyes.

I heard her steps approaching me. Yet I felt uncertain. Then I felt her sari touch my shirt, and for a brief second she stabbed me with her pointed breasts. Then she stepped back and started slapping my face with the back of her hand. Left cheek. Right. Left again.

‘Aunty!’ I opened my eyes.

‘Don’t return,’ she said. ‘You are like a son to me.’

She rushed to the next room and said something inane to the ADC and they resumed the dance lessons.

I took the long way home to General Sahib’s residence. Wet inside my pants, I felt like running. Instead, I slowed down. The chants and slogans of the Kashmiris demonstrating in the city kept insulting my ears, and I could not shut them out.

Two days later in the kitchen. I watched from behind the curtain, General Sahib was alone in the dining room with the colonel’s wife. She was looking beautiful, her voice carried on waves of laughter. The colonel was supposed to be there, too, both had been invited, but Sahib dispatched him for an emergency law-and-order meeting with the Police Chief and the Governor.

The English they were speaking was fluent, with good idiom. Lunch was ready. Kebabs and rumali rotis. They were about to start when the red phone rang. Chef, he was standing close to the phone, answered.

‘General Kumar’s residence.’

Sahib: ‘Who is it?’

Chef: ‘Sir, the Prime Minister’s secretary is on the line… the PM would like to talk to you… Matter is urgent, sir.’

Sahib: ‘Is he on the line?’

Chef: ‘Sir, the secretary will now tell the PM you are available. She has asked me, sir, to tell you not to move away from the phone, sir.’

For ten minutes there was absolute silence in the residence. It was hard for the colonel’s wife to remain silent, but she too was silent.

Chef walked to the dining table on the tips of his toes to cover the dishes. That was the loudest sound during those ten minutes.

The secretary called again.

Chef: ‘PM is on the line, sir.’

He stood glued to the dining table during the phone coversation. Later Chef shared with us in the kitchen the key details. The PM had basically told the General to locate and restore the holy relic to its proper place within forty-eight hours, no questions asked. The police failed to deliver so I am asking the army to take over, the PM had said.

Never before had the General looked so worried and anxious, Chef told us back in the kitchen. Sahib’s face acquired the look of a man who had just been ordered (for the first time in his life) to slaughter a little goat. He scratched his head, plucked his hair while talking on the phone.

‘Sir,’ said the General to the PM. ‘We will do our best, sir. Yes, sir… No, sir… It will be done, sir.’ Right after the call ended he picked up the kebab on the table and for a long time kept moving the thing from left to right in his mouth without swallowing it.

‘What now?’ asked the colonel’s wife.

Sahib kept working on the kebab.

No one to this day knows how and where the vial containing the relic was found. But after forty-eight hours calm was restored. The army faced one more hurdle. Before the relic could be installed in the mosque, it had to be validated.

The mosque named five holy imams to validate the holy relic. They were flown to Srinagar on DC-3 Dakota planes. Their job was to determine if the hair in the vial was authentic.

The General’s ADC asked us in the kitchen to prepare a proper meal for the clerics. It is important to make them appreciate the high quality of our dishes. The ADC stared right through me during the conversation. Chef told me after: this is your real test, kid. The recruitment test was a fake. At this critical moment in my career and your career and General Sahib’s career, and at this critical juncture of Kashmir’s relationship with India, what food would you prepare?

‘Authentic Kashmiri,’ I suggested.

‘In that case,’ he said, ‘we will have to become Muslims.’

‘Convert to Islam?’

‘Of course. Yes.’

‘Chef is not serious.’

‘Chef is serious.’

‘If cooking Muslim food in the kitchen is going to establish peace in the country then I am willing to convert for a day,’ I said.

‘Bewakuf,’ he said. ‘Idiot.’

Chef cooked Muslim Kashmiri delicacies with his own hands passionately and with great care, like a wazwan. Who taught him? I asked. Later, he said, I will tell you later, you Sikh. But he never did. For me it was a god-sent opportunity to learn the exotic cuisine, the names of Kashmiri Muslim dishes (thirty-six to be exact) unfamiliar to me, some right out of a fairy tale. I knew the Hindu Kashmiri dishes, but they were different. Certain Muslim dishes involved pounding the meat for seven or eight hours until it separated into fibres as thin as silk. We cooked in a tent pitched in the garden behind the mosque. I am still able to recall the copper vessels and slow fire. I remember setting up the long dining table under the plane tree. Tarami plates. White linens fluttering in the wind.

Food was served. Fenugreek gosht. Nadir kebab. Aloobukhara korma. Goat tails. Haakh saag. Tabak maaz. Dum aloo. Rista-63. Gushtaba. Saffron pilaf in the middle. Shirmal. Rumali roti, yellow and thin like a two-day-old newspaper. No part of the tablecloth was uncovered.

They were about to start.

But.

The chief cleric asked the General to beckon the ‘cook’. The cleric said: I want to have a word with the ‘cook’.

Chef put on his military (jungle) hat and asked me to accompany him. I adjusted my black turban and buttoned up my white jacket. We walked together to the tree and stood before the table, silently, waiting. The colonel of the regiment, sitting on the left of General Sahib, said, ‘Kishen, Pir Sahib would like to ask you a question.’ The imam was sitting on the right of the General.

Chef stood confidently, just a bit ahead of me, his hands clasped behind his back.

The imam opened his mouth. I only want to double-check if the meat used in Rogan Josh is halal? he inquired.

I sighed in relief. Chef reassured the imam and the other clerics that the meat used was pure halal, but he didn’t stop there. He uttered a few things, a few extra things, which I think ruined him.

This is what he said, I hear those words even now: One hundred percent halal was used, sir, we procured the meat from a genuine Muslim shop in Lal Chowk. Many interesting dishes can be prepared with pork, sir – whether it is halal or not. But we did not use pork. Only lamb was used, sir. Personally I am not for slaughtering pigs.

The situation around the table grew tense. The imam looked as if he was about to vomit.

General: Pork has not been used?

Chef: Lamb meat was used, sir.

General Sahib looked at the imams, then at the colonel of the regiment.

Colonel: No pork has been used, sir.