Jaspreet Singh: Chef

Kashmir. It was my first time, and I found the place different from the way Delhi-wallahs describe it, as paradise, or shadow of paradise. I was a young man, but old enough to separate romance from reality. There was thick fog and it was very cold. I did not have a proper jacket. I had arrived with only one suitcase and the recruitment letter in my pocket. By the time I stood on the lawns of the General’s residence the sound of the train had simply disappeared from my mind. A uniformed man accompanied me from the gate-posts to Sahib’s residence, the Command House, located on a hill overlooking the golf course. I must have waited for half an hour on the lawns. I thought I was going to die of cold when a middle-aged man stepped out of the house. He was wearing an apron. The hair on his head was closely cropped. His face, clean-shaven with thin eyebrows, ears unusually long. The man’s body had a muscular appeal to it. A black dog trotted ahead of him. The dog came to sniff me. I touched its muzzle.

‘How old is he?’ I asked.

‘We are all growing old,’ the man said. ‘Fourteen, maybe, the dog is fourteen.’

‘How long do dogs live, sir?’

He did not answer, but took off slowly in the wind towards a patch of vegetable garden, fencing around it. He opened a little wooden gate and shut it. The dog circumambulated the fence while on the other side the man stooped and plucked leaves of what to me looked like fenugreek or coriander. How the vegetables grew in the extreme cold was beyond my imagination.

‘Come.’ He asked me to follow him.

I handed him the recruitment paper.

‘Not now,’ he said.

On the way to the kitchen the man patted me on my back. He was an inch or two taller than me. Something about that pat made me feel uncomfortable.

‘Follow me,’ he said. ‘The General’s ADC has told me about you. He has given me the instructions.’

‘What do I call you, sir?’

‘I am Chef.’

‘Sir.’

‘Call me Chef Kishen.’

‘Sir.’

‘Just call me Chef.’

‘Yessir.’

‘Follow me with your luggage,’ he said.

We entered his room, which was between the kitchen and the servants’ quarters. The place reeked of shaving cream; cuttings from Hindi newspapers covered the walls: photos of Bombay actresses in revealing saris, including my favorite, Waheeda. On the side table a tape recorder was playing music unfamiliar to my ears. German music, he said. I wouldn’t have imagined, I said. Does this bother you? No sir. Top mewjik, he said. There were two beds side by side, and they formed a huge shadow on the floor. The square shadow on the wall came from the tape recorder. Chef pointed towards the smaller bed. Suddenly my body felt the exhaustion of a long journey. I dumped my suitcase and sat down on the bed.

‘Not now,’ he said. ‘Keep following.’

The kitchen. Scent of cumin, ajwain and cardamom. On the table, a little pile of nutmeg. Thick, oily vapor rose from the pot on the stove. The room was warm and spacious, the window high and wide. Tiny drops of condensation covered the top of the glass. Smoke soared towards the ceiling in shafts of light. I noticed many shiny pots and pans hanging on the whitewashed walls. And strings of lal mirchi, and idli makers, and thalis, and conical molds for kulfi. In the corner the tandoor was ready. Its orange glow stirred in the utensils on the walls. I walked to the oven and stooped over. A wave of heat hit my cheeks. It was then he put his arm around my shoulder and took me towards the dining room. He said, ‘Kitchen without a memsahib is a nice place to work in.’

‘Sir.’

‘See that woman looking down at us?’

‘Sir.’

‘She was the memsahib.’

The painting was seven or eight feet tall, and so was the beautiful woman. Her eyes were big and wide open. Her brows, fearless. Skin, the color of cinnamon. She was wrapped in a graceful red sari.

‘Sahib used to love her as if she were a Mughal queen and she in turn loved him the way she loved her dog.’

‘Sir.’

‘She loved me too.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What do you mean yes, sir? She was a bitch. Memsahibs is people that controls the kitchen. She counted spoons. She counted to test the reliability of staff. That woman banned cooking without a shirt on, and I had to wear at least a banian in her presence. Aprons appeared suddenly. She cooked the dessert herself on Tuesdays and made me taste it and one wrong (but honest) word would make that woman swear in English. It was hard for me. The hardest thing to do is to hold my tongue, Kirpal.’

‘Sir.’

‘That woman refused to change recipes. To disturb a recipe is to disturb the soul of the dead, she would say.’

Right then I heard loud voices coming towards the kitchen from other rooms. The bell rang for service. Chef replaced the server out on a cigarette break and dashed into Sahib’s room with the tray of tea and samosas. The samosas smelled of pork. Sahib is fond of pork, he said before leaving the kitchen. There was rhythm in his legs. In Sahib’s room I will also take ardor for dinner. He pronounced ‘order’ as ardor. It was one of the few English words in his vocabulary.

I soon learned about him. Chef had joined the army as an ordinary soldier, and after an injury in the war he was sent to the Officers’ Mess. During a meeting of the middle brass of the regiment he had committed his first error. He had refused to serve tea to a Muslim officer.

‘I refused tea to that man,’ said Chef. ‘The problem with those people is that they smell. Badboo. That is why. The colonel showed me his teeth and reprimanded me severely. I was transferred to the kitchen as a dishwasher, but within a few months I bounced back. I made the kitchen my territory and impressed the officers with my above average culinary abilities. The brigadier of the regiment chose me for a four-month training course in international cuisine conducted by the foreign embassies in Delhi. German, French, Chinese, Italian, Szechuan noodles, linguine with clam sauce, lamb provençal, Pavlova – that kind of food. You see, if I had not refused to serve tea to the Muslim officer I would never have become a chef. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

It is almost midnight. The train picked up speed close to Panipat Station. The light in the ceiling is flickering. A miniature fan swivels and hurls hot air. Not a single thought I have is peaceful. The screeching sound of metal against metal competes with passengers pushing and jostling even at this insane hour. A child lowers the window, raises it again. Her parents are stirring in their sleep, mouths half open. Their faces move left to right and right to left as if to a pendulum. Diagonally across from me a honeymooning couple is sitting underneath brightly colored bags. The wife is young and pretty. (A white jasmine tucked in her hair.) I like the nape of her neck, and henna on hands. Her husband, in brown corduroy, is glued to the World Cup cricket commentary. It must be day in Australia. He is holding the transistor radio close to his ear. Now and then he lifts his free hand and runs a finger through the brand-new wife’s hair. Such displays of emotion were not possible in public when I was a young man.

She asks him to turn off the radio; he smiles and raises the volume. The peasants sitting next to him applaud: they too would like to know the score. The child on my right yawns. She is no longer playing her window game. The cricket commentary is interrupted by commercials and the hourly news. The newscaster’s voice is convent-educated. Some would say sexy.

She begins with late-night news about the American President.

The President stunned our nation today by visiting the Gandhi Peace Memorial. Despite this gesture many of our countrymen are demonstrating in front of the American embassy in Delhi. The people have taken offence to dogs. This is what happened: yesterday just before the President’s visit the security-wallahs tested the site with sniffer dogs. The people feel that the dogs have desecrated the site. Some are also angry and shocked because the Prime Minister of our country was frisked by the American bodyguards (on Indian soil) before he was allowed to shake hands with the President, said the newscaster. Last night at the state banquet the President delivered a speech saying that America was definitely going to sign the nuclear deal with India, and his country was also going to allow the import of Indian mangoes. Now that is interesting, I say to myself.