Jaspreet Singh - Chef

The girls start laughing again. I feel very tired. Their laughter reminds me of the bleak laughter of the Kashmiri people. They are real jokers, the Kashmiris. I hear them everywhere. Impossible to escape them. The Kashmiri laughter wounds me wherever I go. Kashmir was a beautiful place and we have made a bloody mess of it. Will the Kashmiris, too, lose compassion for us Indians? I ask myself. Will I lose compassion towards certain people?

There are, and there were, people who occupied my mind all the time – and they ruined me. They made me what I am today, and I bow before them, and am thankful, but, it is certain, these people have also managed to ruin me. They had a weakness for giving commands and I had a weakness for accepting them more or less. Sometimes just to please them I would do whatever they felt like doing and I would pretend I liked whatever they liked. Chef used to go biking and I would say I too like biking but really if I could help it I would have slept longer, there was so little time to sleep in the army.

I wish I had a mind of my own, a free mind. I wish I had led a life separate from influence. I was like a child, and my fingers were in the hands of two or three important people and they pulled me this way or that.

After Chef died I did not read the papers for a while. But when I did, there was no story about him anyway. He died for a big nothing. There was nothing on TV. The press and the media had reported nothing to the nation. That is why I think in the larger scheme of things the man died for one big nothing.

On the other hand there were reports about the colonel who had staged fake battles on the glacier, and filmed them, to get a gallantry medal. The papers were also filled with ongoing talk about the coffin scam. But there was no mention of Kishen. The government censored the story. Chef’s fate was similar to the fate of the Pakistani troops and officers who died in the war. Pakistan had sent them to India posed as freedom fighters, and when they died Pakistan did not even acknowledge them as dead soldiers. Muslim troops in our regiments buried the dead Pakistani soldiers, because the enemy army refused to accept the bodies back. Pakistan maintained a fiction. They had to. And what Chef said that morning during his address on the glacier was the truth, but we had to maintain the lie. In the barracks rumors flowed like rum. But after his first suicide attempt, people started saying they did not know him at all. Those who had consumed his delicacies started saying Kishen? Who is Kishen? He was the most serious and sincere of us all. But he was dead. Not a single watch lost a second in our country. This country produced him. This miserable, melancholic, cowdungofacountry produced him. Then it took him away. He did not kill himself. It killed him.

Now this is killing me.

The reason I wanted to read the papers and watch TV was to find out how his parents and loved ones had responded. Not to get the details I already knew, but to find out about his family. I walked to the hospital, and I saw the nurse in white. She was always in white, but that day the color took special significance.

She knew he was gone. And she was expecting me. She asked me if Chef had mentioned her.

I did not respond.

She wept. She held my arm and wept.

‘He talked about you a lot,’ I said. ‘He only talked about you.’

‘Was the fire an accident?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I lied, ‘it was a kitchen accident.’

‘What a way to die,’ she said.

She was grieving him. But I do not think anyone should grieve him. For once he did exactly what he felt like doing. He had designed the complete menu. It was a perfect glacier meal. Chef dared to question the universe.

He questioned the Siachen coffin scam and the ration scam, which ran into five thousand crore millions of rupees, I didn’t tell her. The colonel, the brigadier, the major general and other senior officers involved in the scams were not even charged. Instead they received early retirement with full pension and benefits. Now they run big hotels and malls, and reside in fashionable glass towers and drive yellow Hummers. Two or three represent our country in foreign lands as ambassadors. Isn’t this the biggest shame on this earth that the man who wanted to improve the army is forgotten, not even acknowledged, and the men who destroyed it every month receive fat pension checks and benefits? Why was I born in this country?

The cancer that has grown inside me is not my fault. This country caused it. Despite that it has no shame. There are voices inside me, voices of people close to me, and they keep saying that I am personally responsible for bringing the disease and illness on myself. But it is not my fault at all.

I walked to the ladies ward. There was no one inside. Normally when Irem was not there, her shoes or at least her few belongings were visible under the metal bed. Now the ward was empty. I stood by Irem’s bed. Her name and number were gone and insects were climbing the wall. The nurse told me that the captive had been moved elsewhere.

‘Where?’

She did not know.

‘They are looking for you.’

‘For me?’

‘You must report at the colonel’s office.’

There was a fog and I followed the gravel road to the khaki office building. The colonel was alone in the room, so I did not have to wait long. His office orderly announced me, and although the colonel didn’t look up I marched in anyway. His cap was lying on his desk, and he was reading a thick file.

‘Jai Hind, sir,’ I said.

No response.

I noticed the circles left on his desk by cups of chai and coffee.

I coughed.

Suddenly he raised his head, stared at me and snapped his fingers and asked the office orderly to bring the thing. I noticed the colonel’s trussed jacket, his curly hair. Coconut oil glistened on the curls.

The orderly unlocked the Godrej almirah in the room, and pulled out the thing.

‘Play it.’

The orderly played my tape recorder.

‘We confiscated this from the enemy woman in the hospital ward,’ said the colonel.

‘Sir.’

‘You gave the enemy woman this American music?’

‘German music, sir.’

‘Yes, yes, I know. The enemy played it again and again for two full days – very loud – this music. Why did you give it to her?’

‘Sir, I thought, sir, music would ease the tension. General Sahib had asked me, sir, to conduct interrogations delicately, sir.’

‘The interrogations are over, Kirpal.’

‘Sir.’

‘This was a serious breach of order, Kirpal. I am giving you the last warning. General Kumar knew your Father Sahib. I knew him too. He was our finest officer. You have been pardoned because of your father. This must never happen again. Understand?’

Then he buried his face in the file again. I looked at the tea and coffee circles on the desk, and his cap. After a while I coughed.

‘You are still here?’

‘Sir, where is the woman sir?’

‘Woman?’

‘The enemy woman, sir?’

‘Not here.’

‘Sir.’

‘Dismiss.’

I now know the name of the music she heard. Chef Kishen had received that tape from Chef Muller in the German embassy during his training, but he did not know the title of the music. For many years I did not know the title either. It was only last year I found out. I visited the German embassy in Delhi. The yellow-haired girl at the embassy sent me to Goethe House, where the music librarian asked me to sing that piece of music.

I tried.

TUH-dee TUH-dee

TA-deeee TA-deeee

TUH-dee TUH-dee

TA-deeee TA-deeee

‘Try again,’ she said.

Daam Dum De-daaam De-daaam

Daam Dum De-daaam De-daaam

‘One more time,’ she said.

‘This one goes slowly,’ I said.