Jaspreet Singh: Chef

‘She’ll bring the tea here only,’ he said.

‘Really I am in a hurry,’ I said.

The man remained quiet. I imagined her in the kitchen with her samovar, something amazing that I heard came from the Russians.

‘Does she go to college?’ I asked.

‘Sister was a brilliant student,’ he said.

‘What field?’

‘Bee farmer,’ he said.

‘Bee farmer?’

‘B. Pharma,’ he said. ‘Bachelor of Pharmaceutical. She had to discontinue because of the turmoil in the valley.’

‘I would like to get to know her,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I can go to cinema or theater with her?’

He cleared his throat and stared at me as if I had come from some other planet, and told me that the cinema houses (except the military theatre) had long been shut down because of the turmoil. Kashmir is not now what it used to be, he said.

The woman returned to the room and bent low and left the tea tray on a small table. This time she made a somewhat prolonged eye contact with me. Her face was very fair. Eyes cold blue. Lips, the color of apples.

‘Fast,’ said the brother.

She poured tea into two cups, chipped at the top. My cup cracked the moment it came in contact with hot fluid. I remember the sound of water being poured, the silence of water dripping on the carpet. But my hostess’s face revealed no embarrassment. Keeping her gaze fixed on the carpet she recited a couplet in Urdu:

Es ghar ki kya deekh bhal karain, roz cheese koi nai toot jatea hai?

How does one take care of this house, every day some new thing breaks apart?

The poem cheered me up, and yet her brother looked angry. She ran to the kitchen and fetched a brand-new cup. It seemed the thing was meant for very special guests. I drank the kehva tea greedily. It was delicious! Strands of saffron floated on top, releasing the color. It had come right out of the samovar and the brew was strong. I detected crushed cardamoms, kagzee almonds, and asked myself: why is it that places with the worst possible hygiene manage to manufacture the best possible tea?

‘The tea is la’zeez,’ he said. ‘Delicious!’

‘Why is she not sitting with us?’

‘She is in the kitchen,’ he said.

‘I, too, spend most of my time in kitchen,’ I said.

‘Let me be very upfront about your situation,’ he said. ‘I have no objections.’

‘What do you mean no objections?’

‘No objections to marriage.’

‘Marriage?’ I clarified. ‘Whose marriage?’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said, ‘let us have a conversation. If you want to marry her, I have no objections.’

The tea was very good.

He gulped down his cup. ‘I do not like too much Indian military presence in the valley. Despite this I am happy you have a steady job. Will you marry my sister?’

‘I need time,’ I said.

‘No problem,’ he said.

I stood up with the cup in my hand and he rose to his feet. He pointed his index finger towards the calligraphy on the wall. I walked closer to read clearly.

‘This word means peace,’ I said.

‘I am surprised,’ he said.

‘I attend Sunday language classes.’

I thought he was going to thank me for learning his language. But he didn’t have the decency to do so, no meharbani, no shukriya, nothing; instead he started praising the language into which he was born, how beautiful it was, how elegant.

‘Kashmiri is the language of poetry,’ he said.

‘There is no such thing as the language of poetry,’ I corrected him. ‘Poetry can be written in all languages. No language is inferior. When I peel an onion in the kitchen there is poetry in it.’

‘You are not entirely wrong,’ he said.

It was then I felt the pressing need to pose the question:

‘So, you do not care about religion?’

‘I hope you have no problem converting to Islam,’ he said. ‘Because that is absolutely necessary for the wedding. You must first convert to Islam. Of course when I approached you by the river I knew you were born into a Sikh family. But I know one decent Sikh boy who converted because he fell in love with a Kashmiri Muslim girl.’

I took my last sip.

‘Good tea,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t the tea good?’

‘The tea was excellent,’ I said. ‘Salaam-alaikum.’

‘Valaikum-salaam,’ he said.

I hurried back to General Sahib’s residence. There were more leaves on the street now than on the trees. The wind tossed them and turned them and swirled them and blew them back to the khaki barracks. Rubiya was playing barefoot on the lawns of the residence with her black dog. I felt like talking to her, but the ayah was also present.

The ayah was certainly attractive, a Goan. Her eyes glowed like pods of tamarind. The General’s daughter was very attached to her. Because she had access to all the rooms in the residence the ayah thought she had fallen on this Earth as a superior being. She treated me as if I didn’t matter; only a bit higher than the sweeper, who drank tea from a separate cup. She would shield Rubiya from all the male members of the staff, including Chef. But I really felt for the girl because she was without a mother and her father was absent most of the time. Rubiya was not even allowed to order her own food. From a distance the sense I got was that Rubiya was shy, always hiding under the bed or table. But tell me, I would ask the ayah, what is the girl really like? This is not your concern, she would respond.

‘Rubiya refuses to eat the red beans I cook for her?’ I asked. We were standing just outside the kitchen.

‘Razma reminds her of kidneys.’

‘What is wrong with kidneys?’

‘Kidneys make urine.’

‘What?’

‘Pee-pee,’ she said.

‘Please don’t talk such things. I am cooking.’

‘I must. The girl just can’t digest your beans.’

Rubiya’s gas problem was solved by adding heeng to the dish. The English word for heeng is asafetida. I like the sound of ‘heeng’ better. The ayah preferred ‘asafetida’… One day she approached me on the verandah. She had a huge cleavage and her sari smiled with the weight of it. There was a little comb in her hand. I was plucking dhaniya leaves on the verandah, and the ayah asked me why I looked so unhappy. Is Rubiya sleeping in her room? I asked. Yes, yes. But we are talking about you, and she started combing her hair from side to side and probed me further about my unhappiness, and I told her to look down at the valley below. Look down at the parade ground, I said. See the troops marching in the parade ground. Young boys are learning techniques from older experienced boys. Learning warfare. Jumping. Crawling. Shooting. Aiming. Marching.

Then she asked me, what was it I wanted to learn exactly?

I said I really wanted to learn how to have sex, and perhaps someone like you could teach me? She stopped smiling. Have you gone crazy? she said.

I stepped out for a long walk by the river in the valley. Red leaves floated on the water, flowing as far as the mountains that belonged to the enemy. Later that night I drank rum in the barracks. A soldier told me: ‘Your only chance, Kip, is with the nurse in the hospital. She is a forward woman. A man like you deserves a forward woman, Major. She is ideal, Major.’

I don’t understand.

I-d-e-a-l W-o-m-a-n M-a-j-or.

Why am I thinking about these things? Life is withering away, and I should bring to mind only the essential matters. God. Reincarnation. Matters like that. Not food. Not women. Not even ravishing women. Not even women who understand the body, like the nurse. She took her afternoon breaks in the Mughal garden. One day without telling Chef I cycled all the way to say hello to her. There was a chill in the air. The garden was terraced, a royal pavilion in the middle, water flowed in straight lines and fell from one impatient chute to the next before entering the lake at the bottom. Locking my cycle by the gates I noticed she was standing on the uppermost terrace, not far from the ruined wall, smoking a cigarette. I waved. She beckoned me. The garden was filled with tourists and languages I didn’t understand. She leaned against the wall as I walked closer. There was a brittle red-and-black leaf stuck in her hair.