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.
‘Did you finish your lunch already?’ I asked.
‘Generally I skip lunches,’ she said.
She was wearing a pretty salwar-kameez with flowery designs, and I said that the kameez and the white hospital coat looked
funtoosh
on her, and she smiled and asked why I was wearing a bangle, and I explained that it was not a
bangle
at all, the thing on my right wrist was actually a steel bracelet. All Sikh boys and girls wear the bracelet, I said. It looks
cool
on you, she said. What do you mean? I asked. In America, she explained, when something looks funtoosh on you, they say
it looks cool on you
. Thank you, I said and tried to hold her hand, but she frowned and said, ‘Touching this way doesn’t look nice.’ I didn’t know what to say, I felt I had done something very
uncool
, then for no reason I muttered a few words about the cold Kashmiri weather, and the sadness of Kashmir. This whole place is so beautiful, I said, and yet it is so sad. Look at the barren fruit orchards, the mountains, the lake which has been invaded by weeds. The temples, the mosques, the empty houses, the ruins – everything is sad. I sense a mingling of sadnesses here, I said. It seems as if all the people of Kashmir and all the people who come here, everyone is sad. It is not just a single person (like me) who is sad, rather the situation in the city sprouts the feeling of sadness in everyone. When one is unhappy one doesn’t even enjoy the food one cooks, the basic things in life, I said. One forgets how to love, and life is so short. What are you talking about? she asked. Sadness, I said.
Back in the kitchen, I stood by the window. The plane trees were bare now. The words she had uttered
doesn’t look nice
and
what are you talking about
and
it looks cool
left me anxious and happy at the same time, for there was still hope, for I had not lost her completely, for despite her lukewarm response she had not said a complete
no
and I felt a deep desire to transform the slim hope to reality.
That night in our bedroom Chef poured beer into two tall glasses. The beer was not bad at all. We clinked the glasses the way officers do. Cheers, I said.
‘You speak such good Inglish,’ he said. ‘Were you trying to impress the nurse?’
‘I was only talking.’
So he had seen us together.
‘Nurses do not like softies. Inglish or no Inglish.’
‘Me?’
‘You still don’t know how to handle a knife.’
‘Sir, I will . . . work hard.’
‘Look at me in the eye. Certain things cannot be changed, Kirpal. An officer’s son can never stop being a softie. You see, when I was a boy I found certain smells disgusting. I was repelled by the smell of fenugreek and bitter gourd. Now I have overcome that repulsion, in fact I have come to love the very same smells I hated as a boy. But, certain smells continue to be repulsive.’
‘Like what, sir?’
‘Kashmiris,’ he said. ‘Badboo –’
I ignored him. To distract him I said, ‘Sir, I would like to cook like you!’
He tasted the foam of beer, and flexed his muscles and the veins of his right forearm bulged. There was a tattoo on his arm, his name in green letters in Hindi. He wore a khaki shirt, the buttons open, underneath no banian and the hair on his chest was a forest of black-and-white curlicues.
‘Do you want to replace me?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Replace me,’ he said. ‘I want you to learn all I know. The day your training is over, Gen Sahib will promote me. He has promised.’
‘What rank would that be, sir, when you become an officer?’
‘That of a captain,’ he said, and put his tattooed arm around my shoulder, and stroked my cheek.
‘When will my training end?’ I asked.
Chef hopped on to his bed.
‘The day you lose your virginity,’ he said.
‘Pardon me, Chef?’
‘The smell of a woman is thousand times better than cooking the most sumptuous dinner, kid.’
‘I would not know, Chef.’ I felt embarrassed.
‘Come sit next to me,’ he said.
He took another swig of beer.
‘Have you ever gone down on a woman?’
I lowered my gaze. He slapped my thigh.
‘You see, when I was younger I found the smell down there disgusting. Now I have overcome that repulsion, in fact I have come to love the very same smells I hated when I was young.’
I gulped down my glass of beer without stopping for breath. He pulled his red journal from under the pillow and showed me a dirty picture.
‘Look at this,’ he said.
Below the sketch there were long passages in Hindi and Punjabi.
‘Chef, what have you written in there?’
‘None of your business,’ he said. ‘Pay attention to the picture!’
‘I am looking,’ I said.
‘She is a memsahib,’ he laughed.
‘Yessir.’
‘Did you ever kiss a memsahib?’ he mumbled. ‘Give me another Kingfisher.’
When he fell asleep I surveyed the empty beer glasses. Chef groaned in his bed. His naked chest heaved up and down. There was a strange rhythm to his muscles. I spent the night eating berries. In Kashmir everything tastes of fruit. The days tasted of apples and the nights of bittersweet berries. I ate them very slowly, one by one.