Indian Takeaway (14 page)

It seems as though the fates have further conspired against me. Both the markets are shut, inexplicably on a Friday. I am
running out of options. What am I going to cook? My mind is a blank canvas that has been white-washed further still, just in case the residue of a past idea should remain somewhere hidden in its fibre. I am utterly at a loss.

Then I see a vegetable stall man pushing his barrow of produce. It is laden with aubergines. Tens of beautiful aubergines. Maybe even a hundred of the spherically purple delights. Perhaps this is the divine karmic contact I have been waiting for?

India is a massive country. Actually it ought not to be a country, the way the USSR was never a country. Disparate peoples seem somehow to be held together by the few things they share rather than the myriad of things that separate them. One of the things I believe that Indians share is the way they feel about their vegetables. I already have experience of northern Indian towns and cities, and so far in the south and the east of India the same vegephilia seems to be present. The Indian housewife sends her maid out to purchase vegetables from the legion of men with carts that line every street of the country. These carts are flat-topped on large wheels; the sort of cart that has existed since shortly after the wheel was discovered. Atop these carts sit an array of beautifully presented vegetables. And while the range of produce may be limited on each cart, the supply seems plentiful. Tomatoes, lovingly cleaned and pyramidically placed, reaching skyward; Indian onions, intensely purple in the low afternoon sun; perfectly round cabbages placed neatly in rows. I cannot stress how wonderful these arrangements look, these temples of colour every few yards down a busy street. It says a great deal for the pride of the vendors, the way they display their wares. And what makes the experience even more intense for me is that I know that if I were to journey back, some hours after the moon has chased the sun out of the sky, these selfsame vendors would be asleep
on their carts, now empty of vegetables. They live where they work. For me that is a poetry of sorts.

We make for the nearest vegetable stall. There is an abundance of aubergines in front of me. Baby aubergines, perfect for stuffing with spices before being fried with potatoes. Large, rotund aubergines, best for slicing and coating in a gram of flour batter before being deep fried and turned into pakoras. White aubergines, a vegetable I have absolutely no food-based knowledge of whatsoever. I am surrounded by almost every variety and type of aubergine. It is as if I have died and gone to aubergine heaven where the aubergine angels are singing. I announce to Jeremy that I have settled on my evening repast. It isn’t complicated, it isn’t fancy; there would be no seviching of anything nor the rustling up of a buerre blanc. But it was attainable and would allow me to make for Bangalore with my head held not high, but certainly above the mid-mast position. My plan is simple. Make a babaganoush with these skinny aubergines; babaganoush is a smoked aubergine dip, much beloved in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Lemon juice, garlic and parsley conspire to create a smoky spiky herby dip. My mother-in-law makes an Indian version that is a brilliant accompaniment to lamb curry and inspired me to serve my rendition with roast lamb. It’s well worth a try.

There is a knock on my door. We are back at Jeremy’s yoga school and I have been dozing. The knocking on my door continues, softly but definitely. As the door is so close to my bed I answer, still in the process of opening my eyes and dressed only in a lunghi (a sarong-like wrap-around Indian skirt; my preferred choice of evening wear and very masculine). Suresh
stands in front of me, looking enigmatically content, his kind eyes twinkling unremittingly at me. He is accompanied by a woman and two young girls. I stand there, turban-less and topless with no glasses on, as Suresh introduces the ladies to me. I patiently wait for his unfolding explanation. It transpires that word got round that some Britisher was coming to cook. This woman owns a small restaurant in Mysore proper and she is keen to see how the Britisher would cook. The last thing I was expecting was an audience. The silver lining to this cloud is the addition of another three mouths to be fed; hopefully.

I start prepping in the kitchen. It’s not a massive space but more than big enough for my aubergine delights. There’s a three-ring burner. I turn the two bigger burners on and place the long aubergines directly onto the flame. There are muttered Kannada phrases between mother and daughters. The cooking lady looks on from behind; I can’t read her face to gain any sort of approval rating. I’m still slightly annoyed by her vetoing of meat and chicken and her unwitting destruction of my plan to concoct a Lancashire hotpot. The aubergine skins start to blister and burn. Large aubergines take as long as twenty minutes because not only does the skin need to burn to impart that deliciously smoky aroma, the interior flesh needs to cook. These skinny little articles should be done in minutes. I start chopping an onion and put a pan of water on to blanch and skin the tomatoes.

I fry the other aubergines, having salted and sliced them. It’s an old Indian trick to draw the bitter water out of aubergines, courgettes and cucumber. Top them and sprinkle some salt on the flat surface; put the top back on again and rub it down on the salt. Leave them to rest, top and salt intact for a few minutes. The flavour change is unbelievable; it also means that
when it comes to frying there is less water in the aubergines and so a crispness can be achieved.

As I’m slicing and salting, four pairs of intense brown eyes are fixed on me. The occasional mumbled whisper or girlish laugh is the only sound to break the silence. I realise that it is very rare for these women to see a man in the kitchen, let alone cooking in one. I ask the mother. She agrees. Few Indian men like to cook. A lot of Indian men like to eat. She and I laugh as she explains the joke to her daughters and the old cook.

I muster up half a dozen plates of pan-fried baby aubergine and paneer with a chilli babaganoush dressing served on a rich tomato and garlic sauce. I have to say that my ability to overcome adversity in the face of a vegetarian meal is laudable. And as much as pan-fried aubergine with a chilli babaganoush dressing is yet another not-very-British meal, it is nonetheless a meal. I stand in the crowded kitchen watching them eat, unsure at first but eventually accepting the flavours into their mouths. I realise that the food isn’t terrible. Anna, the surly-looking Spanish yoga student, spits a mouthful of the aubergine out.

‘It is too spicy!’ she screams as she flees the kitchen. I can tell from the complete and utter lack of reaction from the others that they have become used to this sort of behaviour from her.

‘How is it, Jeremy?’ I ask a little nervously, wishing that he had proffered an immediate opinion rather than wait for my probing.

He ponders a moment and chews. ‘It’s not bad. But it would have been nice if you had cooked some meat like you said you were going to.’

I nearly fall off my feet at this point. I can’t believe his gall. I want to blurt out all sorts of words and phrases and expletives in my defence. Of course it would have been nice if I had
cooked some meat. It would have been nicest for me, since I hate cooking vegetables. But rather than explode in an anti-yoga tirade of abuse, I have a moment of the most beautiful clarity. As I look at Jeremy, self-absorbed, self-obsessed Jeremy, I realise that this India, Jeremy’s India, is no more than a façade. While on the face of it he has come to find something out about himself, it is actually just
all
about himself. He seems to have little love for or interest in the country. India merely suits him and this annoys me. Jeremy is just another colonist, like the waves of colonists who came to India and raped her of her resources. The only difference with Jeremy is that he is colonising the country’s spirituality rather than her economy. Perhaps I am being a tad hypocritical. What am I doing here but furthering my own, selfish needs? Am I so very different from Jeremy? I think the crucial difference is that I am not a magical, mystical tourist who can choose to leave the country and break my links. My links are lines of heritage. Even in Mysore (a place none of my Punjabi forbears are ever likely to have visited), I feel an innate sense of India and Indianness.

My mum holds me in a moment of uncharacteristic stillness (on my part) outside the house in Wembley. Raj is held by the big fella. Now you see where I get my sense of style from.

Me, lodged between Raj and my dad. My only memory of sitting on the wall.

Don’t I look great in red? My mum looking more like Eartha Kitt than Eartha Kitt did.

Little Sanj, or ‘Sniff’, as we called him, fooling around in Bishopbriggs. My dad in a rare moment of tactile affection. See how much better I look with a turban and beard?

The gun is in fact loaded – the joys of holidaying in the Punjab. A few hours later we were eating curried pigeon (none of which were successfully killed by me).