Indian Takeaway (20 page)

I fry off half moons of red onion. I am astonished that a restaurant as good as this seems to be has no fresh herbs to speak of. I search high and low and ask the man who appears to be the head chef. He nods sagely, before leading me to a small cupboard where he shows me a bunch of dried mint, a small amount of thyme and a teaspoonful of dried oregano. None of them look particularly fresh. That is the extent of their herb offering. I forgo the herb component to the gravy
jus
. I add a good glass of the house red which is unremarkable in the extreme. I let this all bubble and reduce and then thicken the whole thing in the French style with a mixture of butter and plain flour (hopefully it is plain flour). I don’t think the chefs have ever witnessed anything like this and confusion chases fear across their faces. The gravy is ready and will sit bubbling away for another ten minutes.

I should have chosen someone less forthright and honest than Bharat Shetty to come and eat with me, but I had limited options. Given the uncertainty of the type of flour used in my batter I could be inviting a great deal more abuse upon myself than I would have readily expected. Bharat’s head pops round the door.

‘Hey, man. What’s happening? I’m starving.’

‘Hey. Nearly done. Just taking the toad out of the oven.’

I am nervous. I was hoping that I could secretly remove the toad and if it had been a complete disaster I could have manufactured an ‘accident’, letting the dish tumble towards the hard floor, shattering into a million pieces. No one would ever have known about the flour error. But now Bharat is standing there, watching, waiting, hoping.

‘I’m hungry, man. Let’s do it.’

I steel myself. I haven’t opened the oven for thirty-five minutes. It could now be full of mutant toad in the hole. The oven door is opened …

Hallelujah! It must have been plain flour. I must look like a Nobel Prize winner as I lift the toad in the hole out of the oven and onto the counter.

‘Amazing,’ I say, completely to myself.

Bharat looks underwhelmed.

I serve the toad, which doesn’t look too shabby, and pour over the onion sauce type gravy
jus
thing. Everything is correctly seasoned and I can honestly say that given the circumstances I couldn’t have done any better. It tastes even more delicious since I wasn’t altogether sure there would be anything edible to eat. I’m sure I see Tommy the owner lurking somewhere in the shadows; his aunt must have cancelled. Suffice to say Bharat tastes and nods.

‘Well?’ I ask hopefully.

‘They do very good king prawns here, man,’ he says as he pushes the full plate of toad in the hole and onion gravy
jus
to one side. He has had a solitary mouthful. ‘Big king prawns in coconut and chilli. Hey, waiter!’ Bharat proceeds to order the aforementioned king prawns, leaving my hard-fought toad in the hole uneaten and forgotten.

As the waiter takes our order and removes Bharat’s barely eaten plate of British food, I think about the meal I had originally planned to cook, the call centre adventure. I am sure that would have had a happier ending. What have I learnt from feeding Bharat? Nothing, if I am to be honest. I really wish that I had the chance to feed the new young Indians instead of this, tired and well-travelled, but lovely, Indian. You win some, you lose some. And this feels like a loss.

Later that evening, back at Bharat’s place, I stood on the terrace, watching the city below. I felt strangely confused. I
should have felt much more at home in Bangalore; Bharat and I have been friends for many years, the city was hardly new to me. But much as I knew India was changing, the rapidity of the change was difficult to comprehend. And that change was an international, global change. The very nature of the country was being altered by outside influence. I had hoped that I would come to Bangalore and somehow understand how the two sides of my life met; Bangalore seemed the perfect place to learn about this. That is what the call centre would have given me. Instead I ended up relying on Bharat who is himself part of old India, the country’s past rather than its future. Perhaps the twenty-something graduates who spend all their lives talking to the rest of the English-speaking world would have embraced my toad in the hole in a more international manner, without feeling the need to order king prawns in a coconut chilli sauce. If I thought I was going to find anything of myself with Bharat, then I was sadly deluded.

I was left with an overwhelming sense of sadness. I felt as if I had taken a backward step. Mani and the tranquillity of Mamallapuram, the myriad of searching questions and the sound of the sea were not only a different India, but in truth a different country. It was almost as if the entire journey was an attempt for me to fight my Britishness, hide my own self. Mani saw me as an outsider and would have happily accepted me as such. Perhaps the problem was mine. Why did I feel the need to apologise for being British when in India, and apologise for being Indian when in Britain?

Bangalore left me wondering whether the east and the west could truly combine in a symbiotically balanced state; that and mourning the fact that my toad in the hole was such an unappreciated failure.

T
here’s a hierarchy you need to understand about Punjabis. It’s sort of a modern-day caste system that imposes status. The theory is this: the further you have emigrated from that small village of your birth in deepest darkest Punjab, the better you have become as a person. Those Punjabis who wandered off to Delhi look down on the agrarian Punjabis who stayed at home and tilled the land and milked the cows; the Delhi Punjabis are in turn looked down upon by the Bombay and Bangalore Punjabis, and so on.

The East African Punjabis believe themselves to be God’s chosen people; those in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania look down not only on all Punjabis but on all peoples. This dynamic is all too immediate in my own family since my father is a Punjab Punjabi and my mother is from Nairobi. Some time before the Second World War my maternal grandfather was posted to Kenya by the British to work on the railways as a guard. He had four children: Malkit; Surinder, the lone son; my mother, Kuldip; and Jassi, the youngest. It was after Malkit Massi was born that my grandfather was told of the impending move to Nairobi, where his remaining three children were to be born. Since my grandfather’s brother had not been blessed with children it was decided that Malkit, then no more than four, should be left with her paternal uncle to be brought up as
their child. My grandfather and grandmother left the Punjab and their first born for a new life in Kenya. Malkit stayed in India until she was eighteen when my grandfather went to bring her back. The family was complete again, all six of them, but only for a few years until my grandmother’s untimely passing. Malkit, a veritable stranger to her siblings, ended up as the matriarch, her teenage years cut short by the necessity of family. That is the story of my mother’s childhood.

We talk about incredible journeys; this book is an immense journey. But it’s only when I look back on the lives of my parents that I realise the true extent of ‘journey’. I might travel for days in trains across thousands of Indian miles, but how can that compare to the personal journey of my mother? Born during the Second World War in a colonial outpost, she found herself at the age of twenty, married and in Delhi, only to move to London two years later and finally settle in windswept Glasgow. That is a journey. From the shacks of Nairobi to a palatial terraced house just off the Great Western Road. Raj, Sanj and I can barely contemplate the changes our parents have witnessed during their nomadic continent-crossing existence. And they are still reasonable, kind and loving people. I wonder if I would maintain such poise and equanimity.

My parents learnt about themselves, about their lives through the journeys they were compelled to make in an attempt to give their children a better life. I feel a little self-indulgent at this point in my journey when I reflect on how it is something I have chosen to undertake rather than been forced to make. What can I really learn by gallivanting around India? There is no economic imperative to what I am doing. I am not seeking a better life for my family. I am simply indulging the desire of
a westerner, since that is what I am. I am a westerner, travelling India in search of myself.

Two overnight train journeys totalling about thirty-seven hours of travel over less than half a week have begun to take their toll on my poise and clarity of thought. I have caught a cold and like any man I find myself on the very precipice of death itself; at any moment I could tumble over leaving life behind me, coughing and spluttering with a blocked nose all the way into the ravine below. Bangalore to Goa looked like being another overnight escapade, another journey full of incident and accident, in a Volvo bus. I couldn’t face it, I’m afraid. Another
2001: Space Odyssey
moment and another burly Sikh movie star with a shotgun and a forklift truck? No. I have stayed in Bangalore an extra night and opted for the early afternoon Jet Airways flight to Goa. As opposed to the nine-hour bus ride I would have a sixty-minute flight followed by a similar car journey. I should be at Carmona beach by early evening and eating a pork-based Portuguese-inspired curry by no later than eight o’clock.

Bangalore airport’s departure lounge was once a surprisingly small affair. That is no longer the case, and the cosmopolitan nature of the passing travellers reflects the changing nature of the city. There is a genuine buzzy excitement here. On the way to the airport, Bharat, who kindly offered to drive me, told me that, like Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, Bangalore is in the throes of reverting to its original Kanada name of Bangaluru. Irony of ironies, as the city becomes more international, more global, more part of the economic colonialisation of India, it is simultaneously unknotting itself from its direct colonial past,
filling the void with a newfound sense of optimism. The next time I land in this city, it will be into Bangaluru International Airport.

I’ve always thought that an airport is a snapshot of a city in terms of its aspirations and dreams; it is often the first and last impression a visitor has of a city and a country. And nowhere is this more pronounced than in India where airports are being thrown up and renovated with alarming speed and regularity. The airport at Bangalore was merely a domestic terminal a decade and a half ago. Now it has morphed into an ever-increasing gateway of international business opportunity.

I wander about the departure gate, my stomach getting the better of me, as usual. I’m peckish, unnecessarily so considering how much I have consumed in the last few days. This is yet more astonishing considering the fact that I have a cold and should really not have the slightest pang of hunger. Clearly I have hidden depths of greed that can overcome even the worst of medical conditions.

I wander over to the food kiosk and survey my options. The gleamingly clean glass-topped counters call out to me. There are snacks from every gamut of the Indian inter-meal offering: the pakora, the samosa, the spiced sandwich, the bhaji, the puff, the idli, the dosa. I survey every option, secretly wanting them all but knowing that even my belly would fail to accommodate that. But my eyes are especially taken by a snack known as an aloo boondi. Does snacking get any better than this? Imagine spiced, mashed potato enhanced with freshly chopped chillies and coriander; these balls of delight are then enveloped in a gram-flour batter and deep fried. A homage to the carbohydrate. These delights invariably find themselves served with a punchy, tangy tamarind chutney or even a mint sauce. Delicious. As I gaze longingly at the boondi through
the glass I realise that I must have them; I simply must. I feel a cosmic sense of oneness with them, a deep sensation of déjà vu. Perhaps I was predestined to nibble on this snack? Perhaps it was written in some other place that this potato morsel and I would come together as one at this place, at this time. I feel as if I was simply meant to be here. I am overcome with an inexplicable familiarity with this sight. I have been here before, witnessed this before. But where?

Then I remember: the image of the rat in the airport food kiosk thrust before me by the bearded pastor on the train to Madras. It was this airport, this very kiosk, maybe even these very boondi.

Unbelievable.

Unsurprisingly the edge from my hunger has been removed quick-smart.

No sooner has our plane taken off than the pilot is preparing us for landing. The briefest of flights. The bluest of skies. The whitest of clouds. Perhaps Goa will be the destination of superlatives? Certainly the airport isn’t; it is surprisingly small and compact for a city that sees so much passenger traffic. Taxis and touts wait outside in the baking heat, sensing fresh, cotton-clad blood. But this is late July, low season, and there are only a handful of westerners ripe for fleecing, and they too seem slightly more savvy than most. The look of collective disappointment is one well worth watching. There’s nothing quite like a tout scorned.

I opt for the non air-conditioned cab which will save me the princely sum of 300 rupees. For 650 rupees I can open the window and stick my head out. I will have the wind in my beard and the sun on my face. Or the sun in my beard and the wind on my face. Either way, my face and beard and the wind and the sun will be involved.

The road to Carmona is good. We pass through lush, verdant forests and bisect tiny villages, some no more than a handful of shacks. Every now and again an expansive colonial-style bungalow appears, its gaily painted exterior of pink, purple, orange or blue failing to hide the otherwise faded grandeur. Since it is both low season and election time a lot of the shops are shuttered, some of the tinier hamlets completely bereft of activity. As the journey unfolds, deeper into Goa, my single initial impression is how strong Christianity is in this part of India. On the sun visors of cars, on the bonnets of cars, on shop hoardings, Christianity is everywhere. We pass St Jude’s garage where three moustachioed men grapple with a motorbike. Roadside crosses mark the route and every now and again appears a caged shrine and a handful of believers paying their respects. This couldn’t be less like any India I have known.

And it couldn’t be less like the India I just left. Bangalore is a city that keeps thriving and blossoming and growing with a youthful exuberance, a jewel in the crown of the modern subcontinent. Nothing could be more of a contrast than Goa. It is a beach paradise, a quirky and unique place within India. For many years it was the country’s best kept secret. Now that the secret is out I wonder for how much longer Goa can maintain that mystical, enigmatic state of being.

I should explain that there are two Goas: the tourist Goa and the real Goa. I have been to the tourist Goa before, to the north, and frankly it felt more like the Costa Del Goa rather than the magical, mysterious paradise of India. That Goa I found upsettingly un-Indian. It might have been Magaluf, Dubai or anywhere but India. I have never been to South Goa, the place Indians go on holiday. Perhaps that Goa, Indian Goa, holds the last vestiges of mystical enigma. When I was drawing up my itinerary Dad was in two minds about whether Goa would be
meaningful. He felt that Goa was the Indian equivalent to a Scottish shortbread tin; it’s not that he doesn’t like shortbread, he just doesn’t feel that a man in a kilt on a tartan backdrop is particularly typical of the experience of Scotland. Similarly he wasn’t altogether sure what I would garner from Goa. He felt the collision of tourism and the ever-rampant free market had tainted every Goan nook and cranny. And why not? India should not be any different to any other nation when it comes to crass, flesh-displaying drunkards who use the strength of their exchange rate to re-colonialise poorer countries.

This was one reason I was keen to come to South Goa: I thought that in trying to understand my own duality, in attempting to come to terms with my own sense of ‘home’, as someone quintessentially British, I should come to the place where so many of my fellow Brits come as they search for answers. I’m not sure whether I will find any answers here but I am certainly hoping to leave with another set of questions.

There is a second reason: I am very keen to try pork vindaloo. I am even hungrier for it now, having been thwarted in Cochin. Growing up it was impossible to find pork cooked in an Indian style. This was in part because most Indian restaurants in the UK were run by Muslims, a religion for which the pig is regarded as too unclean to eat. We Sikhs think nothing of tucking into all things porcine and luckily my parents have always been fond of that which is widely regarded as the ‘king of meats’. Pork was cooked and enjoyed at home. But that was Punjabi-style pork, delicious but not the best way to prepare pig meat. When I reached my late teens and started to explore and read about food myself, I learnt from a lady on TV called Madhur Jaffrey that there was a Goan way of preparing pork. Pork vindaloo crashed into my consciousness and ever since I’ve had the avowed intent of searching out this dish and devouring it. The
last time I was in Goa for a couple of days and the pork was hard to find. The word vindaloo itself has been hijacked by the Indian restaurant scene. I wish to reclaim it again for the Goans. A modest task, I think you’ll agree.