Indian Takeaway (27 page)

It soon transpired of course that we were in the wrong Mr Muker’s house. Tea had been drunk and sweetmeats consumed, and most crucially gifts had been given. The wrong gifts to the wrong children. My father hoped that his laughter would be infectious. Never before had laughter been so uncontagious. We stood up, my father muttering apologies but saying how nice it was to have met Mr Muker anyway.

As we got to the door, my father said that at least now he would have no worries of troubles should he ever require the assistance of the commissioner of traffic for New Delhi. By the look on Mr Muker’s face at that point, I reckoned the safest thing for my father to have done would have been never to have travelled in New Delhi again for fear of a personal vendetta against him.

We stepped over the threshold and the relief was almost palpable. As the door closed behind us, my father turned and asked Mr Muker if we could have the gifts back. Thankfully he duly obliged. After all, we still had to visit the real Mr Muker. I don’t ever remember visiting the real Mr Muker. Perhaps we never did.

Tonight I feel like I felt all those years ago; an interloper bringing unsolicited gifts to the wrong people. They are just too polite to say anything. Yamina, who has studied social and political science at Cambridge, asks what’s to be served for dinner.

‘Shepherd’s pie,’ I blurt, hoping that the speed of my saying it will somehow disguise the nature of the dish.

‘God, I hope it’s better than the one we had at Cambridge.’

I was hoping that perhaps they’d had limited exposure to shepherd’s pie. It’s so much more difficult to be critical when
you have no benchmark. It feels like it’s going to be a long night.

Small talk becomes big talk and the evening degenerates into a heated debate about the political state of arts within India. I hope that people will drink themselves into a state of forgetfulness and there would be no need for me to serve dinner.

‘I’m starving,’ says Lucky, helpfully. I look at her and know I have to do the necessary.

As we eat the shepherd’s pie there is talk of the resurgence of independent cinema in India and we continue vociferous exchanges about the westernisation of India. Lisa reaches down and takes a bottle of Tabasco out of her bag, placing it next to her empty plate.

‘I always carry this with me. Everywhere. Even in fancy restaurants in Miami. This is the first time in ten years I haven’t added Tabasco to a meal. I even forgot I had it with me … ’

Yadesh, who has met Yamina at their time together at Cambridge, is not a fan of British food.

‘I loved Britain, but really they have to sort out their food,’ he says affectionately about the cuisine of my country of origin.

‘I am British,’ I say.

‘You were born there. You are Indian really.’ He tucks in to the next mouthful of food. ‘They really do cook some bland English shit.’

It is clear from his implication that he isn’t referring to my shepherd’s pie as bland English shit.

‘You don’t mean my food, do you?’ I tease playfully. ‘Because my food would be described as bland Scottish shit.’

It is very strange, but at this very moment, as the laughter and the chat ring around my ears, I am overcome with a very simple and straightforward notion. As far as these Indians are
concerned I’m not British; pure and simple. I have simply been born there. They have very little expectation of me in terms of understanding contemporary Indian life. They see me as the son of a man who was born in India. This is very confusing. I have spent the evening feeling very different to these people, to my Indian contemporaries. It is quite revealing for me to feel so very British, so very Scottish on the roof terrace of a third-floor apartment in a desirable neighbourhood in New Delhi, yet be regarded as completely Indian by these Indians. There is no point in arguing about it. This is their perception and I have to try and make some sense of it.

The next time I look up, all the plates are empty. But my heart feels full.

Later that evening I meet up with Rovi again. He takes me for a late-night kebab. This has become a bit of an institution between our families, a roadside kebab on every visit. We stand eating at the makeshift table enjoying the silence of men.

‘Rovi,’ I ask, mid-mouthful. ‘Do you think of me as Indian or British?’

Rovi chews and ponders, ponders and chews.

‘Hardeep,’ he says sweetly, ‘you are neither Indian nor British. You are just Hardeep.’

I think it’s the best answer he could ever give.

3
03 things I counted in New Delhi
Train Station

A man in a wheelchair wearing a neck brace, in his pyjamas
and carrying a Zimmer frame.

A one-legged man carrying a newly boxed Tefal electric steamer on his head.

A woman falling backwards out of a slowly moving train, perhaps realising it was heading in the wrong destination. She takes with her several fellow travellers who were more than happy with their direction of travel.

Three hundred rats across ten metres of railway track (big fat rats, as big as small cats, which is technically even bigger than a kitten).

From my Indian train experiences, I’ve learnt by now that there seems to be some unwritten code, some unspoken convention whereby at the appointed hour all the passengers in the compartment stand up and start to prepare their beds for the night. This is in no small part driven by the fact that if one person is preparing their bunk it renders the rest of the compartment useless to casual nut chewing and gossip. On the train from Delhi
to Jammu, I have luckily been booked on the lower bunk and unfurl my two white sheets and thick wool blanket.

Soon I am off to sleep, even before the carriage lights are extinguished. But it is a short-lived visit to the land they call nod, and after a couple of hours of blissful ignorance I am again in a state of wide-awake consciousness as the train rocks gently northward into the night.

Signs on the train from Delhi to Jammu

The interminable night eventually passes. I feel like the only man on the planet still awake. The train has started pulling into stations where a few passengers alight. The delay has caused an air of uncertainty in every quarter of every compartment in every carriage. There are no announcements and not all the signs in the stations are particularly clear. A young man, still half asleep, jumps from the third bunk, dervish-like collecting his belongings and simultaneously tucking in his shirt for fear that the train may depart with him still on it. I have no idea how late we are since I have no idea where we actually are; there’s no point in asking the name of the station since it bears no relationship to any geography in my head. It’s already past 8 a. m., so we are definitely late; it’s simply a question of how late. I doze a little for the next couple of hours, and we eventually arrive in Jammu a little after ten.

Only five hours late. I console myself with the notion that it could have been worse.

Srinagar is a place I must visit on this journey for a number of reasons. I once spent an idyllic summer here on one of the trips my father brought me on. My dad’s sister Harminder, or Minder as she is colloquially known, married Pritam Singh, a fiercely proud member of the Indian Army. Pritam rose to the heady rank of colonel, and in reaching such heights found himself and his family stationed in Srinagar. The summer of 1981 was spent with Pritam Singh and Minder Aunty and their three kids Sonu, Jonu and Monu. (Their real names are Jaspreet, Harpreet and Mandeep respectively. Quite how the nicknames of Sonu, Jonu and Monu were arrived at is a dark art of familial nomenclature of which I have no understanding.)

Srinagar is possibly the most disputed city of Partition, which in one sense puts it at the very heart of the nation of India. Soon after Partition tribal warlords from Pakistan, backed by the newly formed Pakistan Army, invaded the city and tried to claim it. Indian troops were flown in and eventually the invading hordes repelled. Since then, Srinagar has always been regarded as a cause celebre by the Indians, a city freed from aggressive Islam, the jewel in the new crown of India. The reality however belies such a reason for celebration. More than three quarters of the city’s population wish to be Pakistani.

If I am searching for some sense of myself, for some sense of home, then Srinagar might be a place to begin to understand my confusion over the collision of my identity. Srinagar is a mirror to my soul when it comes to matters of duality. If I am trying to understand what part of me is Indian and what part British, is there anywhere better to understand that than in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir? This is a place where people have fought and died for their sense of self, and continue to fight for their right of political and cultural self-
determination. Maybe I can learn a little of my Indianness here; and maybe that might help me grapple with my Britishness.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I arrived in Jammu. My overriding memory as a child was of driving up through the mountains, listening to Queen’s
Greatest Hits
, which had just been released. Thinking back now it seems hilarious that we thought Queen were so quintessentially British; little did we know that Freddie Mercury’s real name was Farrokh Bulsara and he was in fact from a north Indian family. He assiduously kept his ethnicity, his identity, secret. Yet we should have known; all those tight white vests and the oversized moustache: others might have interpreted it differently, but to me he was so very obviously Indian! Freddie Mercury presented a version of himself to the world, a version that belied his heritage. I can’t help wondering whether I am a little guilty of a similar crime.

My dad speaks with great fondness of the stunning natural beauty of the region; he has spent much time in and around Srinagar, walking the foothills of the Himalayas and trekking on religious pilgrimages. He’s not actually at all religious: I think he just really likes travelling and walking. I am now here as much for him as for me. It’s as far north in India as is safe to travel; by safe I mean war-zone safe. Politicians are geniuses at the art of euphemism – ‘conflict’, ‘troubles’, ‘border disputes’ – employing all sorts of language to cloak the reality that India and Pakistan are still at war with each other about the line of control. Things have improved discernibly of late, but nonetheless, the two countries have hundreds of thousands of troops lined up, facing each other. Every now and again it kicks off. It is sad that the stage for this quiet war happens to be one of the most beautiful places on this planet. But then, as Colonel Pritam Singh used to say, ‘No one fights for anything
ugly, do they?’ He had a point. Not much of one. But he did have a point.

And this is the first thing that hits me in Jammu station. Wherever I turn, wherever I look, there are soldiers. The station itself seems to be run by the military. It is said that more than half the Indian Army is stationed in this state. It is also said that the generals refuse to countenance any deal for autonomy with Pakistan or with the people of Jammu and Kashmir since any such change would leave the Indian Army with very little to do, thereby eroding its power base within the political sphere. Such is the world of politics. It seems crazy to me, a Scot who has some sympathy for the ever more vocal voice of Scottish independence, that India forces the overwhelming majority of a state to be part of a country they have no desire to be part of. But what do I know? I still hope Scotland will march over the River Tweed and liberate Berwick from the English!

I have been instructed to find a Sumo to drive me to Srinagar. A Sumo is the brand name of a seven-seater Jeep much used in India and is exactly the sort of vehicle that can deal with the mountainous terrain ahead. I like the notion of being inside a Japanese wrestler. The Sumo system is quite simple. They charge 300 rupees per traveller for the journey; 2,100 for a full load. They then proceed to fill their Sumos with all-comers on a first come, first served basis, whether individuals, couples or entire families with luggage. To maximise space within, the luggage is placed on the roof rack, in best Indian tradition. Think of it as a tombola taxi – you may get lucky, you may not. I am feeling lucky; I am quite taken with the idea of making the journey with an assortment of Kashmiri strangers, overhearing conversations and sharing my own monosyllabic Hindi stories.

Wandering out of the station I ask a soldier where the Sumos are to be found. He points me down some stairs to the car park where there are indeed scores of them; but no drivers. I walk around looking like a lost tourist when I happen upon a small taxi office, fiendishly hidden behind a hut, underneath a weeping tree, as if intentionally to escape observation. In my best broken Hindi/bad Punjabi I find out that only a handful of Sumos are prepared to make the trip to Srinagar. Two have already left, the supervisor chappie tells me. I have paid the price for not sprinting headlong out of the station and making immediately for the Sumos. Obviously the few moments I lost asking the soldier where the Sumos were has proved costly. It’s irritating but nothing can be done about it. I will need to wait for more passengers to make up the numbers. How many more? Six more. I am the only chump still looking for a ride to Srinagar.

I find the next Sumo allotted to leave and sit in the front seat, making myself comfortable. The driver places my small suitcase on top; it looks so lonely up there on its own. I sit and I wait. If a Kashmiri crow were to fly from Jammu to Srinagar, it is probably no more than a 200km journey, if that. But I have chosen to give over the next eight hours of my life to a journey that will take me round and round, up and down through mountains in ever-decreasing circles until I finally arrive in Srinagar. It will be an epic journey; I am quite keen for it to start.

But half an hour later my case is still the only case on the roof rack, and I am still the only passenger. The driver busies himself preparing the rickety old Sumo for the journey. He notices that my fulsome Punjabi Glaswegian arse is warming both the front passenger bench seats. He tells me that someone else will be sat next to me on the journey. I tell him not to
worry since I am happy to pay for both; there’s no way I could have another individual sat so close to me for that length of time: not without first having bought them dinner, or at least a cocktail. The driver tells me that he has to wait for passengers from more trains. Given the unreliability of service and the fact that I am keen to complete my journey up the side of a steep mountain on a narrow, badly built road peopled by maniacs driving in daylight, I consider my options. I will wait a little longer …