No Full Stops in India Read online

  Margaret agreed that she would do the cookbook, and Chandre, seeing that we were all utterly determined to get him in the kitchen, agreed to serve an apprenticeship under Mamaji. It soon became apparent that Chandre knew much more about cooking than he had admitted. It also emerged that Chandre was not totally illiterate, and after a few months he took charge of the cookbook too.

  It is now ten years since Garib died and Chandre took over. Margaret and I are separated – a matter of great sadness to Chandre and Mamaji, but they get on very well with Gilly who lives with me. Chandre's style is very unorthodox, but I wouldn't change him for the best-trained servant in India, and his cooking is superb.

  Chandre, like all good servants, is the real ruler of the house. If I go to sleep again after his early-morning knock, he'll say, ‘I thought you had a lot to drink last night.’ In the evening, he gives me an old-fashioned look if I move on from beer to whisky. Chandre won't allow me to serve drinks to my guests: he says, ‘Sahib, I am the servant in this house and this is my job.’ Towards the end of the evening he sometimes comes and joins in the conversation, leaning on a bookcase which divides the room. He doesn't say much unless the conversation turns to religion, as it does from time to time. Then he will often express his certainty that there is a god up there. Chandre controls my eating as well as my drinking. As soon as breakfast is over he'll insist on knowing what's wanted for lunch, and as soon as that's over I have to turn my attention to dinner. He is in charge of the cookbook, and nothing comes before keeping that up to date and in funds. Chandre doesn't have it all his own way – Mrs Garib gives as good as she gets in the kitchen – but basically Chandre is the boss.

  He's at his most imperious when keeping unwanted guests away. In India, a man's home is very much not his castle: everyone feels free to call at all times. I much prefer this to the nuclear family and the formality of Britain, but there are times when I have seen enough of someone – or indeed of everyone. Then Chandre comes into his own, lying with the utmost conviction to keep unwanted intruders out. There was, for instance, the occasion when the car was parked around the corner and all the lights were off in the flat downstairs, to give the impression we were out. We were actually sitting watching television upstairs in the office. Even upstairs we heard the impatient hammering on the front door, but we weren't worried because we were sure Chandre would deal with the intruders. A few minutes later Chandre came upstairs, looking slightly unsure of himself.

  ‘Sahib, when I went to the door I found a lot of people in khaki with guns. I thought the police had come, so I was very worried and I thought of shutting the door. Then I thought, supposing they get annoyed? We don't want to get taken to the police station. So I came to ask you what to do.’

  I couldn't think of any reason for the police to come to get me, but in India it's always best to stay on the right side of the law so I told Chandre to go down and ask them whether their business couldn't wait until tomorrow because I was very busy broadcasting to London. I find that this is usually quite an effective excuse. Chandre was soon back again for more advice.

  ‘Sahib, I can't tell them to go away,’ he said. ‘They are the security guards for Chaudhuri Devi Lal – he has come to see you.’

  I agreed with Chandre that we could not turn the redoubtable chaudhuri, or headman, away, and so I went down to welcome him and apologize for the delay.

  Chaudhuri Devi Lal was then the chief minister of Haryana and was soon to become the deputy prime minister. At seventy-five, he is the patriarch of the Jats, the Indian farming caste which dominates the villages surrounding Delhi. Some six feet two inches tall, broadly built, with a good head of white hair and a deep gravelly voice, he is every inch a leader. The chaudhuri is hated by the élite because he is proud of his rural background and makes no pretence to the sort of sophistication they admire.

  Chandre always remembers another occasion when Chaudhuri Sahib came to call. This time it was breakfast. Chandre had laid on what we all thought would please the chaudhuri's rustic tastes – egg brujia (a sort of spiced scrambled egg), a vegetable curry, lassi (liquefied curd) and crisply fried parathas. All seemed to go well until Chaudhuri Sahib said to Gilly, ‘These are very good parathas. What oil do you use?’

  ‘Groundnut oil,’ replied Gilly.

  The chaudhuri hurriedly dropped his half-eaten paratha. In a shocked tone he said, ‘You don't use ghi.’ Then, realizing that he had to provide some excuse for not finishing his meal, he said, ‘You know, my doctor has told me to restrict my diet.’ In towns ghi is considered a luxury, but to a self-respecting farmer it's the only acceptable cooking medium.

  Devi Lal never came to breakfast again, but this hasn't spoilt our friendship, though Chandre is disappointed that the chaudhuri didn't find time to come to the house after becoming deputy prime minister.

  Chandre really comes into his own when there is a big party and we have to call in outside caterers. Then he regards it as his job to see that the bearers don't get drunk or remove too many bottles for themselves. Chandre can also produce a meal under the most adverse circumstances. Corbett Park, the national park just below the foothills of the Himalayas, is better known for its tigers than for its cuisine. We take Chandre with us whenever we go, because even without a kitchen his performance far outstrips that of the cooks working for the contractor who runs the café there. One evening, after he had reluctantly been for an elephant ride and seen a tiger, Chandre was crouched over a kerosene stove outside our quarters. Suddenly the pots behind him clattered. Chandre turned, saw two green eyes staring at him in the semidarkness and ran inside. When we came back we found the cooking pots all higgledy-piggledy, our dinner spilt on the floor and no sign of Chandre. We shouted for him and he came out looking shaken. ‘Sahib, a tiger came,’ he said. ‘I saw his eyes. So I ran.’

  My son Pat was not convinced, and said, ‘Chandre, if a tiger came into this compound there would have been a hell of a hangama [uproar]. There are so many people here. They would have seen it.’

  But Chandre insisted that it was a tiger. Pat, who was tired after a day in the jungle, went into his room and threw himself on to his bed. There was a sharp hiss and Chandre's tiger shot out of the door. Chandre had got the family right, but not the species – it was a scruffy domestic, but not domesticated, cat.

  We Europeans always like to impose our ideas on our servants: we feel we are doing them good and, of course, at the same time storing up merit for ourselves. It was inevitable, therefore, that we should all concern ourselves with the education of Chandre's son, Mahesh. Arrangements were made to get him enrolled in the best government school in the locality, and off he went. No one thought much more about this until one day I saw Mahesh pedalling one of the cycle-rickshaws which ply between the main road outside our house and the railway station. This was now not a question of some vague merit we hoped to earn, it was much more serious than that – the izzat or honour of the household was at stake. I rushed inside and called Chandre.

  ‘What the hell is Mahesh doing pulling that rickshaw?’

  Chandre looked rather sheepish and said, ‘I can't get him to stay at school and so he has decided to earn his living. He says that he can't hear and then the master beats him.’

  ‘What do you mean can't hear?’

  ‘He says that he has some trouble with his ears. I have been to see the master and he refuses to have Mahesh back. He said, “I don't want a boy like that in my school.”’

  ‘Well, for God's sake get him off that damn rickshaw!’

  Mahesh didn't seem too unhappy to be forbidden to pull a rickshaw, which is very hard work indeed. The next step was to get him to a doctor. This we did without too much difficulty, but when an operation for his ears was suggested Mahesh once again flatly refused to cooperate. He said he would rather die than go into hospital. So that seemed to rule out education. The next best thing was some sort of training. Fortunately Babu Lal, one of the mechanics who run an open-air car-repair business on the tax
i rank opposite us, agreed to take on Mahesh. I have to say that his attendance there is not much more regular than his attendance at school, but Babu Lal is more tolerant than the master. Obviously you can take Mahesh to water but you can't make him drink. My only consolation is that he did learn to read and write before getting himself expelled from school.

  It does not redound to my credit that it was many years before I visited Chandre's village, although it's only about four hours' drive from Delhi. Chandre is very proud of his village and of its temple, but somehow I had never found time to go there. Then one day Chandre came into my office and said, ‘Sahib, can I have a loan of 20,000 rupees?’ I was somewhat taken aback, because Chandre's personal and family problems had usually been solved with smaller sums. When I asked why he wanted this large loan, Chandre looked sheepish and said, ‘Rani ki shadi’ – ‘For Rani's wedding.’

  I knew that Chandre's daughter, Rani, was only about sixteen, and that we were all meant to be encouraging late marriages to help with family planning and the emancipation of women. But I also knew that once Chandre had made up his mind there was no point in arguing. So I said to him, ‘I hope you have found a good boy for Rani. She is a very good girl.’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Chandre. ‘When I was in my village, the chaudhuri of our biradari came to see me. He is an old friend. He asked whether I would like him to fix a boy for my daughter. I said yes, but I didn't hear anything for six or seven months. Then the chaudhuri came to me and suggested that I should agree to give Rani to one of his relatives.’ He explained the relationship by saying that the chaudhuri's son would be Rani's ‘nand ka devar’ when she married. After drawing several family trees, I came to the conclusion that Rani's fiancé was the chaudhuri's son's wife's younger brother. Relationships in northern India are very complicated to unravel, because there is a separate word for each relative. It's not, for example, good enough to say ‘cousin’: you have to know the word which means ‘my elder maternal uncle's son’.

  After we had sorted out that little problem, Chandre went on to tell me that the rishta, or proposal, had already been formally accepted. ‘In our biradari,’ he said, ‘we from the girl's side have to go to the boy's village. There we take the rishta and it is formally accepted. I went with fourteen people including Mahesh. Twelve came from Delhi, two from the village. I had to take with me sweets, fruit and 150 rupees in cash to give to the boy's family. They gave us a feast and so the rishta was pukka.’

  ‘Was that all you gave?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh no. I had to take the suit length for the boy of terry cotton, shoes, a shirt and a gold ring. I had to take five kurta pajamas [loose-fitting tunics and trousers] for the boy's father and uncles, and five saris for the ladies of the family. It cost about 4,000 rupees.’

  ‘But you didn't want a loan at that stage?’

  ‘No, I have some money saved up in a drawer in the house.’

  ‘In this house!’ I said angrily. ‘You know we have had three burglaries.’

  ‘It's locked in a drawer downstairs. The burglar only steals from the office upstairs,’ replied Chandre with perfect logic.

  ‘Why on earth don't you use a bank? It'll be much safer, and you may get interest.’

  ‘No, I don't trust banks. You may have to pay a bribe to get the money out. Many people have told me that.’

  Bribes are usually only paid to get loans, but I gave up and asked Chandre whether Rani's fiancé was literate. Gilly and Avrille, who works in our office, had told Chandre a hundred times to make sure he married Rani to a well-educated boy who could get a good job. But Chandre hadn't bothered to find out what his future son-in-law's educational achievements were. They turned out to be minimal. Chandre insisted it would all be all right, because he knew the family well, but it wasn't until after the marriage that he learnt that the boy's father had two wives and innumerable children.

  Chandre's biradari has not yet been corrupted by the middle-class practice of giving dowries, and so he was not presented with a long list of goods which he would have to provide in order to get his daughter married. Nevertheless, Chandre himself drew up a fairly formidable list of gifts to give to the couple. It was, quite naturally, a question of izzat or self-respect for Chandre to show that he was able to provide for his daughter properly. This was Chandre's list:

  one television set,

  one scooter,

  thirty-one degchis (handleless saucepans) and other cooking pots and pans,

  thirty-one saris for the women and

  seven kurta pajamas for men of the boy's family,

  five saris and five silver ornaments for Rani,

  one tin trunk,

  one wall clock,

  one wristwatch for the boy,

  two chairs,

  one table,

  one sofa,

  one bed with bedding,

  2,500 rupees cash.

  Total value: 80,000 rupees.

  When Chandre asked for the loan, I had no idea that he would be incurring so much expenditure – I grandiosely thought that I would be financing most of the wedding. It never, for instance, occurred to me that Chandre would provide a scooter for his son-in-law, because I had never seen any of Chandre's relatives riding one. But, as the day of the wedding drew near, the extent of Chandre's commitments became clear as the back room of our house started to fill up with all the gifts. I thought that I should step up my contribution, but Chandre said, ‘No. All I want you to do is to come to the wedding, even though it is in my village and it will not be very comfortable for you.’ That was how I came to pay my first visit to village Molanpur in Uttar Pradesh.

  Gilly, Avrille and I set off for Molanpur on the day of the wedding – a day that had been selected as auspicious by Nirottam, a Brahmin living on the embankment at the back of the village. We met up with Satish Jacob, my long-standing colleague in the office, at a dhaba or roadside eating-house owned by a pehlvan, or wrestler, in Gajraula, a small town on the main road from Delhi to Lucknow. There is a whole host of dhabas there because long-distance buses from Delhi stop to allow their passengers to eat. The competition is stiff so the food is good, but the pleasure of eating it is somewhat reduced by the highly offensive odour from a chemical factory on the edge of the town. The leaves on the trees were shrivelled – presumably due to pollution from the factory – and I did wonder what chemicals had penetrated the wrestler's food, but we were all hungry and so I didn't raise that question.

  Rattan Singh, the retired wrestler, was sitting cross-legged on a charpai, his face unshaven, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses. He said very little – his presence was enough to ensure the smooth flow of food in his dhaba. He was once the champion of northern India, but he had retired several years ago. The surrogates he now employed to fight for him were strutting around wire cages outside the dhaba. They had swollen red combs instead of cauliflower ears, and battered beaks instead of broken noses. They were better-fed than the guests at his dhaba, getting regular meals of raisins and almonds. Rattan Singh assured me that his fighting cocks were just as formidable as he'd once been.

  After we had joined up with Satish and eaten our lunch, we turned off the national highway to Lucknow and drove along the road to Gavvan, the town near Chandre's village. It was April – one of the hottest months of the year. The brain-fever bird's cry rose higher and higher up the scale as it screeched, ‘It's getting hotter, it's getting hotter, and I can't stand it, can't stand it, can't stand it.’ I thought I would get brain-fever too if I didn't stop our little red van and take a break in one of the cool, green mango groves which flanked the road, but we were late – as always – and couldn't disappoint Chandre.

  We passed through the town of Hasanpur, where white-capped Muslims lounged in the shade of mosque courtyards waiting for the evening prayers and the break in the fast of Ramzan, the Muslim month of fasting. In the centre of the town a fine old family house built around a cool courtyard still survived. Much of its plasterwork was intact, but the finely c
arved wooden balconies were collapsing and the whole place had an ill-kempt air about it. Clearly it was soon to fall victim to the greed of the contractors, who were just waiting to complete the transformation of Hasanpur into yet another hot and ugly concrete cauldron.

  Leaving the town, we passed two immaculate white bullocks shaking their heads in unison as they laboured under the yoke of a cart carrying vegetables to market. In the countryside, horse-drawn traps or tongas and bullock carts have still not totally surrendered to three-wheeled phut-phuts of all shapes and sizes emitting all forms of pollution. At first the land was quite fertile. Shisham trees lined the roads, and young sugar cane sprouted in the fields. On the bank of one field we saw a black redstart, his tail quivering energetically. He too was apparently suffering from brain fever, because by now he should have been on his way up to the Himalayas. As we went on, the land became more barren – wild charas or cannabis grew in the scrub, the bushes were stunted, the date-palms had been mutilated by villagers always short of fodder for their goats and cattle. The earth was dusty and white – the sort of soil that makes me feel hot just to look at it. What agriculture there was seemed comparatively primitive. We passed two more bullocks, this time plodding round and round in circles turning a Persian wheel – a form of irrigation which has been replaced by electric and diesel pumps in the more prosperous areas of northern India.