Chef by Jaspreet Singh Read Free Book Online Page B

wearing a low-cut blouse. Observe the shape, whispers Chef. She drinks two or three glasses of port and, I observe, the drinking is making her sad. The two sahibs raise their voices reminiscing about younger days when they were in the Military Academy, where they had been trained alongside batch-mates who were now running the enemy army in Pakistan. Memsahib’s nails are long and red and her hair is red too because of henna.
    Chef wipes his hands on my apron and takes a mirchi and chops it like a surgeon and garnishes the Wagah biryani. Smell it, kid . Jee, sir . . . He applies a sizzling tarka to dopiaza and yells at server: Is the table ready? Chef hurries back to his position behind the curtain and with his finger makes me taste his new invention, the Mhow chutney. Then he puts his arm around my shoulder.
    Memsahib flips through a foreign magazine, which has many photographs. She is comparing herself to the photos.
    It is our time to come to existence, Chef tells me. We come to existence only to carry out orders. He parts the curtains briefly and enters the drawing room. There is a rhythm in his legs. He clicks his heels.
    ‘Dinner is ready to be served, sir.’
    ‘Dinner, Memsahib.’
    Gen Sahib and India-Pakistan move to the table. Back in the kitchen, ghee sizzles and the air tastes pungent and Chef orders the assistant to start slapping more naans in the tandoor and phulkas on the griddle. Perfect puffed-up circles. No maps of India, he warns.
    Yessir.
    The guests keep an eye on the General’s plate. When he eats fast, they eat fast. When he slows down, they slow down. Sahib keeps an eye fixed on Memsahib’s face, even while chewing the lamb. He is liking the Rogan Josh. Sometimes his fork makes circles in the air, sometimes his knife hits the plate like artillery. But, he is liking the lamb. She eats with her mouth shut. She stops chewing now and then and flashes a smile.
    Memsahib will stop eating only when he stops, says Chef. The General is aware of this. So he will keep eating until he is sure that Memsahib is almost finished.
    They talk about classical music, beekeeping, carpets, silkworms, diameter of the most ancient plane tree, absence of railways in Kashmir, loathsome Kashmiris, and picnics in the Mughal gardens. Also about Nehru when he was the PM: an army helicopter would fly to his residence in Delhi with Kashmiri spring water. They pause just before their conversation drifts towards hometowns, educational institutions, well-settled brothers and sisters. Then one of them mentions death: the soldier who killed his own sergeant, the Major who hanged himself at the border, and the young Captain killed recently during the Pakistani shelling on the glacier.
    ‘Excellent biryani.’
    The napkin touches the General’s lips.
    Chef shoves the server in, bearing finger bowls. He returns for the dessert tray. Halva. Ashrafi. Jalaybee. Crescents of watermelon, and aloobukharas and peaches and strawberries. The colonel’s wife has become unusually silent. She closes her eyes and breaks out of silence slowly. Not a single Kashmiri fruit can make me forget the taste of a mango, she says.
    ‘The best way to eat a mango is to suck it,’ says the colonel.
    ‘Yes, yes,’ says Gen Sahib.
    ‘Every time I eat a mango I think of Major Iqbal Singh’s Partition story,’ she says. ‘And that Muslim woman who saved his life . . .’
    Memsahib stops talking in mid-sentence.
    The two men avoid the subject.
    (Father never told me anything about someone saving his life in 1947.)
    I look at Chef. Those real Pakistani women can’t even save a dog, he says. Memsahib watches too many films, he whispers.
    The three of them are sitting on the sofas again.
    ‘More dessert for Pakistan?’ asks the General.
    ‘No,’ she says.
    ‘Pakistan must have more?’
    ‘No, no,’ she says.
    General Sahib starts the records.
    Time passes.
    It passes very quickly, then slows down. Music makes time pass slowly.
    How could the woman save