‘Men need adventures to keep the time,
to stop days from turning into years, and eyes from growing old,’ Jaaved’s
grandfather had once said, to defend the bruises Jaaved had earned after an
evening’s worth of scrambling and fighting. When Jaaved’s mother had been
unimpressed, the old man had turned his eyes on her. ‘Women need it too, more’s
the shame.’
Standing in the
restaurant’s kitchen today, five years since, Jaaved, a lanky nineteen-year-
old with a mop of thick black hair that ill-suited the summer, hoped his
grandfather would remember this sentiment if he ever found out what his
grandson had been doing.
Hot vapours scented
with cumin and black pepper rose from the pot as Jaaved stirred. The chopped
onions were golden by now, and the tomatoes had melted into the gravy. The
kitchen burnt with the heat of ten stoves, and sweat trickled down his face and
vest. A droplet slid down his nose and hung at the tip, a moment before
dripping into the curry. It’ll add to the flavour, thought Jaaved with
some embarrassment.
His hands dug into the
bowl alongside—squishy pieces of chicken, red-faced and softened by half a day
in vinegar and kashmiri mirch. He dropped them into the pot, lowering the
flame, watching the gravy soak in. Then, with a furtive glance over his
shoulder and a quick intake of breath, he did the forbidden. From his pockets,
he took out a small glass bottle that sparkled like a ruby. It had an ink
dropper attached on top, and quickly, smoothly, he tipped two drops of the liquid
into the pot. He replaced the bottle and stirred the curry, glancing around
cautiously once again. Rose essence. Absolutely against the recipe that he had
been entrusted with.
His
grandfather, Afzal Khan, or Khan Mian, was in the other corner of the room, now
toothless, but still barking orders to the kitchen boys. He had started Khan Mian Khan’s in Chandni Chowk forty years ago, when
the immigrants to Delhi had settled down enough to enjoy food in the new city.
He had named the restaurant after himself, and fixed every one of its recipes
after the time-honoured cuisine passed down from the courts of the Mughals. It
was one of the most famous restaurants in Delhi, featured in travel guides for
foreigners and in articles on the city’s rich culture. If Afzal Khan found out
that his grandson had been tampering with the recipe even slightly, Jaaved’s
treatment would likely be worse than that of three of his cousins, who had
already been barred from the kitchen, and disinherited for their incompetence.
Yet Jaaved couldn’t
help himself. He had been mixing in his own ingredients in the recipes for
months now. Rose essence and almonds in chicken. Honey syrup in lamb. Crushed
hazelnuts and thickened butter in potatoes. He never put too much, just a hint,
and he tried one innovation each day, since he couldn’t secret in more than one
type of ingredient. He was also careful to try it only in a few of the plates
he prepared, so in the worst case, people would suspect that something had gone
wrong with a particular order, rather than deliberate tampering. He kept an eye
out for the regular customers and their regular orders, and avoided interfering
with those—Salim mian who came every second week for his Afghani ghosht, Miriam
bibi with her host of cranky children and her taste for Luckhnavi chicken, and
never with Bhimshen Banerjee’s orders; the man had a nose of a fox to go with
his bear-like appetite.
But his experiments
continued. He mostly targeted first-timers, trying to gauge if their reaction
to his ingredients was better than those who had the original dish. It was a
difficult task. Most customers found Khan Mian’s food unbelievably different in
general, incredibly tasty as it was. ‘It’s the butter chicken syndrome,’
Jaaved’s grandfather often repeated. ‘With cheap butter chicken restaurants
mushrooming everywhere, the taste of authentic Mughlai cuisine has become so
rare that they feel they’re eating something exotic.’
So
Jaaved had to resort to estimating smiles and burps to track reactions to his
changes. Thankfully, there had been no complaints. That, at least, was some
validation. Only once had a customer claimed that the meat tasted too sweet,
and Jaaved had taken immediate steps. He had got the waiter to whom the
complaint was made so drunk on country liquor that by evening, he had
completely forgotten about the complaint!
But even that mild
scare hadn’t stopped Jaaved from experimenting with his grandfather’s
time-tested recipes. And he kept waiting for some words of appreciation from
his customers, some sign that he was, after all, on the right path.
***
It
had all started on a day at the end of last year’s summer. Jaaved had been
sitting on the steps of the Jama Masjid, sipping Rooh Afza dissolved in soda
and ice. Heat swam in waves around him and people hurried
to and fro with frowns on their brows.
The boy at the drinks stall was doing good business, Jaaved thought
idly. His head was dizzy with the temperature but he liked this feeling—the
heat washing over him, sinking into him, burning his skin and soul. Everything
seemed simplified in this state, the cares of the day turned to small things,
and worries melted away.
His mind wandered from
thought to thought, the red sandstone stairs baking under him, and the drink
icy cold as he rolled it in his mouth. Rooh Afza literally meant augmenter of
the soul; it was a cooling essence that had been concocted by a Delhi physician
following the old code of Hippocrates and Avicenna. It had been in use for a
hundred years, but the soda stalls never stocked it when he was a child; they
used to only sell fresh lime soda. But now, in the new millenium, with the
rebirth of Delhi, they were selling blackcurrant, blueberry and even Rooh Afza
soda—hundred years old and entirely new.
His
culinary adventures began that evening when he trickled some of the soda into
the lamb curry and presented it to his grandmother, who promptly spat it out,
along with her dentures.
Jaaved became more
careful after that. He started by copying his grandfather’s restaurant recipes
at home, but he began tweaking the amounts of the ingredients used. He would
decrease the number of onions, or increase the amount of curd, or change the
mix of the garam masala. Sometimes he would take out a portion of the dish and
perform more exotic experiments on it.
He started secretly
watching TV programmes that showcased different cuisines, late in the morning,
after Khan Mian had left the house, taking extra care to avoid leaking any hint
of his plans.
Inspired by the New
Age cooking techniques he saw on TV, he bought some cheese, a little bottle of
olive oil and another of soya sauce with his pocket money. He couldn’t help but
feel that mixing these with his grandfather’s traditional recipes would work,
if only he could get it right. Fusion—as the lady chef with the ample bosom had
said on TV.
But the process wasn’t
easy for Jaaved. There were no books he could refer to, or anyone’s advice he
could seek for his culinary experiments. It had to be all done on the sly. Moreover, some of these ingredients, these
flavours and tastes, had been inaccessible to his ancestors—the heady aromas of
rosemary and thyme, the warm tang of oregano and olives. Some had been ignored,
because of lineage and beliefs. Wines and spirits were, of course, shunned, and
he didn’t even dare try those. But he didn’t have to, there was already more than enough
for him to sample, to discover. He felt like he was exploring a
giant, uncharted ocean, delving down forbidden and unexplored paths. And it
thrilled him to the core.
Slowly,
under the dull yellow glow of a solitary flickering bulb, inside the mouldy
walls of the home kitchen that no one used, he began forming his own theory of
flavours. First there were the base ingredients, the building blocks of taste,
like choosing to build with bricks, stone or glass. These consisted of
different types of meat, potatoes and lentils. Then came the layer ingredients,
built upon the base. Tomatoes and onions, capsicum and curd, like choosing the
structure of the building. And finally came the tip ingredients, the ones which
existed on the tip of the tongue and determined the memory of the taste. The
façade of the structure. All sharp tastes had this power, and the tip
ingredients were usually only needed in minute quantities. Salt and sugar,
pepper and clove, fruit strains, mint and cardamom, olive and soya. He was
drawn to these, to the teasing games that they allowed, to their surprises.
After the first two
months, he had gained enough confidence to present his dishes to his
grandmother once again, and then to Dara, the neighbour’s boy and Jaaved’s
childhood friend, who ate half his meals at their house. His grandmother didn’t
spit it out this time, but her appreciation was non-committal. Dara was far
more enthusiastic, but unfortunately Jaaved couldn’t bring himself to ignore
the fact that Dara ate all the leftovers found anywhere in the neighbourhood.
Children in the area called him ‘Dara Dustbin’.
Within the third month
of his obsession, Jaaved knew he had to try his recipes out in the restaurant.
There was no other way. He knew his grandmother would never betray his secret.
He was the star of her life, the apple of her eye, while her husband was her
arch-nemesis, someone she took glee in subverting at every turn. But her
support wasn’t enough. She simply didn’t have the enthusiasm for life, and
food, that Jaaved needed from his patrons. Khan Mian Khan’s, on the other hand,
drew the foremost connoisseurs of food in Delhi—those born and bred in Chandni
Chowk, and those who braved the crowds, the heat, dust and the ominous
alleyways of Old Delhi to satisfy their cravings.
How
could anyone walk away from an audience like that?
But the counterpoint
was the constant fear that accompanied such a task. At seventy-three, Afzal
Khan, Jaaved’s famous, wise, generous grandfather was only possessive about
three things in the world—his kufi, which he’d worn for thirty years, the
carefully preserved gold threaded vest that had been passed down for
generations in his family, and the pride and glory of his life, his restaurant.
Jaaved had once seen his grandfather whip a man twice his size with his belt
because he’d hurt the reputation of the place by allowing the lights in the
signboard to fail.
So when Jaaved heard
the commotion at the kitchen door, his heart leapt to his mouth. He strained
his ears. Someone was being told that he couldn’t be allowed inside the
kitchen. There were raised voices, and then the door opened. A short,
broad-shouldered man with a slight paunch, dark copper skin and expensive
clothes walked in, adjusting the sunglasses in his pocket. The man looked
around the kitchen with some disdain. ‘Who made the Lahori korma?’ he asked in
English.
Jaaved
had introduced his special flourish in an order of Lahori korma just half an
hour ago. There could be no other explanation. This was it, the end of the
experiment, one way or the other. He lifted the rag cloth from his shoulders
and kept it on the table with the air of a martyr. His grandfather’s wizened
face turned to look at him. The whole world seemed to have slowed down.
Jaaved couldn’t find the words, so he just nodded at the young
man—easily a head shorter than him, but with an air of authority that came
easily to the privileged.
‘We need to talk,’ the
man said, in utmost seriousness. ‘We need to talk about money.’
