So many things begin with an egg. Your tumor looks like an egg, said the doctor. Three months to a year, he said with alarming precision. Surgery might help. Chemical therapy is torture, but it might prolong your life.
Doctor, I can’t afford the treatment, I told him. Just tell me what I am in for. Expect a few changes, he said. You are a cook, isn’t it? Cancer is an illness that cooks the innards of the body. It spreads from organ to organ eating itself, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. Time will come when you will not be able to hold a spoon or a pen. You will lose feeling on one side of your face. You will lose your hair, words, memories. Time will e-vap-o-rate. Space will con-den-se. Your nose will not be able to tell the difference between kara parshad and pizza. Appetite for food and sex will wither. Just like everything else, he said, food and sex reside in the brain. You will repeat yourself. You will confuse thoughts and words. You will try to say one thing but something else will come out of your mouth. You will speak your own language like a foreigner. Foreign words and accents will roll out of your mouth. People will get the wrong impression that you are trying very hard to become an Englishman or a Yankee. You will grow angry at yourself, but you will be more angry at others. You will use lots of foul, obscene words. Galis.
He sounded like a fortune-teller.
‘Shit,’ I said.
‘Certain things can at best be delayed. But,’ he said, ‘don’t give up hope.’
‘Does my cancer really look like…’
‘Do not worry. Right now it is the size of a pinhead. Here.’ He pointed at the CAT scan the way palmists point at lines on one’s hands. Looking at that shape I felt dizzy and my head started cracking and throbbing and pounding and that was the precise moment when my transformation began, my dying.
So many things begin with an egg, I say to myself.
The train is roaring over a bridge. I feel dizzy on the window seat. India keeps passing by. The melancholy villages keep passing by. How much I like these villages, and how much I am repelled by my fellow passengers. Civilians. We are racing at an alarming speed. The old engine is suddenly trying to make up for the lost time.
I will miss the bus to the mountains if the train fails to cover time.
There is one thing the doctor said which keeps coming to me. Cells, Kirpal. Our bodies, you see, are made of cells at the most fundamental level, he said. Cells are constantly taking birth and dying inside us. Every cell knows when to kill itself. But cancer cells refuse to do so, they keep giving birth to more and more cells, and refuse to die themselves. People with cancer die, Kirpal, because at the fundamental level their bodies start craving immortality.
On this train I feel like a man who has already expired. Unable to endure so many civilians. I don’t desire to be immortal. Old passengers leave, new ones occupy the seats. They are all the same, no difference, and I am ashamed of them, all of them. The more I witness their lives the more ashamed I feel. Ashamed of my country. Is it for them my father died? Did we lose so many of our men in the army for such useless people?
Eight people on my left are speaking at the same time, they are inebriated and discussing plans to immigrate to America; another group across the aisle prefers Australia. I have decided not to speak to them at all. If I tell them about my time in the army they will say: ‘We would like to hear stories about the heroism of our soldiers.’ These people think war is TV.
Not far from me a man and his wife are sitting. It seems they have gone without sleep for nights. He is bald and she is on the plump side. They are a slightly older couple than the honeymooning pair I encountered last night. Not a word has been exchanged between us. But they are horrible. I had to endure them when the train stopped unexpectedly an hour ago.
When we came to a halt, the man lifted the window shutter and tapped on the wife’s shoulder.
‘I am stepping down,’ he said.
‘It is a small station,’ she said.
‘Forty minutes halt.’
‘Who told you?’
He did not respond.
‘Don’t go far away.’
He wiped his shirt with his hand, and walked past other passengers, and stood by the open door. It was early in the morning, but already very hot. On the left end of the station there was a pile of dismantled army vehicles and a badly damaged MIG-21 fighter plane, with only one wing.
The platform was animated with civilians and stray dogs and white foreigners in Indian dress. Cows were chewing on the garbage inside the bins and outside the bins. The man succeeded in making eye contact with his wife from the platform. She smiled and beckoned him towards her window.
‘What station is this?’ she asked loudly. He moved very close to the shutter of her window and leaned against the horizontal bars.
‘There,’ he said, pointing his finger. ‘I can’t read the sign properly.’
He stood there sweating, and a long time passed before another word was exchanged. He unbuttoned his shirt and touched his bald head.
‘It is hot,’ she said. ‘Where is your hat?’
‘I am fine. Just fine.’
The girl selling tea and pakoras stopped before the man. She looked like a gypsy. The man ordered.
The girl produced two teas in earthen cones.
‘Should we get a plate of pakoras as well?’ the man asked.
His wife didn’t respond.
The silences were not awkward. I think this is how all married people eventually become.
The gypsy girl looked at the wife while the man transferred a cone of chai through the window. The wife returned the gaze. There were blisters on the girl’s feet, red dots in the middle, and red circles around them. She wore bangles all the way from wrists to shoulders, they chimed when she lifted her arms.
‘Pakoras, Memsahib?’ she asked.
‘No,’ the wife said. ‘No pakoras.’
‘Egg pakoras, Memsahib.’
‘No.’
‘Take it, Memsahib!’
‘Go away,’ the wife almost screamed.
The civilian man took the plate and started eating greedily.
‘Did you find out the name of the station?’ the wife asked.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘this is not Pokhran.’
‘Why did we have to take this train?’
‘Don’t start again,’ he said. ‘You have such a negative attitude.’
‘You started it.’
‘I don’t understand you.’
She picked up the book she was reading and opened it randomly.
‘Listen,’ the man said to his wife, ‘the lady-doctor says she can do it quickly. Nothing goes inside you.’
‘But I don’t want to get it done.’
‘Don’t worry. I will go with you. The lady-doctor says it is safer than X-ray. Ultrasound is like taking a picture only.’
‘But I really don’t want to.’
‘Think about it.’
His fingers were grubby with pakoras.
‘For you I will do anything. But not this thing,’ she said.
‘Please don’t do it if you feel like that. No one is forcing you.’
‘What if the picture isn’t right?’
‘It will be all right.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Have I ever lied to you?’
‘But how can one be sure?’
‘Because if it isn’t all right then we must find out a way to fix it. Don’t you want it to be all right?’
‘But what if it is a girl?’
‘Of course it will be a boy.’
‘You don’t like girls?’
‘I like you,’ the man said. ‘I go to work every morning because I like you. Have I done anything to show I don’t like you?’
‘I know you like me. But would you stop liking me if I don’t get this thing done?’
‘You don’t go to the lady-doctor, nothing will change between us. I assure you. But, it will make me unhappy.’
‘What if it is a girl?’
‘What can I do to make you think positive?’
‘How can you be sure?’
He took a coin from his pocket. He flipped the coin thrice, using his grubby fingers.
‘See,’ he said. ‘Three times sure. It will be a boy.’
‘Stop it. I want to read my book. Just stop it.’
‘Did I ever stop you?’ he said and moved away from her on the platform, and beckoned the gypsy girl and ordered more tea.
The girl tried to hand him two orders, but he took only one.
‘Memsahib is not having,’ he said, and spat on the platform.
He slurped loudly. She put a finger in her ear. He ate two more pakoras before the guard pressed the signal.
Civilians, I say to myself. Civilians.
And India started passing by all over again. The cows, the fertile fields, the dust. India picked up speed, started pacing in straight lines and curves to the highest mountains up north. Boulders of memories started echoing. Chug. Chug. Chug. I had thought travel would liberate me from the burden of memories. When one is neither here nor there, when there is so much space and so much sky outside the window, I had imagined time would finally liberate me. But exactly the reverse is happening.
There are two kinds of chefs in this world. Those who disturb the universe with their cooking, and those who do not dare to do so. I am of the last kind. I try to make myself invisible. Don’t get me wrong. Great satisfaction comes to me watching people praise my dishes. And yet… Food that draws attention to itself is not my idea of perfection.
‘Bad’ cooking, of course, draws attention, but so do dishes that are technically considered ‘good’. The ‘best’ preparation is the one that transports people elsewhere, far away from the table.
Chef Kishen dazzled the table. I, on the other hand, transport people to dazzling places. But I have never been able to cook like him. His touch was precise. As if music. He appraised fruits, vegetables, meats, with astonishment, and grasped them with humility, with reverence, very carefully as if they were the most fragile objects in the world. Before cooking he would ask: Fish, what would you like to become? Basil, where did you lose your heart? Lemon: It is not who you touch, but how you touch. Learn from big elaichi. There, there. Karayla, meri jaan, why are you so prudish?… Cinnamon was ‘hot’, cumin ‘cold’, nutmeg caused good erections. Exactly: 32 kinds of tarkas. ‘Garlic is a woman, Kip. Avocado, a man. Coconut, a hijra… Chilies are South American. Coffee, Arabian. “Curry powder” is a British invention. There is no such thing as Indian food, Kip. But there are Indian methods (Punjabi-Kashmiri-Tamil-Goan-Bengali-Hyderabadi). Allow a dialogue between our methods and the ingredients from the rest of the world. Japan, Italy, Afghanistan. Make something new. Channa goes well with artichokes. Rajmah with brie and parsley. Don’t get stuck inside nationalities.’ I would watch the movement of his hands for hours on end. Once the materials stripped themselves bare, Chef mixed them with all that he remembered, and all that he had forgotten. Sometimes he would contradict himself, and that was the toughest thing to master in the kitchen.
The day I discovered I had cancer something happened to my hands. They looked exactly the same, the same shape, but I tore a chapatti a little differently, and I picked up fruits from the bowl differently, gazed at them a little longer than I used to. Even the glass of water didn’t get lifted the usual way. It appeared as if time had expanded and was distorting into patterns I didn’t know. I felt the heat of a spoon, its coldness. I became that coldness.
Before he left by bus to the glacier, Kishen asked me to take care of the nurse in the hospital. How was I to take care of her? She had already said no to my advances, and I felt humiliated. But our next meeting was inevitable. Eight days after Chef’s departure I noticed a dense fog building up outside. Standing by the window, peeling an onion, I felt an immense need to see her. It was as if a garden had grown inside me. I ordered my assistant to take over, and walked down the hill to the hospital.
Once it was a mosque and the hospital now had a green dome. It was a modest but magical-looking place. When I arrived she was busy in the ward, and asked me to wait outside in the hall.
There I waited half an hour, my gaze fixed on the floor. The black and white square tiles looked freshly mopped, not a single particle of dust on them. At last she emerged. Along came the smell of penicillin and talcum powder. Afternoon, I said. She seized my arm. A current passed through me.
‘Can you visit me this evening?’
‘Your home?’ I asked.
She nodded.
‘Right now I am in a hurry,’ she said.
There was a small mole on the left side of her nose as if a seed of black cardamom. I felt like touching the mole, but there was no time. A patient cried sister, sister. The nurse consulted her wristwatch. Well, she said. Later, I said, and we began walking in opposite directions.
The Rogan Josh I prepared that day was one of my best. My assistant asked many questions about origins and authenticity and I found myself responding like Chef Kishen. Major, this tastes of heaven, he said. Good, I said. Now you take your break. Watching him disappear through the kitchen door I thought of a boat I had seen in the Dal Lake – it was called heevan. The painter had misspelled ‘heaven’ as ‘heevan’ and for a brief second I felt as if God had misspelled my fate in more or less the same way. I have a great talent to ruin things when they start shaping up. But that day, when the fog lifted, I was on top of the world, and dark thoughts could not win the tug of war. General Sahib was not supposed to eat at home in the evening. He was to dine at the Alpha Officers’ Mess with commissioned officers and their wives. It was my day off. I was ready to transfer the lamb to the tiffin-carrier when Sahib’s ADC made an entry, parting the curtains.
‘Kip, who are you cooking the Rogan Josh for?’
‘Oh,’ I said cautiously, ‘for tomorrow, sir.’
‘Sahib prefers fresh food.’
‘My mistake, sir. It will not happen again.’
Then he was unusually nice to me.
‘Sahib often praises your preparations. The subzi you made a few days ago was most karari, and piyaz with fish tikka were exemplary. Shabash! Well done!’ he said, and patted me on the back.
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Also,’ he said, ‘I am very impressed you are bringing knowledge from other officers’ kitchens to Gen Sahib’s residence.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
He was the first officer (and dancer) to have stepped in the kitchen, ever, in my presence. His rank was that of a captain.
‘Kip,’ he said, ‘this evening the General would like to reward you and other staff members, too, for all the good work and for maintaining highest standards.’
‘Sir.’
‘Before the function begins this evening in the Officers’ Mess, General Kumar will have rum with the entire staff on the lawns of the Mess.’
‘Rum, sir?’
‘Everyone must attend. Seventeen-twenty hours, sharp. Understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Now make me a quick nimbu-pani.’
Rum with the General on the lawns of the Officers’ Mess was a rare honor for us, the staff members. I was doubly excited. But this new development cut into the time I could spend at the nurse’s quarter. I did not want to hurry her. I did not want to talk about work at all, or brag about the rare honor I was about to receive from Sahib.
Evening came and I polished my shoes and took longer than usual to tie my turban in front of the mirror. I wore my blue shirt and black pants and felt slightly uncomfortable because the clothes were just like new. She lived not far from the Dal Lake. On the way to her house I kept thinking about how my body felt in my clothes. I kept delaying. At the side of the lake, I looked at the water, the waves, and for a brief moment sat on a rock and when I turned I noticed a man fishing. Salaam, he said, and I recall my response was extremely slow.
‘What fish are you looking for?’
‘Trout,’ he said.
It occurred to me that he had been sitting there for a long time. There were no fish in his bucket. Not far from him I saw half-open blue irises and I plucked one. I had forgotten to bring along a proper gift, other than Rogan Josh and garlic naan in the tiffin carrier.
I stood before her door. The curtain was made of beads. When she appeared I did not know how to greet, so I simply apologized for being late. Then she also apologized. She too had been late. For a moment, she said, I thought you came here, and not finding me in, you left. It is not cool to be late, she said.
Inside, she grabbed my arm again. Sorry, she said. I am not going to offer you tea or snacks, but there is something ‘you must know.’
‘Please don’t tell it right away,’ I said. ‘I already know what you are trying to say.’
She installed my flower in the vase.
Something made me wipe the crumb of bread from her kameez. Kishen treats you just like his son, she said. I nodded. It is true, I said. I agree whole-heartedly. Do you know he keeps a journal?
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He mentioned it to me once.’
‘Not everyone knows.’
‘Did you ever read it?’ she asked in Hindi.
‘No, but two days before he left Chef woke me up in the middle of the night. He was scribbling something. What is your best experience with food, Kip? His voice was very disturbed. I rubbed my eyes. Why wake me up at this insane hour? Tell me, he said. First you tell, I insisted. The best meal I ever had was at a dhaba in Amritsar. Me too, I lied. I don’t know why I lied. The dhaba food was not even half as good as the dal-roti at the Golden Temple. His gaze settled on me for a long time before it turned absolutely cold and he started jotting again in the journal and I went back to sleep. In my dream I saw a plate and a bowl, both made out of miniature fig leaves. The leaves were stitched together with toothpicks.’
Telling her about the dream made me feel better. But her mind was elsewhere. She kept looking at the vase on the table. The dots on the vase were almost the same size as her mole. ‘I want to tell you something,’ she said.
‘Later,’ I said. ‘Gen Sahib is going to honor me this evening in the Officers’ Mess. How proud Kishen will be when he gets to hear it! Often I hear an echo of his voice: Cook without fear of failure, Kip. But, you must never fail.’
‘I do not know how to tell you this, but I must,’ she said. ‘I know Kishen has not shared this with you, and that is why I must. We are not married, but we are like husband and wife.’
‘You are like what?’
‘Husband and wife, you know what I mean?’
‘Yes, yes,’ I said.
‘That is why,’ she said, ‘it is not good when I see you giving me that look. I have sensed it in your eyes many times and I would like to tell you that it is not right.’
‘I am sorry,’ I said.
‘No, I am sorry,’ she said, ‘and I have no tea to offer you.’
I did not know whether to stay or leave.
From her window that huge mass of snow and ice was faintly visible on the distant mountains, and I took a few steps to the window and looked at that thing for a long time.
What is a thing called a glacier? I asked myself. Layer over layer of ice. Snow from hundreds of years ago. Peel this one and then peel that one. Endless, limitless, thankless work. It cuts one’s fingers. Endless, limitless, thankless work. The glacier deceived people, it didn’t even reveal its actual size or intentions or the number of layers. No, it was not. The glacier was not a thing of beauty. It was one big white onion. It brought tears to one’s eyes. Useless tears, I say to myself. The saddest thing about those tears was that they were absolutely useless.
She tapped on my shoulder, and when I turned she hugged me, and said: Now go.
I left the Rogan Josh next to the vase on the table. Under the table there were three miniature battle tanks. They glared at me. I’d not noticed them earlier. Centurions: manufactured in England. Now go, she insisted. Without a proper namasté I stepped out towards the Officers’ Block. It was getting dark and chilly and I passed lots of jeeps and black cars parked on both sides of the road. I made it exactly twenty minutes before rum at the Alpha Officers’ Mess.
The Mess was bright both inside and outside. The lawn was lit up with floodlights. The flowers that lined the lawn were red and yellow and purple, and they were the size of footballs. We lined up outside on the lawn. The gardener Agha, the water carrier, the sweeper, the orderlies – the entire staff that worked at Sahib’s residence.
There were two empty chairs on the lawn, and behind those chairs the little girl Rubiya appeared: ‘Daddy, the men are here!’
But as soon as she said that the girl ran away as if afraid of us.
Then all of a sudden I heard confident footsteps pounding on the pebbled path. General Sahib stepped out in his dashing civilian clothes, wearing an impressive tie. He walked up close to the line, shaking our hands one by one.
‘Stand at ease,’ said the colonel of the regiment.
It was the second time I stood next to General Sahib face to face, and I did not know how to conduct myself in front of him. I stood to attention the way my father used to in the photos. The General looked at me with piercing eyes.
‘The army is proud of your father.’
‘Sir.’
He patted my back.
‘You know, Kirpal, Major Iqbal did all the work and I got the baton.’
I did not know what to make of it.
Then the General laughed.
I still recall the fine cut of his dark blue jacket and the red and blue regimental tie. Sahib was around forty-nine then, that day we had rum, and he did not change much as long as I knew him. I remember he had a large collection of ties. The width of his ties changed according to the fashion of the year. Narrow. Broad. Narrow again. His neck was long and his face sharp and clean-shaven.
‘We are impressed by your exemplary work,’ he said.
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘The colonel has recommended you for a promotion, Kirpal.’
‘Sir.’
‘Now you are only one rank short of an officer.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Let us drink to that.’
We clinked our rum glasses. I looked at General Sahib in the eye.
‘You are very handsome, my boy,’ said the General.
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Beautiful. Just like a woman, sir,’ said the ADC from far away.
‘Are you happy?’ said the General.
‘Sir, is it possible to go on a three-day casual leave, sir?’
‘When?’
‘First week of July, sir.’
‘Delhi?’
‘No, sir. Glacier, sir.’
‘I understand, Kirpal. Your father…’
Then he turned to the colonel: ‘Send Kip on some duty to the glacier. Is there a vehicle going?’
‘I will look into that, sir. But, for now the situation is unstable.’
The General turned and saw Colonel Chowdhry’s wife enter the Officers’ Mess. The other officers’ wives were already inside the dance hall, waiting. Particles of talcum powder kept floating towards us on the lawn. The light in that room was faint and weak and before the colonel’s wife stepped inside she smiled at me from a distance.
‘What is going on?’ exclaimed the General. ‘ Pakistan is inside, and India is outside! This is unfair!’
The officers laughed. Loud music could be heard.
‘Very unfair, sir. The gentlemen are outside, and the ladies are inside.’
‘Unfair,’ repeated the General.
‘Start the party, sir?’
‘Yes. Yes,’ he said to them.
‘Jai Hind,’ he said to us.
‘Jai Hind, sir.’ We clicked our heels.
The General saluted and hurried towards the dance hall. Other ranks followed him.
I returned to my room after a long walk along the river. Only once I felt the need to splash my face with water. It was ice cold.
If you want something, my mother had told me when I was a boy, you say no and then say no again and the third time you say Okay, a little. She was talking about food when it is offered at some other person’s house. Our guests had offered us the betel leaf cone, and I said no, then no again, and I was ready to say Okay, a little but the hosts didn’t offer the paan the third time. At home I screamed at the top of my voice. I want that betel nut thing now, right now. Neighbors gathered around our house, probed my parents why they were torturing me. Next time you want something, said my father, grab it.
The nurse, I just learned, was not up for grabs. Memsahib was, but I was afraid of her, and of the colonel. I was afraid of losing my fingers. Ideally, I wanted to become a vegetable. The vegetables were not afraid of anything. The carrots were fucking the earth. The carrots and onions were having better sex than me. Zucchini made scandalous love to paneer, mushrooms, garlic and tomatoes. Basil coated the deep interiors of fully swollen pasta, with names sexier than shapes. R-i-g-a-t-o-n-i! F-u-s-i-l-l-i! C-o-n-c-h-i-g-l-i-e! Gulmarg salad licked walnut chutney in public. Even brinjal (that humble eggplant), swimming in a pot of morkozhambu, insisted on having more pleasure than me.
Patience, Kip.
How impatient we people are in this country. Yet how patient we are when it comes to food. We wait for a long time to get it right, I say to myself on the window seat. I wanted to speed things up, force them into bending my way, and the result was a disaster. I seem to have no talent for forcing things my way.
I stopped using the cycle. I would go to the bazaar to buy vegetables on military transport. Sometimes when the curfew was in place the ADC would arrange a jeep. One morning I found that the General’s staff car was taking the black dog to the vet, and I requested the driver to give me a lift. The dog was in great pain, eyes running. Sitting in the car, I found it difficult to endure the animal’s whine. What is it? I asked. The orderly and the driver did not know for sure. No idea, Major. Just doing our duty, Major. The dog stank of a strange disease.
They dropped me in the bazaar, and took the road to the vet’s clinic. The bazaar was crowded and dusty and noisy as usual. Sad and miserable people milled around in colorful robes. I bought fresh herbs and fish and vegetables and fruit. For several hours I waited in the street, elbow to elbow, but the car did not return. Fortunately, there was a military transport parked close by, and the driver, an acquaintance of mine, gave me a lift.
On the way just outside the Mughal garden the nurse was standing at the bus stop. The driver slowed down.
‘I am in a hurry,’ I said.
He stopped not far from her and honked.
‘Going to the army camp?’
She nodded.
‘Get in,’ he said.
She squeezed in beside me and lit up a cigarette as soon as she settled.
‘Please don’t smoke in the truck,’ I said.
‘It is OK, Major,’ said the driver, smiling at us in the mirror. ‘Let her.’
She made brief eye contact with me, then threw the cigarette out the window. The shopping bags were squeezed in the space between our legs. I picked up the strawberries, which were wrapped in an old English newspaper. The color red had wicked into the yellow of the paper, the Government was planning to construct a railway track all the way to Kashmir. I sliced the strawberries with my army knife. I am not hungry, she said. Take some home, I suggested. I don’t like cherries and strawberries, she muttered and sat there silently. Just before the driver made it to the camp gates we heard sounds of sirens. Emergency vehicles were heading downtown. He turned around and stopped not far from the hospital. Without saying a word, she jumped out of the truck.
The truck would not start up right away. From the window I watched as she opened her purse and dug out a fresh cigarette and put it between her lips. Camel. It was an imported Camel. Her hands started searching for a light. There was a matchbox in the driver’s shirt. He gave it to me and I jumped out and ran to her and struck a light. She turned away. I struck another, but again she turned her head.
‘Why don’t you just give it to her,’ yelled the driver.
‘OK,’ I said.
She struck the match herself.
‘This is my last cigarette,’ she said before disappearing.
In the kitchen I heard that the General’s car had been grenade-attacked downtown. The news terrified me. Kashmiris, Major. Terrorists, Major. Close to the vet’s clinic the car had slowed down to negotiate the speed-breaker when a Kashmiri lobbed a grenade. The car shot up in the air and was ripped to pieces. Although the driver and the orderly had escaped unharmed the dog had been badly wounded.
General Sir rushed to the site with his staff members and a curfew was imposed on the city. Sirens echoed in the valley.
The ADC was in a bad mood when he marched into the kitchen to inform me that Sahib was going to skip the Sandhurst curry that night. No dinner for Rubiya either, he added. The girl is very sad. There is no point cooking the dinner.
‘But how can you be sure, sir?’
‘As I say.’
‘But, sir, during times like these one feels more hungry, not less.’
‘As I say.’
‘Sir.’
‘General Sir will drink coffee only,’ he said. ‘And you, Kirpal, will take the tray to his room. Twenty-one hundred hours. Sharp.’
‘Me, sir?’
‘Your day has come. Tonight you will serve Sahib in his room. Understand?’
‘Sir.’
‘And do not forget the hot-water bottle.’
‘Yessir.’
I was nervous and ran to my room and shared the news with my assistant. He was busy looking at porn magazines.
‘Major,’ he cried loudly, ‘girls are heaven.’
I told him that touching oneself makes one weak. Touching oneself was not real. He seemed to disagree with me.
‘Major, look at her momays!’
He had a pile of Debonairs and Playboys on his bed.
It used to be my bed. But after Chef was posted to the glacier, I moved to his bed, and the assistant occupied my old bed.
‘Masturbation is bad,’ I said.
‘Major, what is wrong with making love to oneself? If one can cook for oneself, then one can also touch oneself.’
‘It is not real.’
‘Major, have you ever seen a naked girl before? Come. Here. Look. Nangi Ladki.’
A helpless rage filled me. Anger began flowing inside me, and the tray shook as if the earth was shaking when I marched to Sahib’s room. I was wearing Sahib’s old clothes and shoes, which I had received on Diwali day, and I stood outside his room at twenty-one hundred hours, sharp.
I froze in my position, waited outside longer than I should have. I could not believe what I heard. I think inside the room he was weeping. Sahib was listening to some soft ghazal music, the notes were extremely melancholic. But he was weeping as well. He was very attached to the dog and he was weeping. I stood outside for a long time with milk, coffee, sugar, cups, and silver spoons, and finally when my courage returned I tapped twice or thrice on the door. But the taps must have been very, very light, they must have felt like the passing breeze to the General inside that room. I tiptoed to the kitchen, transferred the coffee to a thermos, and left the tray outside the door by the mat. Then I returned to my room.
My assistant was still up on his bed, on his elbows, looking at the glossy magazines. He reeked of rum. The room had the odor of sperm. There is no privacy in the army unless one is an officer. That was the first time I lost my patience. I yelled at him. Touching oneself is not real, I repeated. Shut the light and go to bed, I said. That night I listened to special music. Chef had given me a cassette of German music as a parting gift. The music went fast, then slow, fast, slow and fast again. Listening to those beautiful foreign sounds made me forget where I was and made me forget about masturbation.
The dog never returned to its old self again. It had lost an eye, and the vision in the other eye already had grown very dim. So it would circle round and round. There was hardly any flesh left on its hind legs. Little Rubiya thought that the dog loved moving in spiraling circles and semicircles. She would count the circles like an expert mathematician. Zero. One. Two. Three.
Kip-ing!
Sometimes Rubiya, trying to catch butterflies, would drift towards my quarter, but the ayah would come after her. The girl hated school and would often try to run away. She flared her nostrils while telling me about another then another escape from school. The girl’s face resembled the dead woman in the painting, but her eyes were different, tiny, her legs thinner than lotus roots. Her cheeks were soft but dry, I knew this even without touching them.
Rubiya and I, even then, despite her ayah, developed a special understanding, which goes beyond words. Sometimes when Sahib happened to be a little annoyed with my performance, Rubiya would wink or smile or give me a look which meant I understand, don’t worry, my father is a bit out of his mind. He is a bit fussy, that is all.
How could I have predicted then that she was going to become someone big one day? How could I have seen the poet in Rubiya?
Those days there was dust in my eyes, but let me say it again, those days were really the golden age in Kashmir.
The reason the enemy was able to cross the border and set up their camp on the glacier is because our Intelligence officers were sleeping, or playing golf, or building hotels and gyms and malls in Delhi, or they were drinking rum. And polishing their American accents. The enemy knew this and meanwhile entered the country and built bunkers high up on the mountains. Mules and helicopters had transferred rations to the bunkers, and our Intelligence officers kept sleeping. Our leaders kept posing for the Lahore-Delhi bus diplomacy photos, and no one knew that General Musharraf and members of his staff had crossed the Line of Control to visit the so-called freedom fighters, the soldiers of the Pakistani 5th Light Infantry, who had built concrete bunkers in our land. By the time the local villagers informed our army about the infiltrators it was too late. Thousands of enemy guns and men had crossed into our territory, and our men started dying like sheep and dogs.
Early in June news reached us in the kitchen that the situation had shifted from bad to worse in the border areas of Kargil, eighteen thousand feet high. My assistant had to leave the kitchen on a convoy to the front, and he died in Tololing. Time flowed differently now for us in the kitchen – breakfast was served at night and lunch at five in the morning and dinner at noon. On certain days all we managed to whip up was raw and half cooked or yesterday’s leftovers and many a times Sahib ate with soldiers at the border posts. During war the difference between jawans and officers diminishes, Chef used to say. They eat from the same ration.
I had lost all contact with Chef. Before the war, the radio operator Nair used to help me keep in touch with Kishen. But during the war he heard nothing from Siachen. News about him reached the kitchen only after the ceasefire, which took place sixty days later. The news was not good. He was alive. But during a two-day leave in Srinagar he had tried to kill himself.
From the kitchen window I saw helicopters hovering over the hospital and the parade ground in the valley below. They shook the plane trees left and right. I cycled to the hospital. Men dead and near dead were being whisked into Emergency. I remember the shadows of the men who carried the stretchers. Voices of soldiers who wanted to delay their amputations, the surgery, because they were hungry. They had not eaten for days.
Even the nurses and doctors looked sleep-starved and hungry. The wards were filled with dying men, and the corridors packed with badly wounded men or those with one arm or leg.
Kishen’s bed was in a small room in that overflowing hospital. Normally it was a maternity room, but it had been opened up for this special ‘suicide’ case. The matter was under investigation. Two guards stood outside the room. Kishen, glacier-wallah, is in operating theatre, they told me. When will he return? We don’t know. We know nothing. No one knew what was going on in the hospital. There were many new nurses, and they all looked alike. I waited for a long time by the metal bed. The pillow on the bed had a hollow and I looked at the hollow and his name and rank and 23rd Battalion on a sheet glued on to the wall. His boots were under the bed. The stencil on his black trunk said: Brij Kishen, NCO, 23rd Battalion. They had moved all his things from the glacier to the ward. Lying on top of the trunk was his pen. I picked it up. I had seen him jotting in his journal with that pen many times in the kitchen.
During the war we all did unnatural things and I was no exception. Rubiya, too, those days began doing unnatural things. School was canceled. General Sahib had postponed the Goan ayah’s annual leave – as a result the woman was always in a foul mood, not really taking care of the girl. Rubiya developed a fascination for observing fire. She would throw things she liked or disliked into the fireplace in the living room and watch them burn. Flames would consume the objects, soon they would crackle along the logs of pine and deodar in the fireplace, and it was possible to see the soot particles floating in the air. The girl made no distinction between what was useless and what was precious, she whimsically discarded her father’s things, even her dead mother’s clothes and ornaments and photos. She would sit next to the fireplace after the act and watch the roaring flames reduce the materials to ashes. She would feel the waves of heat hit her cheeks (I thought), then run away and hide for long hours somewhere in the big residence. Once or twice she was found hiding in my room, which was not even attached to the house. Several times Sahib scolded and even punished her but the war sent him away from the residence. I saw him briefly in the hospital the day I went down looking for Kishen. Back in the residence I was a bit stunned to encounter him again after such a short duration of time. Rubiya received a harsh scolding from her father during dinner. The girl refused to touch the food I had cooked and ran to her room. Sahib retired to his bedroom, he made no attempt to make up with the sobbing girl. Because of shortage of staff I doubled as the orderly and personally took the after-dinner tea to his room. He was pacing up and down in the room, which was huge, but in extreme chaos, the bed unmade, the chairs and tables pointing in different directions. I left the tray on the center table. On the side of the table I noticed a pile of confidential files and not far from the files a red journal. On the spine Kishen’s Hindi signature was visible. What was it doing in Sahib’s bedroom? The Hindi was a bit faded, but it was still there. I felt like flipping through it, but restrained myself.
‘Kip, no need to stir sugar.’
‘Sir.’
‘You may leave.’
‘Goodnight, sir.’
Back in the kitchen I tried to conjure up the course of events that must have happened. The CO of the regiment must have sifted through Kishen’s belongings after the suicide attempt, then handed the journal to the Intelligence Branch and the intelligence-wallahs dispatched it to Gen Sahib via a senior officer.
Standing in Sahib’s room I kept hearing an echo of Chef Kishen’s voice. I had to do something. I was afraid, but I had to do something. ‘If you see this journal in the wrong place, destroy it, Kirpal.’
This is the detail. Two days later the journal has still not left Sahib’s table. I enter Sahib’s room in the afternoon after his departure. I am about to pick up the thing when I hear voices. Ayah and Rubiya in the corridor. What if they discover me in the room? But. The voices recede. Soon ayah is in the bathroom, Rubiya starts playing barefoot in the garden with her dog. I am still in Gen Sahib’s bedroom, standing by the table. I pick up the confidential files and the journal, rush to the warm living room.
That evening the General based on the report from ayah scolds and punishes Rubiya for having burned to ashes his important documents. That’s the limit, he says. You’ve burned my top-secret documents. She cries. She protests. But, Papa, she says, I didn’t do it. Papa doesn’t believe her. Ayah doesn’t believe her either. Sahib, here is the only half-burned page from those files, says the ayah. The page flew out of the fireplace, says the ayah. Papa, I didn’t do it. No, Papa. The girl is losing her faith in the world. I didn’t realize this thing then; now I know better.
I have never been able to pardon myself for having given the girl so many tears, so much anguish. Ever since that moment I have felt a different person. Again and again I go back to that moment. I see myself rushing to the living room with the files and the journal in my hand. Through the window I make sure Rubiya is playing in the garden outside, her dog is panting, going round in circles. I make sure I hear the sound of water in the bathroom, a woman is taking her bath in there. I am in front of the fireplace. Waves of heat hit my face. I shake, I hesitate, I sense the presence of the dead woman in the painting, her ghostly gaze. I change my mind. But my mind is made up. I let the things in my hands go. Little tongues of fire start licking the pages. Then the crackle, the sparks, the roar.
The only item I could not throw into the flames was the journal. Later in my room I opened the journal, not to judge anyone, but to simply find out why Kishen wanted to kill himself. What kind of information, scribbled inside the journal, was sensitive enough to cause its relocation to Sahib’s room?
It is a little thing – seven inches by five inches – no more than two hundred pages. In Delhi, for a long time, I kept it under lock and key, but as I was setting out on this journey I picked it up and brought it with me. It is now with me on this train. The first time I tried to read it (in the General’s kitchen) was extremely difficult. Chef wrote the entries very tightly, in bad handwriting, and in two languages, Hindi and Punjabi.
The first few pages are recipes of simple salads – somewhat exotic, but perfectly suitable for Indian taste buds:
Tomato and Feta Cheese Salad
900g tomatoes
200g feta cheese
120ml olive oil
12 black olives
freshly ground pepper
Serves 4
In bold letters he emphasizes: Black olives are a must, not green, not sun-dried black olives, but juicy black olives.
The next few pages are filled with complaints about the absence of olives in Indian cooking. How hard it is to find this thing in Indian stores, and the troubles he had to go through to acquire olives. He ends a page with an invention of a new olive side dish, the olive raita. He ends the next page with another invention: mirchi (green cayenne pepper) chocolate fondue. Two pages later he comments on his fascination for cheese. He complains about the lack of good cheese in Indian cooking. Paneer is fine, but there are more than 462 types of cheeses, maybe more. He praises Brie and Roquefort in particular. Why do we borrow certain things from foreigners and not the rest? he writes. Why do we adapt to tomatoes and kidney beans and not cheese? Indian cooking seems impossible without tomatoes. But tomatoes moved to our country from Mexico. Only one hundred years ago we started using them in our food. Now it is commonplace.
The French embassy-wallahs told me about a master chef, Batel or Patel his name was, and this man killed himself because he could not deliver the perfect meal. I bow before the master. I can never bring myself to do that.
Right in the middle of the journal, he talks more about his apprenticeship at five-star hotels and foreign embassies in Delhi. Of all the embassies, he received his warmest welcome from the German embassy. He writes about Chef Muller. Chef Muller introduced him not only to German cuisine, but also to music. This music I listen to when I am alone, he writes. In the kitchen I hear this music when cooking. I cannot thank Chef Muller enough for gifting me two tapes of such fine music. But, how uninteresting German cuisine is! Even the curried sausage. It is hard to comprehend how such a culture managed to produce such incredible music!
Chef’s life and work are fused together; it is difficult to separate them at least in the notebook. I had expected to see more sketches. But there are only three dirty pictures. A naked woman is shoving a Cadbury’s chocolate bar inside her sex. A man is balancing an orange on his erect lingam. His penis is coated with ‘kamasutra powder’ – the recipe is scribbled on the margin. Otherwise the pages look surprisingly clean. Only five or six have grease on them.
Flipping through, it seems as if this is my journal. I have never kept a diary, but I might have written more or less the same words. I would have skipped the dirty sex parts, but I might have written about other things in a similar way. When I read these pages I sense a remarkable similarity in voice. He was my second self or perhaps I am what he was becoming. The greatest gift he gave me was not food. Not even the foreign cuisines.
Chef gave me a tongue.
The tone changes the moment he is transferred to the glacier. But again he is talking about his plans to install the first tandoor on Siachen. He plans to use mules as transport to take the component parts to the camp on the Icefields. He proposes a detailed method on how to reassemble the parts. He does not recommend parachuting the fully assembled clay oven down on the Icefields using a helicopter. (This method was used to transfer the Swedish guns.) He uses the words ‘glacier’ and ‘icefields’ interchangeably.
In the beginning of June, he writes, with a heavy heart I quickly collected my things and left the base headquarters. We followed the long and dangerous road to Ladakh. Then a Cheetah helicopter flew us to the Icefields, a camp twenty thousand feet high. In the helicopter I was feeling dizzy. When I looked down I experienced vertigo. This was the first time I saw the Icefields from so close. They are like their name: huge white endless fields, where a hundred thousand people can play cricket and hockey for days on end. But the place is absolutely empty. Empty and desolate. Other than two little army camps there is nothing. Our camp is at a higher elevation than our enemy’s.
Minus 58. God help us all.
A soldier told me that this place is the second coldest on Earth, he writes. The glacier is eighty miles long. The name means ‘wild rose’. Wild roses grow at the base of this beast or organism or whatever it is. The Balti people live there, and in their language Siachen means wild rose.
Not a single day goes by without firing by either side. We never attack on Fridays. A soldier told me that Fridays privilege the enemy because it is the day of their prayer. Saturdays are better. On Saturdays the peaks flash like the inside of a tandoor.
Most of the mountain peaks here do not have names. So we give them names. Because we do not have much to do in the kitchen we find ways to amuse ourselves. Giving the peaks names kills time very well. Sometimes we give names which are abuses in our language: Ma-chod, bahen-chod, bhon-sadi-day. We call our enemies Pakis or sulahs. They call us Hindu cunts. Those ma-chods, behn-chods, bhon-sadi-days. Mother fuckers. Sister fuckers.
Our homes are white arctic tents, each one with space for three sleeping bags. Evening, morning and afternoon I hear the same thing from the men: Arrange my transfer, or I am very unhappy here. Men become extremely religious here. The soldiers read Hanuman Chaleesa and Gita if they are Hindus and Japuji if they are Sikhs, and Koran if they are Muslims, but there are not many Muslims in the army.
There are soldiers who look at photos of Bombay actresses like Shilpa Shetty (and vamps like Helen) for hours while others listen to songs on transistor radio. Some engage in thirty-second open-air pissing and spitting contests. Fluids freeze before hitting white ground. I have my Sony tape recorder here. Sometimes when I need to be alone I put on my parka and underpants under pure wool fatigues, and lace my Swiss snow boots and put on my gloves and baklava and black goggles and step out for a walk in loose, deep snow. I take my Sony along, and when I am far enough away from our camp I play Chef Muller’s German music. The music is foreign to my ears and perhaps that is why I like it more than our own.
We wash once a month. We use kerosene oil to melt ice. Kerosene stoves run twenty-four hours in the tents. We have learned not to waste even a single drop of water… Kerosene blackens our faces, our fingers. We step out for the call of nature. We shit on the Icefields. The doctor has instructed us not to expose ourselves longer than thirty seconds. It is so cold on Siachen.
There is something wrong with the way we eat here. Precooked food. Canned curry and subzis. Canned rice. Chappati is a luxury. Unhealthy Maggie instant noodles. No Balti chicken. Mango frooti juice in tetrapacks. Salted Amul cheese. Butter. White bread. Cadbury chocolate bars are not for eating; we unwrap the bars and break them and dump them on the ice floor in our tents; chocolate makes ice less slippery, allowing us to walk without falling; we step on chocolate burfi, literally. I hate chocolate. Rum is free-flowing. Rum, too, allows us to walk. Sometimes jawans steal kebabs from the plates, which are sent to the officers’ tent. I approve of this wholeheartedly.
Mustard oil is our savior. It doesn’t freeze.
The Sikh soldiers experience more pain than the rest of us, he writes. Sharp crystals and icicles form in their beards. Long hair inside their turbans becomes matted automatically. They cry in pain trying to comb the hair. Halat khasta, they cry. Kip would have been dead by now.
Don’t believe if someone tells you that men on the Icefields die like animals. No, they do not die like that. A mule when it slips into a crevasse cries out of agony for one full hour before slipping into deep silence. Men die either instantaneously, or take several days. On 4 March Naik Surendran died in his sleep due to HAPO. Two days later a second-lieutenant fell from a height of 14,000 feet. The rescue team failed to retrieve his body. They returned with a dead corporal, the soldier’s fingers stitched to his public hair.
There are a few breaks in the entries after this point. Two or three pages later he starts repeating himself. As if he is stuck inside a cold white vortex. Armies are supposed to be mobile tigers and foxes, he writes. But we have become ice.
Everything is white here, even time has turned white. These are my white hours. This Icefield is not for the weak-hearted. We are being killed not only by the Pakistanis but also by bitter cold. It is so cold here it eats one’s brain and belly and freezes the heart. Men use jerry cans of kerosene oil to thaw the Bofors guns. We are lucky we have the Swedish Bofors guns. They can lob the forty-kilo shells (which look like jackfruit) into the enemy positions thirty or forty miles away. The guns are helping us sheeshkebab the Pakis. But to use the guns one must stand out in the cold. Men complain about mountain sickness, this condition is called HACO – a human brain drowns in its own fluids, a human body turns blue, and HAPO – a lung fails due to lack of oxygen. Men can’t sleep. We hallucinate. Some hear the cries of djinns. Men become impotent. Yesterday a gunner while eating his meal broke down. He was telling us about his victories with women, and then suddenly he broke down and started weeping and said he can no longer get it up. It seems to me the reason he lost his manhood is because he stayed too long at this altitude. Six months without a break on Siachen. His officer could not find a replacement. I tried to console him, but he punched me in the mouth and said – what do you kitchen people know?
I did not know how to respond to this man. He was not very young, in his late twenties perhaps. The moment he broke down all the laughter in the tent ceased, and people stopped eating, and we were no longer able to talk about the red-light district of Bombay: about Kamathipoora, where Pal and Thapa had picked up gonorrhea (at first they feared it was HIV), and where Inder had slept with the impotent ship captain’s pretty wife.
Flipping through these pages, I say to myself on the window seat of this train, this does not seem like the journal of a man about to kill himself or about to make a serious attempt. In the journal he writes that he admires officers who simply look the other way when men do not follow their orders on the glacier. Siachen is a strange place, he concludes. Bonds between men grow strong here, and they grow very weak, and get blown away by cold winds. If I can admire or pretend to admire the beauty of this icy wasteland, and find poetry in the tents and igloos and seracs and pinnacles and icicles, and the black soot on the walls of the igloos because of kerosene oil bukharis and braziers, and parachutes dropping parts of Bofors guns, and canned food and sheep, if I can admire all these things…
Then suddenly Chef writes about me. It was the second time I found myself written about.
I do not think the boy Kirpal will stay for long. He does not really belong in the army. Kip is fixated on his father. That is why he is in the army. The boy has a sensitive sense of smell – almost like a dog. One day he will sniff out the truth.
One day he will learn that to live properly, one must allow one’s parents to die. Once I saw his father kiss a Kashmiri woman in the Mughal garden. I was on the other side of the fountain – they could not see me. The woman’s face was wet from the mist, she spread a calico sheet on the grass under the plane tree, she sat at the edge of the sheet, hands dangling on her raised knees, she fussed about the embroidered dupatta on her head, tucked neatly behind her ears and falling on both sides of her blue kameez. It was then he took the woman in his arms and turned around to check if someone was watching and once convinced that no one was close by he kissed her. It was brief, but it was definitely a kiss. She pushed him away as if trying to tell him not to take such liberties again, but really she wanted him to do exactly the opposite.
Kirpal’s father belonged to the tradition of officers who were gentlemen. Officers like Maj. Gen. Khanolkar and Maj. Gen. Thimayya, Gen. Harbaksh Singh and Gen. J.S. Aurora. They knew duty, honor, humanity. Officers like him (despite the fact that they succumbed to women during weak moments) are the main reason I am still in the army. Some of our commanders here on the glacier are extremely abusive. They make this hell a bigger hell.
There are no trees here, Chef writes. One day I saw a tree and started walking towards it. But a soldier told me that it was three days away. The captain said that the tree did not exist at all. ‘Go to the CO’s tent if you want to see the real thing. Smaller than the size of your prick, a Japanese bonsai.’
Yesterday I saw a djinn, he writes a week later. He was on a serac, smoking a cigarette. Save me, the djinn cried. I found it difficult to bear his agony. Save me, he screamed. Have you people forgotten how to scream? he asked. Stop it, I said. Stop smoking that bleedy cigarette, I said. Go away, you dwarf. You Ma-chod. Bhaen-chod. Bhon-sadi-day.
This journal has a burnt smell. But.
Flipping through these pages I begin to feel very cold. I am trying to find the precise page, the one I had discovered in the General’s residence, the one which had given me a hint as to why Chef had tried to kill himself:
The soldiers take care of their clothes and bodies. How obedient and patient they are. When they die on duty they bring to their lips the name of their wife or simply ‘O my mother’. I have heard from other soldiers. There are always some who do not return. I cook thinking they will all return. There is always someone who does not. It is hard to throw away the food. At night I hear the missing soldiers’ cries: I am hungry, feed me. There is always a soldier who does not return. Sometimes to forget this hell I recite the comical names of our border posts: Khalsa 1, Khalsa 2, Romeo 1, Romeo 2. I close my eyes and recall all the street names and areas in Srinagar, where our base camp is. Habakadal. Brazulla. Jawahar Nagar. Pantha Chowk. Ganderbal. Raina Wari. Raj Bagh. Badami Bagh. The moment I do so I see the faces of real people, and I am able to endure this hell. Sometimes I hear the whistle of a train approaching. It stops at a platform on the mountains. Kirpal is headed to the Badami Bagh camp. I touch the face of Kip, the boy is standing outside the General’s residence. There is a tenderness in his look. Sometimes I walk by the tents at night and I feel as if we are a wrecked ship, and feel the glacier moving under my feet. Mocking me. My God, where am I?
We are condemned. For us there is no hope. The Pakistanis fire at us from the other side. Are they filled with hope? They are on lower ground than us and yet filled with hope. They believe they will go straight to heaven after they die. When we capture an enemy prisoner I cannot wait to ask him. Tell me, what does your heaven look like? Here, please draw it on this sheet of paper. What food do people eat in heaven?
Everything looks strange, he writes near the end of the journal. The war is over. I am no longer on the Icefields. Back at the base headquarters things make no sense. Men polishing officers’ boots, men playing the brass band, bagpipes, the band master’s baton going up in the air, parade ground, signal center, MT workshop, men playing volleyball, dry canteen and wet canteen, burra-khana and chota-khana, burra-peg and chota-peg, recreation room – nothing makes sense.
The entries from this point are written very very tightly and it is difficult to read them. They are a strange mixture of two-thirds Hindi and one-third Punjabi. His Hindi is superior to his Punjabi.
She cooks me a meal, he writes. The nurse. And while she lays the table I ask – Why do we cling to the Rose Glacier, and why does Rose cling to us?
She does not hear me. While she serves food I begin thinking about the garbage on the glacier. Our shit on the Icefields. Acres of wrecked Bofors guns and American and British weapons. Wrecked vehicles, tanks, jerry cans. What is the name of the wind that blows on the glacier? I would like to know the name of the wind.
Why are you not paying attention to me? she asks. The nurse kisses me. She undoes her blouse. Her breasts fall. I say, I thought you wanted to do it after the meal. She is somewhere behind me now. I see her petticoat string dangling from the empty chair. I turn. My heart is beating fast, fluids are running inside fast. I have not seen a woman’s belly button for an entire six months. I eat her tortellini. I lick her tattoo. But I am not able to get my thing up. In the past I would have had her before the blouse and petticoat came off. This time minutes pass and become hours. I am not able to get my thing up. I am not able to get it up.
She removes her three bangles and her wristwatch. Places them on the side table. Now she is completely naked and is panting like a dog and this arouses me but my thing does not harden. It does not. It is the tail of a dog. Wags a little. Only a little.
She tells me to talk to the doctor. She is a nurse. She knows these things. The next day I sit outside the doctor’s door. But when my turn comes after a long wait I am unable to tell him my problem. Words remain frozen in my mouth. Instead I tell him I feel weak, very weak. He gives me Vitamin C.
For half a day I run along the river, I do not return to the nurse’s quarters, I bike to the houseboat Texas Dawn in the red-light district to do it with a paid woman. The girl I choose is fair and sexy and well-endowed. Her name is Azra or Asma. But. The thing does not work.
The thing is wrecked.
A few pages later the address of Chef’s wife in Delhi is written. There are a couple more blank pages.