Sara

By Shashi Warrier

Junaid, chef and restaurateur, has much to live up to as the grandson of the famous Junaid of Fatehgarh, whose secret recipe he is entrusted with. His world is changed forever when he falls in love with Alice Munro, whose great-grandmother's diaries reveal the unimaginable -- that Junaid's grandfather built his family's fortunes with an act of treachery. Seeking redemption, Junaid and Alice embark on a search for the truth -- a quest that continues even after Alice's untimely death, as Junaid and their daughter, Sara, uncover a tale of love and betrayal. Poignant and powerful, Sara is an unforgettable story of hope and loss ... and all the strength it takes to heal

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins India
• Release date: Jul 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9789353571061

Shashi Warrier

Shashi Warrier is the author of The Hidden Continent, Suzy's Gift and five thrillers: Night of the Krait, The Orphan Diaries, Sniper, Noordin's Gift, and The Girl Who Didn't Give Up. Hangman's Journal is a semi-fictional biography of the last hangman of the erstwhile kingdom of Travancore and The Homecoming is a novel based in Kashmir.

Book preview

Prologue

Abba figured it out during his second week in hospital following a heart attack.

I was at his bedside that night, standing guard so that Ammi could get a few hours of sleep. Abba came awake at two in the morning, the rhythm of his breath changing as he grunted and shifted onto his right side. ‘What is it, Abba?’ I asked softly. ‘Can I get you something?’

‘Nothing, Son,’ he said. He was silent for a long minute. ‘I have something to say to you.’ He reached out and touched my hand. ‘Something important.’

We’d been at odds for the last few years, ever since I spent a couple of years in Delhi studying hotel management. After another couple of years of squabbling over how to run his restaurant, the family business, in Fatehgarh, I decided to return to Delhi, where I had a good business offer from a former teacher. I visited Abba and Ammi and my sisters regularly, at least three or four times a year, but the squabbling continued during the visits. What did the old man want to tell me now? I wondered, because it wasn’t in his nature to apologize to one of his children. ‘What?’ I asked warily.

‘This last week in bed, I wondered why we fought so much,’ he said. ‘Now I understand.’

‘Well, then tell me,’ I said, sceptically.

He smiled through his exhaustion. ‘Light,’ he said. ‘Lighting.’

‘Light?’ I exclaimed softly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You learned to cook in a bright, modern kitchen,’ he explained. ‘You depend too much on your eyes. Me, I learned in a dark, smoky room. I go by memory and feel and smell and sound more than sight.’

‘Let me think on it,’ I told him.

‘No need to think,’ he said. ‘We’ll try it out the next time you visit.’

‘Rest,’ I told him.

‘I’m resting,’ he replied testily. ‘What else do you think I can do alone in bed with a needle in my arm?’

He drifted off seconds later. He was on a drip that contained something that encouraged him to sleep, and there was a catheter to make sure he didn’t have to get out of bed to pee. I dozed in my chair by his bed until he stirred again, perhaps a couple of hours later.

‘What did you mean about the light?’ I asked, picking up where we’d left off about my cooking, which I thought was pretty good.

‘Because you should learn to use every sense when you cook,’ he replied, ‘and you don’t.’ He paused. ‘Enough. I’m going back to sleep.’

And he did. We never spoke about it until a few months later, when he had recovered enough to do half of what he’d been doing before the illness. I was visiting again, and helping him out in the restaurant kitchen – he’d taken on a sort of assistant since his heart attack, but the boy just refused to learn – and the power went off, leaving us in darkness, only partly lit by the cooking fire. Abba just leaned over someplace in the dark and fished out a candle, lighting it with a spill. He picked up a little bowl of what I knew was coarsely powdered pepper and handed it to me. ‘Is this ready?’ he asked.

I sniffed at the powder, took a pinch between my finger and thumb, letting it fall back into the bowl. ‘I think it is,’ I said.

‘Don’t just pat it with your fingers, boy, feel it! Dig your fingers in,’ he said, a tinge of his old impatience entering his voice.

I held back my sharp response, and did as he said. It was a revelation. Deeper inside, I felt the finer grains below the layer of coarse grains on top. It was too finely ground. We’d have to use it elsewhere, and grind some more for now. Since the electricity was gone, I’d have to do it the old way, with mortar and pestle, but I didn’t mind because I’d learnt something. I grinned. ‘Okay, Abba,’ I told him. ‘I’ll grind some more.’

He straightened up from the pot he was supervising. ‘In every other way,’ he said, his bearded face Mephistophelian in the light of the flickering cooking fire, ‘of the two of us, you are the better cook. Now that you understand your one weakness, I expect you to be the better in every way by the next time you come here.

‘Then, if you are ready, I will tell you the secret that my father passed on to me.’

I wanted to hug the old man but I didn’t because that was how it was between us. I thought I knew which secret he meant and wanted to get my hands on it, so I paid attention to my fingers and skin and found my judgment of all sorts of things getting finer and finer.

On my next visit home, he barely gave me time to leave my bag in the house before dragging me off to a series of shops to buy a range of spices and herbs, very small quantities of some, and surprisingly large quantities of others. He took me to the kitchen, and there, under his supervision, I ground and powdered and heated and toasted and mixed over a hundred ingredients together into a soft brown powder. At the end we had a week’s supply of the family’s signature spice mix, something that he’d hitherto made all by himself behind locked doors, never allowing anyone else a peep at what he was doing.

Then he watched me carefully as I prepared my own welcome dinner – a delicately scented biriyani – tasted a spoonful, and, closing his eyes in pleasure, brought tears to my own. ‘You’re ready now,’ he said, savouring the taste. ‘You will do this for your son if he, too, becomes a cook.’

I couldn’t help pulling his leg. ‘What if it’s my daughter who becomes a cook?’ I asked.

He glared at me. After a long, heavy, silence, he said, ‘If she is as gifted as you are, you will do it for her.’

Again, I didn’t hug him, because that was still how it was between us. He was always cranky, and I never did work up the nerve to tell him how much I loved him and how much I owed him, but we got along well enough since that night in the hospital. We didn’t quarrel even when, some years later, I brought home a bride-to-be who was both a firangi and a kafir.

Abba and I did quarrel, though, over the knowledge that followed my firangi kafir bride, and that was serious … But I get ahead of myself.

PART ONE

One

The firangi.

On a glorious summer’s afternoon, at a quarter to one, just before the lunch-hour rush, she sits alone at a table for two by one of the windows overlooking Regent Street. Table 3, served that Friday by Rashid Alam. Rashid, a smiling Bengali from Chittagong, tells me in the kitchen that the lady at Table 3 has been asking if there really is a Junaid of Fatehgarh.

The sign outside the restaurant says, in bold yellow letters on a deep blue background, ‘Junaid’s of Fatehgarh’. I’ve heard that question half a dozen times. ‘We’re getting ready for the lunchtime rush,’ I tell Rashid, an edge to my voice, ‘and you’re getting in everyone’s way.’ In sharp contrast to the quiet in the dining hall, it’s pandemonium in the kitchen. Rashid stands still, and I continue, ‘She’s seen the sign, and must be asking casually if there really is such a person. Ignore her.’

‘Not like that, saab,’ he says, his English a little underprepared even after two years in Britain. ‘Serious.’

‘All right,’ I tell him, sighing. ‘I’ll go see her. Just as soon as I finish this.’ I put the last of the coriander leaf garnish on a dish of dum aloo, wipe my hands on a napkin at my waist and stride out into the dim hallway where twenty-odd hungry Londoners attack the offerings of my cooks. I notice, amongst them, a visibly Indian couple, the man in a t-shirt, the lady in a blue sari, the only patrons using their fingers rather than the knives and forks and other implements set before them. I smile at the man as I pass by, and he, noticing my dark skin, toque and smock, smiles back.

The lady at Table 3 sits looking out of the window: I can’t see her face. I stop by her and clear my throat to get her attention. ‘Ma’am,’ I say.

The skies have gone grey with the arrival of a surprise shower. When she turns I see that her eyes are the colour of the sky outside. ‘Yes?’ she says, the beginnings of a smile curving her mouth. She’s in her mid-twenties, a curly-haired dishwater blonde, freckled, wide mouthed, dressed in a t-shirt and denim jacket. Pretty.

‘You asked Rashid if there really is a Junaid of Fatehgarh,’ I tell her. ‘There is.’ I bow. ‘What can I do for you?’

She blushes in a moment of confusion. More than pretty. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t know quite what I expected.’

‘A very common problem,’ I tell her, disarmed.

‘It’s just that …’ She seems to run out of steam, then manages to raise some more. ‘You know, my great-grandmother still talks of a Junaid of Fatehgarh from fifty or sixty years ago …’ Her voice trails off again.

‘Ummm …’ It all begins possibly to fall into place. ‘Your great-grandmother,’ I tell her. ‘Perhaps you could tell me where she came across this Junaid.’

‘In Fatehgarh, where else!’ She laughs. ‘I’m getting this all wrong,’ she says. ‘My name is Alice Munro, and my great-grandfather used to be Political Resident in a little kingdom called Fatehgarh in the north of India, and Gram – that’s my great-grandmother – keeps saying the king had a chef called Junaid who used to serve the most delicious spicy food that didn’t give any of them, ermmm, well, Delhi belly.’

‘Ah!’ I tell her, the link established. ‘That must have been my own grandfather. He used to cook for the Nawab and his guests. The gentry of his time, of his land.’ I bow again. ‘As I hope to do here, now.’ A question strikes me. ‘But how did the Resident’s wife happen to know of a lowly cook in the years between the wars?’

She laughs again. ‘I never thought of that … You know, Gram’s getting on for a hundred, and she says she loves Indian food. But when we get her Indian, from one of the curry restaurants near where she lives, she absolutely hates it!’

‘Oh!’ I say. ‘And why, if I may ask?’

‘Well, she says it’s nothing like the real thing, and the real thing is always what Junaid of Fatehgarh used to make. That was the best she got at the Nawab’s table. But she’s mostly in a wheelchair now, and her short-term memory’s a bit, well, incomplete, some of the time.’

‘I wish you could bring her around one of these days,’ I say. ‘I’d like to know if the new Junaid is as good as his grandfather.’

‘We aren’t likely to now, are we, with Gram stuck in a wheelchair?’ she asks.

‘No, we aren’t,’ I say. ‘What a pity!’

‘Maybe I can stand in for her today,’ she says. ‘What do you recommend?’

‘The murgh achari,’ I tell her without hesitation. ‘With naan, and a salad.’ I pause. ‘Anything else would be as good, but this chicken dish has all the spices that Punjabi pickles do. Ummm …’ I hesitate.

‘Yes?’ she smiles.

‘Use your fingers. It’s best to dip a bit of the naan in the gravy just before you eat it.’ For no reason that I can see, I feel compelled to explain. ‘So the naan absorbs some without going soggy.’ She laughs again, without reservation. It’s a jolly, honest sort of laugh, and afterwards she looks a bit concerned, as if she laughed out too loudly. She looks at her fingertips, at the varnish on her nails, and up at me. I shake my head. ‘No, the varnish won’t spoil the dish, or the dish your varnish.’

She nods. ‘I’ll take your word for it. Thank you.’

She gets her achari five minutes later, puts the knife and fork aside, and uses her fingers on it. After a professional lifetime spent watching people eat, I’ve found that the way people eat tells a lot about how they are. There are the predators, the chargers, the picky ones, the tentative ones … But this girl eats with care. Not carefully, to avoid having gravy drip down the front of her dress, but caring for the food, so she gets the best of what she eats. She neither hurries nor loiters, dipping small pieces of the naan in the gravy, learning, as she eats, just how long to soak it to get the best of it.

She finishes her lunch in twelve minutes, the self-consciousness disappearing with the naan. I go back to her table as her finger bowl is cleared. ‘How was it?’ I ask.

‘Fabulous,’ she says, smiling up at me. ‘Now I know what Gram meant!’

‘You don’t know how much that means to me,’ I tell her. ‘May I recommend a dessert?’

She belches softly, genteelly, behind a napkin. ‘No, thank you,’ she says emphatically. ‘I’m too full. That was really good. Maybe next time.’

‘I’m glad there’ll be one!’ I tell her. The restaurant has filled up by now. ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ I tell her. ‘This is the busiest hour of the day.’

‘Of course!’ she says. ‘May I have the bill, please?’

‘For the great-granddaughter of a fan of my grandfather’s cooking, ma’am, there is no charge.’

Again that jolly, honest laugh. ‘Thank you so much!’

Again without knowing why, and much against my business instincts, I add, ‘In this house, there never will be.’

The laughter fades. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘I am,’ I tell her. ‘Try me!’

At the door, she turns to look back, wiggles her fingers at me and disappears down the stairwell. A moment later, she melts into the crowd on the pavement outside.

Try me she did, a few weeks later, on a Saturday afternoon, when she came with an older couple – a cousin and his wife, from Hampshire – in town for the day, for lunch and a matinee. She cheated, though she never admitted to having done so. Never.

They sit at a corner table, the couple facing each other and Alice with her back to the hall, where someone in the kitchen won’t be able to see her face. The waiter this time is a desperate Indian, Satish, who’s got a diploma in hotel management but can’t get a better job than this.

He turns up in the kitchen, getting in the way, as Rashid did. ‘A lady asked for you,’ he says. ‘If you’re not too busy.’

I straighten up from an inspection of a platter of seekh. ‘Which table?’ I ask, hoping it’s Ms Munro, great-granddaughter of the Residency.

‘Eleven,’ he says, brusquely. He thinks it’s my fault he’s got to work waiting at tables.

I recognize her when I reach the table. ‘Welcome back,’ I say.

‘Hello there!’ she says. ‘Meet my cousin Harold, and his wife, Jenny. They’re here for the day, from Hampshire, for lunch and a play afterwards. The play’s on me, so lunch is on Harold …’

Harold and Jenny nod, and mumble greetings. ‘Welcome,’ I tell them. Then, to Harold, I say, ‘Did you hear the same things about my grandfather from her great-grandmother?’

Harold grins. ‘No, I’m from her father’s side. But I’ve heard enough on the phone, in the last week or so. She hasn’t spoken of anything else.’

Alice butts in. ‘So what do you recommend today?’

‘The house lamb biriyani,’ I tell her. ‘With a raita, and a papad. With carrot halwa for dessert. Don’t miss it this time.’

‘Would you recommend a wine to go with the biriyani?’ Harold asks.

I smile. ‘Satish, the lad who came to you first, knows more about wines.’ It’s one of the things Satish prides himself upon, his knowledge of wines. And he does know them, though he tends to get a bit pedantic on the topic. ‘He’ll be with you in just a moment, and I need to get back to the kitchen right away.’

Before sending him back to their table, I tell Satish to tell me when they ask for the bill, which they do after a leisurely encounter with the biriyani and the halwa. I go back to their table. ‘How was the food?’ I ask Alice.

She searches for words to describe it. ‘It sort of came alive,’ she says, finally. ‘Layers of taste.’ A pause, and a shake of the head. ‘It was terrific … And now, can Harold have the cheque?’

‘No charge,’ I say.

‘That’s not fair,’ she replies. ‘It’s on Harold.’

‘At your bidding,’ I say. ‘That’s cheating.’

She comes up, then, with the most potent weapon in her armoury. ‘Look, no matter how much I love the food, I’m not going to stuff my face here and not pay for it. The first time, well, that was a pleasure, but any more of it’s going to be oppressive.’

‘You can’t be serious!’ I say.

‘Try me!’ she replies, as I did on her previous visit.

I blinked first. Harold paid, and they departed, smiling, to their matinee. I lurked in the kitchen, mildly shamed and extremely irritable, wondering why I wanted this gori back in my restaurant so badly. It was doing well, but it was still new, and a long way from breaking even. I couldn’t afford to offer a stranger an indefinite number of free meals.

After a busy week, I found myself wondering, towards half past noon next Saturday, whether she would come to lunch, now that my generosity was no longer oppressive. By two or so, when it was clear she wouldn’t, I found myself sinking into a grey, despondent haze, and only the busyness of preparing for a large and noisy Saturday evening crowd kept me going. The Sunday afternoon that followed was, as usual, busy, but Sunday evening – I kept Sunday evenings for myself – brought on a blue mood that I put down to homesickness and loneliness. The despondency continued Monday morning, despite the bright sunshine, receding only under the pressure of the day’s lunch crowd, which was exceptional. And then, an old friend persuaded me to cater for a large wedding of rich Punjabis, and their hospitality kept me out of the restaurant and bed for a couple of days. When I got back to work on Thursday, the kitchen was a bit of a mess, and that kept me occupied until Friday, when the despondency returned, weightier than before.

I arrived at the restaurant at my usual hour of nine, well in time to prepare for lunch – no breakfast, please, only lunch and dinner – on a regular working day, got the menu laid out, checked the supplies, ground some spices, found a little problem with one of the burners … And found that I was grumpy, unusually so.

I found out why at half past two that afternoon, when the lunch rush was gone and the last few stragglers were, well, straggling in. Rashid came into the office as I was opening the account books.

Rashid of the big smile turns up at the door of my cramped little cubicle. It’s a small bleak white box, without a single window to let in sunlight or fresh air, where I survive on electric lamps, and, in warm weather, air conditioning. His smile only irritates me further. ‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘That lady who was asking about Junaid …’ His voice fades when he sees the thunder on my face.

‘What about her?’ I growl at him.

‘She is here again, asking for you. Serious.’

The grumps disappear. The air conditioning is no longer stale, the tube lights no longer lifeless and pallid blue. I restrain my eagerness. ‘Tell her I’ll be with her in five minutes … Two minutes, actually.’

I make it in a minute and a half. She looks up, smiling. ‘I’ve eaten,’ she says. ‘I came for dessert.’

‘The gulab jamun is particularly good today,’ I tell her. ‘Where did you lunch?’

‘Oh, we went to a pub,’ she tells me. ‘Somebody I know is getting engaged.’

‘I’m relieved,’ I tell her. ‘I was afraid you might have found a place where you like the north Indian food better than you like mine.’

She chuckles. ‘Don’t be silly!’

‘Don’t know about being silly,’ I tell her. The words are out before I realize they are. ‘I’m only being honest.’

She starts to smile but when she looks me in the eye her smile falters. Rashid arrives at the table in time to rescue me, and perhaps her as well. ‘Phillip Knott saab is on the phone,’ he tells me. ‘He didn’t say what he wants.’

‘Excuse me,’ I tell her. ‘Business calls, but I’ll be back soon. Wait.’

She nods. The smile returns, and she looks at her watch. ‘I can give you thirty seconds.’

I smile back and get to the phone. Phillip is my partner, and the one footing the bills while I do the work. ‘Yes, Phillip,’ I tell him. ‘What’s up?’

He senses something. ‘Do you want me to call you later?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘Much, much later.’

He laughs. ‘Sure. A couple of urgent matters, and then you can go back to your girl …’

‘What girl?’ I ask.

‘It’s got to be food or a girl, and you’re in your own restaurant, so it’s got to be a girl.’

‘You jump too quickly to conclusions,’ I tell him.

For the next few difficult minutes, we discuss, unfortunately, the dismissal of one of the waiters. That done, he excuses me. ‘But we must talk today,’ he says.

‘I’ll call you at seven. Call me here if I forget.’

She’s still at the table when I get back, finishing the last of the jamun after letting it soak in the syrup. ‘Your thirty seconds were up long ago,’ she says.

‘I have to earn a living,’ I tell her. ‘And I’m so glad you waited.’

‘Look, we’re not going to be able to sit and talk here,’ she says. ‘There’ll always be someone or something. So let me ask you out to lunch …’ She pauses, blushing. On her fair skin the blush shows very clearly.

I’m disarmed by the blush, delighted at the invitation. ‘Sure,’ I tell her. ‘But I’m only free Sundays. Sunday evenings.’

‘That’s all right,’ she says. ‘Forget lunch. Sunday night it is. Where shall we meet?’

‘You tell me,’ I say.

‘I live down in Croydon,’ she says. ‘By the old airfield. Near Purley Oaks station.’

‘I’m in Hounslow,’ I tell her, mildly uncomfortable at the thought of where I live, in a poky flat not much better than a Council one, and filled with kitchen equipment, the only thing I’ve been spending money on. ‘Perhaps we should meet somewhere in town.’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Waterloo? Under the clock?’

‘Right. What time?’

‘Five?’

Sunday afternoons I sleep. That’s the single afternoon every week I’m free of the restaurant, and I consider that one-hour nap sacrosanct. Besides, there’s that spice mix to concoct: I collect the ingredients over the week and make it up at home on Sundays, enough for the coming week. So I’ll have to get out of bed early as well.

I don’t think twice. ‘Five will be fine,’ I say, ‘under the clock at Waterloo.’ Midnight at the North Pole is fine, if that’s what she wants. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I tell myself one word: ‘Idiot!’

‘Excellent,’ she says.

One of the other waiters, Sebastian, comes along with a message from one of our regulars. ‘Umm, I have to go,’ I tell her, and prepare to tear myself away.

‘Do,’ she says. ‘See you on Sunday night, then.’

Those seventy-odd hours to 5 p.m., Sunday, were full of unease, of apprehension and questions, some of them the stupidest I’ve ever asked in my whole life. Not that they seemed stupid when I asked them, of course. Since I asked only myself those questions, my stupidity remained hidden until I told her about it some years later.

Early Sunday morning, I have a long, careful look in the bathroom mirror. I’m in good shape for thirty-nine going on forty, thanks to metabolism, long walks and plenty of exertion in the kitchen. My waist size is still 32, as it’s been for the last eighteen years. She must be twenty-five or so. Abba went bald in his forties, and my hair is thinning now. He’s also lost most of his teeth, getting by on dentures and bridges which he acquired on my insistence. So when I’m sixty, bald, and toothless, she’ll still be a presentable mid-forties.

I’ve had girlfriends before, in Delhi, though the sex, always clandestine, required tricks that I imagine are part of the curriculum at spy school. I never once thought beyond the next tryst or two with any of them. But here I am, approaching middle age, and breathless at the thought of meeting a woman a few days hence. Why I have responded thus to a strange girl in a strange land I do not know, but I have, for the first time in my adult life.

Why am I so uneasy? That question gets an answer as I work on the spice mix. With the grinder growling loudly in the background, I have little to do but think of the evening coming up. The depth of my inadequacy hits me all of a sudden, making my knees unsteady. She is the great-granddaughter of a high official of the British government, and, for all I know, a blue blood. And I … I am a cook from an obscure village in India, elevated to the status of restaurateur by chance and a certain minor talent with pots and pans and fires and knives.

And, let’s not forget, an inherited recipe for a spice mix that gives piquancy, not Delhi belly.

And the restaurant might still fail, though Phillip Knott thinks otherwise.

I summarise. The first difficulty, then, is getting her to fall for me. The second is getting my people to accept her. The third is getting her people to accept me. All this while keeping the restaurant going.

The second I think I can handle. Abba and Ammi are willing to accept some violence to their own notions of what’s best for the family for the sake of my happiness. They might take time, but they’ll come around in the end.

The third I know nothing about. I’ll deal with it afterwards. After I deal with the first.

And so, focus on difficulty number one: getting her to fall for me. Ignore the breathlessness, the jagged, painful thoughts. This is a matter for the rest of your life, I tell myself, so don’t rush it. Meanwhile, the grinding is done, and soon I place the boxes of mix in the deep freeze.

Mr Rehmatullah from across the street calls. His roots, too, are somewhere in UP, in a fertile plain not far from Fatehgarh, and he carries something that he thinks will ease my homesickness: a covered basket containing some Indian dish, prepared earlier that day by his wife. He does this every second or third Sunday, picking his time carefully, catching me when he knows I must be home.

Mr Rehmatullah watches for movement in my flat from behind the curtains of his own. His daughter, Fauzia, is nearing twenty, obese, well past the ideal age for marriage in his view, unmarried with no prospective groom on the horizon, and he is busy hunting her a husband. He thinks of me as a future son-in-law, despite my being twice Fauzia’s age or thereabouts, and these attentions will lead, in the next few weeks, to an attempt to arrange a marriage between Fauzia and myself. I wonder, sometimes, did Abba have to behave thus when it was time to get my sisters married? They are bright, pleasant people, plump and easy-going, hard-working and fairly conservative, but they laugh often and heartily, something most Indian men – not Abba, thankfully – frown upon.

‘Hello, Junaid,’ he says. ‘Here is something for you. Hasina made it in the morning. Mutton rogan josh.’ Hasina, his wife, seems to be in her late thirties, perhaps younger than me. She has a heavy hand with the spices and the grease, and her cooking, at