Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

11

Far on a hillside roamed the lady responsible for Sampath’s nutrition, a tiny figure on the crest of the university research forest, disappearing and reappearing among the trees, emerging at the point where the forest bordered the fields so as to check the cane traps she had set for pheasants and other wildfowl. They lived in the forest but ate from the grain crops and were as fat and delicious as wildfowl could be. When she spotted one in the trap, she pounced upon it and, without flinching, wrung its neck with a grip of iron. The profusion of greenery and space exhilarated her. And while it reduced her son to a happy stupor, it incited her to a frenzy of exploration.

Making her way into the deepest parts of the woods, losing herself amidst the bamboo groves, the sal forests, the towering moss-laden trees, she climbed higher and higher, taking paths made by goats foraging about the steepest slopes, barely wide enough for her small feet.

‘Beware of the wild cats,’ said the goat herders she met, surprised at seeing this delicate-looking town woman out alone in the forest. ‘Beware of the snakes, the scorpions and leeches.’ But she didn’t care. She waded out into the muddy ponds to collect lotus stems, raided bird’s nests, prised open tightly sealed pods, nibbled at the grasses and buds, dug at roots, shook the fruit from the trees and returned home with her hair wild, her muddy hands full of flowers, her mouth blue and red from all she had sampled. The corners of her sari were tied into knots containing ginger lilies and rain-fever mushrooms, samples of seeds and bits of bark. Sometimes she brought back a partridge or a jungle quail, strung on to a stick and carried over her shoulder. She returned via the steep path that led to the back of the watchman’s shed so as to avoid the visitors and the talk which had ceased to interest her.

In the tin-covered porch Mr Chawla had constructed at the rear of the house she had set up her outdoor kitchen, spilling over into a grassy patch of ground. Here rows of pickle jars matured in the sun like an army balanced upon the stone wall; roots lay, tortured and contorted, upon a cot as they dried; and tiny wild fruit, scorned by all but the birds, lay cut open, displaying purple-stained hearts. Ginger was buried underground so as to keep it fresh; lemon and pumpkin dried on the roof; all manner of things fermented in tightly sealed tins; chilli peppers and curry leaves hung from the branches of a tree, and so did buffalo curd, dripping from a cloth on its way to becoming paneer.

Newly strong with muscles, wiry and tough despite her slenderness, Kulfi sliced and pounded, ground and smashed, cut and chopped in a chaos of ingredients and dishes. ‘Cumin, quail, mustard seeds, pomelo rind,’ she muttered as she cooked. ‘Fennel, coriander, sour mango. Pandanus flour, lichen and perfumed kewra. Colocassia leaves, custard apple, winter melon, bitter gourd. Khas root, sandalwood, ash gourd, fenugreek greens. Snake-gourd, banana flowers, spider leaf, lotus root …’

She was producing meals so intricate, they were cooked sometimes with a hundred ingredients, balanced precariously within a complicated and delicate mesh of spices — marvellous triumphs of the complex and delicate art of seasoning. A single grain of one thing, a bud of another, a moist fingertip dipped lightly into a small vial and then into the bubbling pot; a thimble full, a matchbox full, a coconut shell full of dark crimson and deep violet, of dusty yellow spice, the entire concoction simmered sometimes for a day or two on coals that emitted only a glimmer of faint heat or that roared like a furnace as she fanned them with a palm leaf. The meats were beaten to silk, so spiced and fragrant they clouded the senses; the sauces were full of strange hints and dark undercurrents, leaving you on firm ground one moment, dragging you under the next. There were dishes with an aftertaste that exploded upon you and left you gasping a whole half-hour after you’d eaten them. Some that were delicate, with a haunting flavour that teased like the memory of something you’d once known but could no longer put your finger on.

Pickled limes stuffed with cardamom and cumin, crepuscular creatures simmered upon the wood of a scented tree, small river fish baked in green coconuts, rice steamed with nasturtium flowers in the pale hollow of a bamboo stem, mushrooms red — and yellow-gilled, polka-dotted and striped. Desire filled Sampath as he waited for his meals. Spice-laden clouds billowed forth and the clashing cymbals of pots and pans declared the glory of the meal to come, scaring the birds from the trees about him. Kulfi served her son with an anxious look, watched his face like a barometer. Turning blissful lips to the sky, or at other times looking down in pain, with tears pouring from his eyes, his ears exploding, barely able to breathe, Sampath would beg: ‘More! Please, some more.’ And triumphantly Kulfi would rush back to get another helping.

‘You will poison him,’ said Mr Chawla, genuinely worried when she embarked upon these efforts at a new cuisine. She would manage to ruin their fortunes entirely. ‘If it were not for the family name, straight away I would take you to the mental home,’ he mumbled. As the years passed, he found he understood her less and less instead of more and more. What went on in her mind? he found himself wondering sometimes. Did she think like a human being? He saw expressions of anxiety, of happiness, of peacefulness upon her face, it was true, but was she considering how she felt, analysing and reasoning?

‘I have fed the food to a chicken beforehand to make sure it is not poisonous,’ she assured him.

One chicken after another had been named the official taster to Sampath. When one keeled over and died, from natural causes or tainted food, a new one was kept tethered in its place.

So Sampath was safe and he made sure nothing would change when it came to his food; whenever he heard his father muttering about other cooking arrangements, he threatened to go on hunger strike. He had never eaten so well in all his life! His growing plumpness proved how well the meals agreed with him. Pink-cheeked and in an injured tone, as if he were being done out of his birthright, he said: ‘Every son knows there is no cooking like his mother’s cooking.’

The devotees, watching jealously, had begun to think that perhaps there was cooking unlike their mother’s cooking. Previously, they had merely wondered at what Sampath was given to eat, but as Kulfi became more and more ambitious, more and more sure of what she was doing, just one whiff was enough to send them wild. Far from consigning her to a mental home, they hovered about her greedily, trying to peer into the bubbling pots, to draw their fingers through the piles of spices on the grinding stone. But she shooed them away fiercely. ‘Not for you, not for you,’ she declared regally, and they backed away from the authority of her voice, the dignity of her bearing, and shook their heads, wondering what was the matter with them. Charging down the mother of the hermit! What had come over them?

‘Baba, why are we so aggressive and greedy sometimes, when at other times we are just happy to sit beneath your tree?’

‘On a hot day the bee buzzes louder, on a rainy day it sits quietly in its hive,’ answered Sampath.

Though he wrote down everything he heard religiously, the spy had given up trying to understand Sampath. The more he saw, the more he was convinced that the secret of Sampath’s presence, his odd words and antics, would be found in Kulfi’s cooking pot. More determined than all the rest, he tried again and again to sneak past her in an attempt to collect a sample of her food in a bottle he had provided himself with.

But each time, as if she had been forewarned, Kulfi caught sight of the spy just in time and cracked him over the head with a broom. You could get yourself killed in the BUFHM, he thought, and watched from the bushes as she continued her work, slicing vegetables with vigour, beheading chickens and geese with nonchalant blows of her hatchet. But still, the more his efforts were thwarted, the more suspicious he became. The minute her back was turned again, he could not help but make one more attempt …

What with all the trouble Sampath’s meals were causing, Mr Chawla decided to allow visitors only between the hours of lunch and dinner, between half-past noon and half-past eight in the evenings.

With limited access, the popularity of Sampath and his hermit-like reputation grew. However, the trick of limited access could not be applied when the monkeys arrived.