Back in Elasticnagar he allowed his anger to claim him, and began to lay plans to descend on Pachigam in force. Pachigam would suffer for Boonyi Kaul’s insulting behavior, for metaphorically slapping her better’s face. The liberation movement was starting up in those days and the idea was to nip it in the bud by strong preemptive measures. Kashmir for the Kashmiris, a moronic idea. This tiny landlocked valley with barely five million people to its name wanted to control its own fate. Where did that kind of thinking get you? If Kashmir, why not also Assam for the Assamese, Nagaland for the Nagas? And why stop there? Why shouldn’t towns or villages declare independence, or city streets, or even individual houses? Why not demand freedom for one’s bedroom, or call one’s toilet a republic? Why not stand still and draw a circle round your feet and name that Selfistan? Pachigam was like everywhere else in this sneaky, dissembling valley. There were tendencies there on which he had been too soft for too long. He had leads: suspects, targets. Oh, yes. He would come down hard. And he had a reliable informer in the village, a subtle, ruthless and skillful spy, eating breakfast on most days right in Boonyi Kaul’s house.
Pandit Gopinath Razdan, an exceedingly thin man with a deep furrow between his eyebrows, the reddened gums of an addict of paan and the air of one who expected to find much to be dissatisfied with wherever he went, arrived at Boonyi’s door wearing narrow gold-rimmed spectacles and a pinched expression, carrying an attaché case full of Sanskrit texts and a letter from the education authorities. He wore citified Western dress, a cheap tweedy jacket with its collar turned up against the crisp breeze, and grey flannel trousers with a coffee stain above the right knee. He was a young man, about the same age as Colonel H. S. Kachhwaha, but he took pains to look older. His lips were pursed, his eyes were narrowed, and he leaned upon a furled umbrella with at least one visibly broken spoke. Boonyi disliked him on sight and before he had opened his bony face she told him, “You must be looking for someone somewhere else. There is nothing here for you.” But of course there was.
“Everything is in order, please be assured,” said Pandit Gopinath Razdan, jerking his head to the side and emitting a long red stream of betel juice and saliva; and there was hauteur in his voice, even though he spoke with the bizarre accent of Srinagar which not only omitted the ends of some words but also left out the occasional middles. Ev’thing is in or’er, plea’ be assur’. “I am presenting myself-I am prese’ing mysel’-at your goodfather’s own behest.” Bustling out from the kitchen came Pandit Pyarelal Kaul, smelling of onions and garlic. “Dear cousin, dear cousin,” fussed Pyarelal, casting shifty glances at Boonyi, “I wasn’t expecting you until next week at the earliest. I am afraid you have taken my daughter by surprise.” Gopinath was sniffing the air disapprovingly. “If I did not know better,” he said in his skeletal voice, “I would think that was a Muslim kitchen you have back there.” Know be’er. Musli’ ki’en. Boonyi felt a great snort of laughter blowing through her nostrils. Then a huge surge of irritation welled up in her and the impulse to laugh was lost.
Pyarelal slapped Gopinath heartily on the back; whereupon he, the city slicker, winced, might even be said to have recoiled. “Ha! Ha! dear chap,” Boonyi’s father explained. “We’re all of a jumble here in Pachigam. Ever since I got bitten by the cooking bug I’ve been slowly introducing pandit cooking into the wazwaan-a radical change, but one of great symbolic importance, I’m sure you will agree!-so that now we for example offer our clients the garlicless kabargah rack of ribs, and even there are dishes made with asafoetida and curds!-and in return for everyone’s willingness to go along with my innovations, I thought it was only fair to start using lashings of onions and garlic in some of my own food, just the way our Muslim brothers like it.” A faint shudder coursed through Gopinath’s etiolated frame. “I see,” he stated faintly, “that many barriers-ma’y ba’iers-have fallen down around here. Much, sir, for a man like myself-my’elf-to ponder.”
Boonyi had listened to this exchange with growing impatience and bewilderment. Now she burst out, “Pon’er, is it? Daddy, who is this to come here from the city and immediately start pon’ering over us?”
It transpired that Gopinath was the new schoolteacher. Pyarelal, fearing Boonyi’s reaction, had hidden from her his decision to give up the pandit’s traditional role of educator and concentrate on his cooking instead. As the years passed the kitchen had moved ever closer to the center of his life. In the kitchen where once Pamposh had reigned he felt in communion with her departed beauty, felt their souls blending in his bubbling sauces, their vanished joy expressing itself in vegetables and meat. This much Boonyi knew: cooking was his way of keeping Pamposh alive. When they ate his food they swallowed her spirit too. What Boonyi had not noticed, however, because children need their parents only to be their parents and accordingly pay less attention than they should to their elders’ dreams, was that cooking gradually became more than therapy for Pyarelal. The kitchen released an unsuspected artistry in him and in that village of actors who had taken up cooking as a sideline his growing mastery gave him a new, central part to play. More and more, when Pachigam people went off to a wedding to prepare the Banquet of Thirty-Six Courses Minimum, the pandit took a leadership role. His saffron-flavored pulao was a miracle, his gushtaba meatball mixture was pounded until it acquired the softness of a baby’s cheek. Wedding guests clamored for his dum aloo, his chicken with almonds, his fenugreek-scented cottage cheese and tomatoes, his lotus stems in gravy, his red chili korma, and the closing, delicious sweetness of the firni, and cardamom tea. Women came up to him and asked slyly for his wazwaan recipes, at which the innocent fellow, ever ready to help, began to spell them out until his fellow cooks shouted him down and shut him up. After that he devised a standard response to all requests for the secrets of his culinary sorcery. “Ghee, madams,” he would say with a grin. “Nothing else to it. Use much and much of real, asli, ghee.”
Boonyi was naturally well aware of her father’s growing importance in the preparation of the Thirty-Six Courses Minimum, but it had never occurred to her that this would lead to his making such a dramatic career move. Badly off balance, she lost her head completely. “If teaching isn’t that important to you,” she burst out at miserable Pyarelal, “then learning isn’t that important to me. If my father the great philosopher wants to turn into a tandoori cook, then maybe I’ll find something to turn into as well. Who wants to be your daughter? I’d rather be somebody’s wife.”
It was her wildness talking, the impulsive uncontrolled thing that Shalimar the clown had begun to fear. When she saw Pyarelal’s face fall and Gopinath’s ears prick up she at once regretted that she had hurt the man who had loved her most ever since the day of her birth, and in addition that she had said far too much in the presence of a stranger. What she didn’t know was that Pandit Gopinath Razdan, Pyarelal’s distant cousin, was also a secret agent, and had been sent to Pachigam to sniff out certain subversive elements in this village of artists-for artists were natural subversives, after all. His orders were to report his findings covertly and in the first instance to Colonel H. S. Kachhwaha at Elasticnagar, who would evaluate the quality and value of the intelligence and recommend any course of action that might be required. Nobody in Pachigam suspected Gopinath of having a secret identity because the identity that he made apparent was so hard to take that it was impossible to believe he had an even more problematic self concealed beneath it. The children he taught with an asperity and severity that was the exact opposite of Pyarelal’s jolly prattling gave him the nickname of “Batta Rasashud.” Batta was another word for pandit and rasashud was an extremely bitter herb given to children who were infested with aam, that is to say, roundworms. When he discovered this, because teachers always discover the rude names by which they are known, his temper got even worse. He was living in a bedroom upstairs from the schoolroom and at nights the villagers would hear crashes and oaths emanating from it, so that many of them suspected that the angry pandit was possessed by a demon who came out of his body at night and flew around like a trapped bird.