The Hundred-Foot Journey (32 page)

“Ah, Mehtab. Wanted to, you know, but so busy, yaar. Learn just before restaurant open and phone ringing all the time and guests arriving. Every time I try and call you I have one big thing to deal with after another.”

“Huh. Just excuses.”

“So, who told you?”

Mehtab’s face suddenly softened.

She put her fingers to her lips and beckoned that I should follow.

*   *   *

Margaret was in the living room, sitting upright in the middle of our white leather couch, her eyes closed, her head slowly dropping back as she dozed, only to snap forward at the last moment. A hand each rested on her son and daughter, both sound asleep, both with their heads on her lap, their legs curled under the blankets that I recognized came from Mehtab’s personal chest. And I recall that the children’s faces were wiped of everything but the most profound and touching innocence.

“Aren’t they adorable?” Mehtab whispered. “And so good. Ate up all my dinner.”

The look on my sister’s face, it was the utter joy of finally having children in her home, that destiny she always thought would be hers but was never meant to be.

But then she scowled, just like Auntie, with that bitter-lemon look. “She the only one of your friends bother to tell me you get the star.”

She pinched me again, but not so hard this time.

“Brought me the paper,
France Soir
. Such a nice girl. And told me all about her husband, you know. What a brute. They have suffered terribly, her and the little ones . . . and why you not tell me she move to Paris?”

Luckily, at that moment, I was saved from another barrage of Mehtab mortar attacks, because Margaret opened her eyes, and when she saw us peering at her from the door, she smiled, her face sweetly lit up. She held up a finger, signaling us to wait, and she slowly, delicately extricated herself from the dangly limbs of her children, both still sound asleep.

We hugged and kissed warmly, out in the hall.

“I couldn’t believe it, Hassan. It’s so exciting.”

“Shock to me. Come out of the blue.”

I grasped both her hands and squeezed, looking into her eyes.

“Thank you Margaret, for coming here. For informing my sister.”

“We came right as soon as we heard the news. It was just so fantastic. We just had to see you and congratulate you.
Immédiatement
. What an incredible achievement. . . . Madame Mallory, she was right!”

“I am sure, up in heaven, she is telling Papa that right now.”

We laughed.

Mehtab, in her auntie mode, fiercely shushed us with a finger to her lips, and pointed we should go to the other side of the flat, to the kitchen counter, to talk. In the kitchen, we pulled out the stools from the marble counter, as Margaret told me how things were working out at Montparnasse, how decent Chef Piquot was, not at all a yeller and a tyrant, like so many of the other leading chefs.

“I will never forget, Hassan. We owe you everything.”

“I did nothing. I made one phone call.”

From the SieMatic fridge, I retrieved a bottle of chilled Moët et Chandon, popped the cork over the sink, and poured us glasses in amber antique flutes. Margaret, refreshed by her nap, was talkative.

“It was lovely to see your sister again, after so many years. She was so good to us, when we just showed up unannounced at the door. So kind to the children. And my, can she cook!
Ooh la la
. Just as well as you. She gave us dinner.
Délicieuse.
A spicy beef stew, thick and gooey, perfect for the chilly night. And so different from our
boeuf Bourguignon
.”

Mehtab, her cooking suitably relished and appreciated, was looking very regal, very aloofly pleased, even though she was pretending not to listen to our conversation. She was setting my place for my late-night snack.

“Margaret, come,” she said, pushing a dish of sweets across the counter. “You have still to try my carrot halva. And we must discuss Hassan’s party. The menu. And who we should invite.”

My sister turned to me and in a tone close to barking said, “Go. Go wash up.”

When I put my face down under the running water, the phone rang. A few moments later, the sound of padding feet, and Mehtab’s voice coming through the bathroom door.

“It’s Zainab. Pick up.”

The line crackled. Far away. Like talking under the sea.

“Oh, Hassan. They would have been so proud. Papa and Mummy and Ammi. Imagine. Three Michelin stars!”

I tried to change the subject, but she would have none of it. Had to give her all the details.

“Uday wants a word.”

Uday’s baritone boomed down the line.

“Such incredibly good news, Hassan. We’re terribly proud of you. Congratulations.”

Zainab’s husband, Uday Joshi.

No, not the Bombay restaurateur who set my father’s teeth on edge.

The son.

Uday and Zainab, the two of them, they were the talk of all Mumbai. They had turned the old Hyderabad restaurant into a pish-posh boutique hotel and restaurant chain. Very Mumbai chic. Turned out, of all of us, little Zainab was most like Papa. An empire-builder. Always with the big plans, just more competent.

I remembered that time when Uday and Zainab married in Mumbai, shortly before Papa died. It was very awkward at first, when Papa and Uday Joshi, Sr., finally met up at the wedding. Papa talked far too much, carrying on with his show-off palaver, old man Joshi looking bored, stooped and gripping the handle of a cane. But later the two aged fathers posed together for the
Hello Bombay!
photographer, a couple of paternal peacocks, for a wedding spread that eventually took up five pages of the popular magazine, and after that the old men both softened up and talked together late into the night.

When Papa and I met up later, he said, “That old rooster. I look much better than he does, yaar? Don’t you tink? He is very old.”

And I remember standing with Papa, late in the night, when the festivities were in full swing, as a jeweled elephant carried the newlyweds across the grass, while the white-jacketed servants, bearing aloft silver trays covered in champagne flutes, professionally threaded themselves among the twelve hundred glittering guests. And there, in the center of the main tent, a silver vessel filled with beluga, the politicians elbowing their way forward, plopping soup ladles of the caviar onto their plates, two-thousand-dollar dollops at a time.

But Papa and I just watched, standing off to the side in the shadow of the night, under a string of fairy lights, eating kulfi, the Indian ice cream, from the
kulfi-wallah
’s simple earthenware pots. And I remember the taste of the cold blanched almond cream as we marveled at the women’s emerald earrings. Big as plums, Papa kept on saying. Big as plums.

“We must talk business,” my sister’s husband again said down the phone. “Zainab and I, we have a business proposal that you might find interesting. Now’s the time to open tip-top French restaurants in India. There’s lots of money sloshing about. We already have financing.”

“Yes. Yes. Let’s schedule a time to talk. But not tonight. Let’s talk next week.”

“He has a very light dinner, or none at all, but always a nighttime snack after he comes home from work,” Mehtab was telling Margaret when I returned to the kitchen. “It helps him relax. And he usually has a mint tea. With a spoonful of garam masala in it. Or sometimes a bit of my vegetables. And sparkling water.”

“Ah. I know this pastry.”

“They are not from the pâtisserie,
of course
.
I make them myself, using the recipe of his old teacher. A pistachio paste, and in the glaze, yaar, a little vanilla essence. Try it.”

“Better than Madame Mallory’s, I think. Certainly better than mine.”

My sister was so flushed with pleasure at this compliment, she had to turn back to the sink to cover up her embarrassment. I had to smile.

“Mehtab. Did anyone else ring?”

“Umar. He is going to drive the whole family down for the Three-Star Party.”

Umar still lived in Lumière, the proud owner of two local Total garages. He also had four stunning boys, and the second oldest was coming up to Paris next year, to join me in the kitchen of Le Chien Méchant. The rest of the Hajis, adrift and scattered across the globe. My younger brothers, the rascals, both chronically restless, had wandered the world for years. Mukhtar was a mobile phone software designer in Helsinki, and Arash, he was a law professor at Columbia University in New York.

“You must call all your brothers tomorrow, Hassan.”

“Mais oui,”
said Margaret, lightly touching my elbow. “Your brothers must hear the fantastic news from you directly.”

Umar, my sister continued, said he would also see if Uncle Mayur was game, but he didn’t think the retirement home would allow him to make the journey to Paris, because Uncle Mayur was so wobbly on his legs these days. Uncle Mayur, eighty-three, was the last one we thought would make it this long. But when I looked back, Uncle Mayur, he never worried about anything, was always stress-free, perhaps because Auntie fretted enough for the two of them.

Mehtab patted her hair. “And what do you tink, Margaret? Who else of Hassan’s friends should we invite? What about that strange butcher with all the shops, the one who owns the chateau in Saint-Étienne?”

“
Ah, mon Dieu.
Hessmann. A pig.”

“Haar. I think so, too. I never know what Hassan sees in that man.”

“Put him on the list,” I said. “He’s my friend and he’s coming.”

The two women just looked at me. Blinked.

“And what do you think of the accountant? Maxine, the nervous one. You know, I think she has a crush on Hassan.”

I let them get on with it, their plots and machinations for my party, as I drifted, restless, from room to room through the flat, as if there were some unfinished business I had to attend to, but couldn’t remember what it was.

I opened the door to my study.

Mehtab had placed the copy of
France Soir
on my desk.

It came to me, then. At my desk, with great purpose, I picked up a pair of scissors and neatly trimmed the page-three article. I slipped the cutting into a wooden frame, leaned over, and hung the announcement of my third star on the wall.

In that hungry space.

Of generations ago.

All writers, particularly those with journalistic training, cultivate the impression they know far more than they actually do. My inclination is to create an aura of wisdom by expertly pilfering the knowledge and experience of my betters and presenting their insights as my own. So while there are countless people and sources that enhanced this work and lent it credibility—too many to name and thank here—I do hope you will bear with me as I thank a few key people and resources that made significant contributions to
The Hundred-Foot Journey
.

This book is an homage to the late Ismail Merchant, the talented and irrepressible film producer behind Merchant Ivory Productions, who died unexpectedly in 2005. Ismail and I both loved eating well and banging pots in the kitchen, and one day, as we dined at the Bombay Brasserie in London, I urged Ismail to find a literary property that combined his love of food with his love of filmmaking. I would help him in this endeavor, I promised. Sadly, Ismail died before I finished writing this book, but it is my sincere hope that one day
The Hundred-Foot Journey
will make it to the screen, a fitting memorial to my late friend.

My desk is cluttered with culinary references; I relied heavily on their expertise to portray as accurately as possible the technical mysteries of the kitchen. Here a few resources:
Life Is a Menu,
by Michel Roux; Ismail Merchant’s
Indian Cuisine;
French Chefs Cooking,
by Michael Buller;
Flavours of Delhi,
by Charmaine O’Brien;
The Cook’s Quotation Book,
edited by Maria Polushkin Robbins;
Cuisine Actuelle,
Patricia Wells’s presentation of Joël Robuchon’s kitchen;
The Decadent Cookbook,
by Medlar Lucan and Durian Gray;
The Oxford Companion to Wine,
by Jancis Robinson;
The Sugar Club Cookbook,
by Peter Gordon; culinary essays of the incomparable
New Yorker
; and, last, Scribner’s classic
Joy of Cooking,
by Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker. There were of course countless other sources, from websites to articles and novels, that inspired me during the writing of this book, but my special thanks to
Forbes
for my journalism career that has allowed me to visit foreign places and learn about the world.

In India, Adi and Parmesh Godrej deserve my thanks. They kindly introduced me to the restaurateur Sudheer Bahl, who invited me to spend half a day in the kitchen of his first-rate restaurant, Khyber, a key piece of research that greatly enhanced my understanding of India’s robust cuisine. In New York, meanwhile, my friend Mariana Field Hoppin used her charm and connections to similarly get me into the kitchen of the esteemed fish restaurant Le Bernardin. In London, through our friend Mary Spencer, I was able to spend quality time in the bowels of The Sugar Club, when Peter Gordon was that restaurant’s star chef. But let the record show that it was Suraja Roychowdhury, Soyo Graham Stuart, and Laure de Gramont who kept me honest by reading my work and calling me on the accuracy of my cultural transgressions, besides correcting the many examples of mangled Franglais and Hindi-Urduisms.

Also: thanks to my friends Anna Kythreotis, Tony Korner, Lizanne Merrill, and Samy Brahimy for their unfailing good humor, friendship, and support. V. S. Naipaul, whom I don’t know well, was nonetheless uncommonly kind and generous to me during a key period, as was his wife, Nadira, who regaled me with colorful stories of her upbringing, some of which I pinched.

Most of all, however, I must thank my dear friends Kazuo Ishiguro and his wife, Lorna. I cannot recount the number of times, despairing at the latest rejection, or stumped by a technical writing problem, that Ish picked me up, dusted me off, and sent me on my way again with a kind word and some stimulating insight. No one could have asked for a better friend and role model than I had in Ish.