Fishy Chronicles 41: Eggs Extraordinaire

“Why did you postpone lunch?” Genie asked, leaning against the kitchen doorway, effectively blocking my chances of escape.

“Er, yes.”

“And?”

“And?”

“Why did you cancel?”

“Who told you?”

“Zeba. Roma. You ordered coconuts and rice and then cancelled the order.”

“Okay.” I tried to stay nonchalant. I continued to shred the potatoes. I was going to deep fry them later... if Genie stopped interrogating me. He was now standing next to me, his eyes boring a hole into the top of my head. I dearly hoped he wasn’t doing a pensieve or a Professor Dumbledore on me. I tried to push past the wall of muscle, but only felt his finger duelling with my chin to try and lift it to make me look at him. Finally he gave up and pulled his index finger away. Genie bent double, leaned down, planted his elbow on the untidy kitchen platform, turned his body my way and smiled. Someone else would have looked comical in that awkward pose, but Genie refused to fit an ‘anybody’ mould.

I took in his wholesome form. There was barely space to squeeze through between the fridge and Genie's buttocks. It was unfair – handsome guy, small space, unbidden lust, you name it. Plus nothing was going to happen.

I sighed and turned back, wondering what to do. I moved three paces to the sink and poured water into the bowl with the shredded potatoes, then put three tablespoons of salt in the mix. I saw Genie's mouth curl.

“What!”

“You don’t need to take it out on the potatoes – salting them to death!” Genie said.

I laughed. “Monkey! I’m making those little chippies that go with that Irani dish.”

“Aha. I see. You're trying to replicate Aunty Leila's liver dish. Do you even know what it is called?”

I didn’t. Aunty Leila was a friend of Uncle Nigel. Her family had farms in Nasik, but she, an Iranian Muslim, had married a Parsi and moved to Mumbai, many many years ago. Her food had a wholesome and sometimes rustic quality, which Uncle had attributed to her early years in Shiraz, Iran. When I told him Shiraz was a major city in Iran and was unlikely to have ever been a village or rustic, he laughed.

I always hoped Aunty Leila would feel sorry for him and want to cook Uncle Nigel a meal, because then I learned something new. I needn’t have fretted, Uncle gave me his recipe books.

Only there was a problem.

Genie leaned over Uncle's book and smirked. “Let me get this straight, you tried to cook it before with this recipe, but it didn’t taste like the real thing.”

I thought Uncle loved me too much to want to finger me from his spot in the netherworld, but, at times, especially when I tried to reproduce a dish, I felt it was a distinct possibility. 

                                       ******

This is a fictional series about a 30-something Mumbai-based narrator whose former pet fish and former manservant have returned to stay awhile. Personal equations are different now.  

In this episode, the narrator tries to replicate an Iranian dish from Uncle Nigel's recipe book but hits a road block.

                                        ******

I felt a gentle poke. “Well?” Genie asked.

“Yes. It was awful. Of course I couldn’t feed it to anyone and...” another poke, “... and Uncle did not seem surprised.”

Genie took the book and read the recipe closely and then flipped pages back and forth.

I moved closer to him, “What are you looking for?”

“Uncle's egg recipes.”

I took the book from his hand. I had never looked at those simply because I made them well, and I had favourites. I opened the book to Uncle's versions of Akoori and an egg curry.

I could feel Genie's breath on the back of my ear. “Well?”

The recipe was weird. Someone would die of food poisoning with the measures and ingredients Uncle was using. Uncle's meals were legendary. He had had the best vessels and the most exotic condiments and his talent suffused his meals. But these instructions were preposterous. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed before. One recipe was even named Dikra Bomanooooo. I kid you not about the number of Os. Around the recipe he had drawn little hearts being shot at by obese, naked archers.

“Cupid, not naked archers,” Genie corrected me. I gave him a dirty look and went back to look at the instructions. “Do you want some advice?”

“About what?” I asked, feeling frustration bubble up. Genie took the book from my hand.

“Don’t you think Uncle was more complicated than you gave him credit for?” Genie placed the book on the platform, located another recipe, held a bunch of pages upright with his index finger and thumb and compared the two recipes on either side.

I hopped in frustration, “Of course! He was a brilliant man...”

“I wasn't talking about his brains. We know he was brilliant and extraordinarily creative. But don’t you get that everything he thought of was well considered, that they didn't, and wouldn't, make sense until they were supposed to?”

I was flummoxed. Genie was speaking like a drunk philosopher. And I couldn’t understand a thing! I took a deep breath. “Come again,” I said through clenched teeth.

“Come closer. Have you ever known Uncle to share anything of importance easily?” Genie asked, still comparing the recipes.

Much like yourself, Dude! I stared at Genie's handsome profile and enormous moustache. I pulled the end of his large moustache and his head whipped around and he glared at me. I grinned and moved closer, trying to concentrate on the recipes but thinking about moustache-pulling retribution.

“The measures and ingredients are ridiculous,” I said.

“What exactly is?”

“The quantities.”

“How about the ingredients?”

“They’re too exotic and shouldn’t find a place in this recipe,” I pointed at an Indian egg dish – in fact a Malayali egg roast. For sure, Uncle had got this from one of his neighbours. For a while Mr Mathai suspected Uncle of trying to have an affair with Mrs Mathai, until Uncle came back from a foreign trip with a bottle of Chivas Regal and told Mr Mathai his ugly secret. After the Chivas, Uncle became a welcome guest in the Mathai household.

I felt a poke and dragged my attention back to the book. “See, if Uncle planned to use these recipes, there’s got to be a method to his envisaged madness.” Another nudge. “Right?” Genie looked at me, nodding his head and looking at the book and back at me in turns.

“Do you have a girlfriend, Genie?” The look of shock was well worth the annoyance he had put me through. I grinned, pulled the book closer to me and stared at the numbers. For instance, Uncle had written “50 grams Epsom Salt. Stir in...” All his recipes had Epsom or some weird variety of salt in it, but no actual rock or table salt. “Chop 30 barracudas and grind by hand.” How the hell did one catch a deep sea barracuda? Would any part of a barracuda fit into Uncle’s mortar? How many months would it take him to grind 30 very large fish and how many thousands of people would that feed? I had had utter confusion looking at his recipes, but while he was alive I had just watched him cook and, a little later, written them down.

“Anything strike you?” Genie prodded, sounding annoyed.

“Everything's multiplied by 10. Some ingredients are code words. Like barracudas, probably coming from Uncle's fascination for sea life, could be chillies, because,” I flipped several pages that mentioned dishes I knew well, “Epsom salt and barracudas figure in all of them and could only be salt and chillies... in the recipes, I mean,” I looked up, happy. A light bulb had suddenly flickered into life and was blasting bright. And I realised Genie was way smarter than I had given him credit for. But what did I really know about him? And why was he staring at me that way?

He blinked and pulled the book back towards him. He put his head back and laughed. “What's cow? Three cows, roasted and powdered? I wish I’d known Uncle Nigel... a little more at least.”

“Yeah. I wish I did too. This book is crazy.”

“It’s not meant for the faint hearted or lazy people.”

I eyed Uncle's lovely old world, curly, large handwriting. This trick recipe book wasn’t a joke for Uncle. It had a special rack to hold it and had many of his prized recipes in it. Some of his mother's too. Yet, everything in it seemed like a game.

“You know what I think?” Genie murmured in my ear, his arm on my shoulder.

“What?” I mumbled back.

“He didn’t want just anyone to have it.”

“He had a strange way of showing it.”

“I’m thinking you’d have figured it out and enjoyed the game in time.”

Oh! I was so slow. Of course, that’s what it was. I was being challenged and being shown something I’d never see otherwise. I had to keep myself open to possibilities. Loosen up. Stop clinging to clichés. Etc, etc, etc. Uncle had left me the strangest things. Keys. A briefcase full of objects I could make no sense of, some more in cartons in my loft. Old books that collectors had begged me for, but I had resisted selling. His will was being contested by some of his relatives, but it was ironclad – so his lawyer said. I dreaded meeting them. One of his cousins called me a gold digger at the lawyer's office. I had...

“Hey!” Genie shook me. “Are we going to make this dish or not?”

“You're going to help me?”

“Of course! You’re never going to figure it out on your own.”

I held back my irritation. Genie's point was debatable. I could see Genie look at me slyly from the corner of his eyes and a slow smile appeared. “At least, I think you'll need my help figuring some of these codes,” he tilted his head at the book.

“Yes. Two heads are better than one – in this case, at least. Come on, let's crush some barracudas and toast those cows.”