Floyd’s India

скачать книгу бесплатно


In those, some say, halcyon days, Bristol was in Gloucestershire and the pubs shut at 10.30pm, but, minutes away, across the Clifton suspension bridge was Somerset, where the splendid hostelries stayed open until 11.00pm and there was the possibility that the landlord might just serve one more after time as he rang the bell. Everybody, by now, was in complete disarray. Everybody had probably drunk between 10 and 20 pints of beer since the first dignified pint in the White Elephant. Two or three would have fallen by the wayside, quite literally; some of the sensible ones would have returned to their wives, but the single guys were hungry. A leader always emerges at a time of crisis. It was the one who stood on the table, pint in hand, tie unknotted, shirt undone, who, bright eyed and sweating, called out ‘Who’s for the Curry House?’ And so, once again, we piled back into the vehicles, more crowded than before because one or two had disappeared, and headed back over the Clifton suspension bridge, down to the city centre, past the bus station and along to Stokes Croft where a flickering yellow neon sign announced the existence of the Koh I Noor Indian Restaurant.

Below left and right Images from Madras. Middle Cleaning silverware.

Inside the dining room, with its 14 tables standing on a slightly sticky, thick carpet, each table had a slightly soiled but very starched tablecloth. The walls were covered in tawdry flock and the exhausted waiters, in their stained dinner jackets which were almost a deep, dark green through years of wear, adjusted their clip-on bow ties and prepared for the onslaught. They had an air of resigned acquiescence. Each table was dressed simply with a salt and pepper pot and a stainless steel sugar bowl filled with white sugar lumps. The call was for–because that’s all there really was — six chicken vindaloo, nine meat Madras, four plates of evil smelling, deep-fried, crispy Bombay duck and mango chutney and, of course, 15 pints of lager. The bewildered waiter wrote the order on a series of little duplicate pads and headed for the kitchen only to be called back by the blue-eyed fly-half with crinkly blond hair, who was training to be an accountant, and from his position of authority on the main table he would say, ‘Make that 30 pints.’

Eventually, on white plates, the pungent curries and mountains of plain boiled rice arrived. There was, of course, not enough cheap stainless steel cutlery to go round. The Madras was hot, fiery and acrid, the vindaloo was diabolical. One by one, chaps would go to the bog but, one by one, they didn’t return because the old hands knew that you could climb out of the window and then you wouldn’t have to pay your share of the bill. So, every Saturday night was a mad Madras night.

Well, dear reader, that was in another time. It was before Indian restaurants became a culinary force to be reckoned with, before silver leaf garnished fragrant biryanis. It was before Britain had ever heard of a tandoor oven, but it was at a time not so long after India gained independence from Great Britain and the country was still awash with ex-colonials who wanted to continue eating their meat Madras or chicken Madras and their Bombay duck. In reality, the concept of a meat Madras is entirely a figment of the British imagination, but that is something I learnt much later in life.

In the meantime, and hoping to fulfil some kind of youthful gastronomic holy grail, I left the west coast full of anticipation for my visit to Madras. But, they’ve changed the name! Yes, okay, Madras was the first important British settlement in India and yes, quite correctly, the Indians have given it back its original name, Chennai, but how can you now go into your favourite curry shop after a hard game and say, ‘9 meat Chennais and 30 pints of lager, please’?

Above left to right Taxis Madras-style. A little wood burner. In the paddy fields.

Chennai is India’s fourth largest city, the capital of Tamil Nadu. It is a young city by Indian standards. Its foundation in the 17th century by the East India Company also marked the foundation of the British empire. When the fortification — called Fort St George — was completed in 1640 the walls protected the East India Company’s factory and other European trading settlements. Its function was to serve as a base for British agents to prevent local merchants controlling the price of goods. It later became the city of Madras. As it grew, the local Tamil people assigned the name Chennai to the city, whereas the British stuck to Madras. In recent years, however, it has been decided that the official name of the city should be Chennai.

The city is the home of curry powder, which was originally developed in Madras for the nostalgic British wishing to re-capture the flavours of India after they returned home from the Raj. Huge quantities of curry powder are still manufactured in machines that resemble concrete mixers, but it is all for export. No Indian cook would dream of using it.

British buildings dominate the area. The Ice House was built to store ice imported from Boston until it was used to cool the gin and tonics of the British residents. The Madras Club was built as a place where the British elite could drink the G & Ts. The chief reminder of colonial days, however, is the High Court, the largest court of law building in the world outside London. To the south, 20 hectares of narrow lanes form the city’s largest market, Kothawal Chavadi, which includes a colourful fruit and flower section. On the outskirts of the city is Asia’s biggest film studio complex, just beyond the jaws of a fake shark which guards MGR Film City. On this enormous site, funded by the state government, are 36 sets standing ready for use. Tourists are sometimes invited to be extras, especially in Raj-era films.

Now, in the intervening 40 years between eating my first meat Madras and my first visit to Chennai, I have learned a lot and I certainly was not expecting to find an authentic meat Madras in Madras, any more than I would expect to find a spaghetti Bolognese in Bologna or a chop suey in Beijing. These, and many other internationally known dishes are, again, concoctions created by bewildered ex-patriots. I did, however, expect to find exquisite food, but I was disappointed. As with all big cities the world over, it is hard–not to say nearly impossible–to find the gastronomic heart of that place. I stayed at the Connemara Hotel where they had a specialist restaurant devoted to the Chettinad cuisine, which is fiery, hot and spicy and should be delicious, but it was not.

Away from the crowded streets.

Using all the resources available to me, I sought out the so-called good restaurants but, quite frankly, you will probably eat better in Southall or Birmingham, and that is not to mention how hard it is to put up with the inexorable poverty and squalor which gives birth to begging and harassment. So then you have to ask yourself, if you are finding this so offensive, why are you here in the first place. Well, the fact is the cooking in India can be one of the great experiences of life but it is best enjoyed at the home of Indians, no matter how rich or poor they might be. They treat their produce with such love and such care. They prepare their masalas with the same sort of love with which Van Gogh must have mixed his oils.

I spent some time at a magnificent palace where a family of four or six people were attended by over two hundred staff. The dichotomy lies in the fact that the poor can’t afford to eat in restaurants, so there are just absolutely fundamentally basic squalid soup kitchens, while the rich are so well off they can afford to have cooks at home, so no matter what you read in the otherwise absolutely essential Lonely Planet Guide to India, take their restaurant entries with a pinch of chillies.

If you do eat in the streets of any of the big three cities, Chennai, Calcutta and Mumbai, and you choose a place which is very, very busy, you will usually eat well for a few pennies, cents or dimes.

However, if you are in Chennai, make a point of eating at Hotel Saravana Bhavan. This is the ultimate in Indian fast food restaurants. They have a menu of over three hundred different dishes, mostly vegetarian. They serve up to 4,000 meals a day (by the way, it is not a hotel, the word ‘hotel’ in many parts of India means restaurant or canteen). You get a tray on which are eight, nine or ten little dishes, savoury, sweet, hot, sour. It is called a thali and the first person who replicates this brilliant concept (in many ways not dissimilar to Spanish tapas) in London will make a fortune and change the gastronomic mindset of a nation already obsessed with Indian food. Anybody prepared to put several million quid into my idea can buy not only my expertise, my knowledge and my passion but they will also have the exclusive rights to the name of this amazing chain of eateries and, with due apologies to Paul Scott, it will be known as ‘The Last Days of the Floyd’.

We ground out of Chennai through the appalling traffic to the village of Sriperumbudur where, from a distance, you can see water buffaloes bathing and high-rise ancient temples which, if you squint, remind you of Gotham City. We saw the ancient reservoirs, so-called tanks, where the lepers cleanse themselves and the locals do their washing, but it ain’t like a visit to Salisbury Cathedral!

It was quite funny on the day that we all went there to film what is actually a very beautiful and fascinating place. On the way my beloved director, Nick, somehow got it into his head that the Indians grow a lot of rice and we should acknowledge that fact in our telvision programme. You have to remember, however, that there is nothing real in television land. Some 30 or 40 hapless Indian women were planting rice in a paddy field but, quel horreur, on the shady side of the field. This is, of course, totally unacceptable; for television purposes they must be in the sunshine to avoid shadows, so that the colours are bright and vibrant. To make matters worse, it was impossible to get a shot of these people from the road because the camera angle would not be correct. So, at the behest of Nick, our long-suffering researcher, Raj, was instructed to tell the semailleurs — which is French for seed sowers–to move over to the other side of the field and replant what they had already planted for the benefit of our camera. In the meantime, Stan, my manager, on this day dressed in combat kit, drawing on a cigar and for all the world looking like Stormin’ Norman, hijacked and occupied the adjacent hospital. He stormed the operating theatre, where bewildered surgeons were bullied into allowing him–in mid-operation–to place the camera on the roof so that the world could see something that they have probably never seen before, since the dawn of television, a load of women planting rice.

Sriperumbudur Temple and Tank.

Above left to right One of the many temples at Kanchipuram. Bogged down at Muttukadu.

Interlude at Kanchipuram

Some 40 or 50 minutes out of Madras there is a splendid Taj hotel called Fisherman’s Cove at Covelong Beach, near Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu. The beaches are unspoilt, there are spectacular views, regular rooms in the hotel complex and utterly enchanting guest bungalows on the beach. Here, with Tess, I spent six magnificent days as the guest of Sarabjeet Singh, the general manager. During that time I learnt how to make some exquisite dishes, including the subzi poriyal (crunch spicy beetroot with coconut) and kathirikai kara kulambu (a spicy aubergine dish) on pages 153 and 156, from the hotel’s executive chef, Fabian. I seem to remember he had a couple of hits in the charts in the late fifties. (Joke! Rock-’n-rollers know what I mean.)

Kanchipuram is the Golden Town of 1,000 Temples, one of India’s seven most sacred cities. Nowadays only 126 temples survive, but five of these are considered outstanding. They are closed between noon and 3.00pm and are best visited in the afternoon. On the same stretch of coastline as Covelong Beach is the famous Shore Temple at Mamallapuram, probably the best-known sight in southern India.

A Bombay market.

Bombay (now known as Mumbai) (#ulink_04af8809-5c49-5e30-b28f-4628051f52cf)

So, on a high from the Fisherman’s Cove, our culinary circus rolled on to Bombay (or Mumbai as it is now known), birthplace of Rudyard Kipling in 1865, and a city famous for its red double-decker buses. Home of the wealthy and glamorous, Mumbai is the commercial hub of India. Here there is a huge contrast between the rich and the poor. The city claims more millionaires than Manhattan, and there is indeed an almost ostentatious display of wealth, and yet two million people in the city do not have access to a toilet, six million go without access to drinking water and over half the city’s population of 16 million people live in slums or on the street.

The huge natural harbour is the reason why commerce blossomed in Mumbai, helped by the opening of India’s first railway line which started in Mumbai. Elephanta Island in the middle of the harbour has magnificent rock-cut cave temples, one of the city’s main tourist attractions, and in February a festival of music and dance is held at these cave temples.

Mumbai is also the home of Bollywood, the Indian version of Hollywood, which produces more films than any other city in the world — 120 feature films per year. In Mumbai you can still savour the glamour attached to the notion of going to the movies at one of the glorious art deco cinemas.

The Gateway of India.

Above left to right Lunch box delivery.

The city also has over 50 laughter clubs. Members gather in parks all over the city each morning and laugh themselves silly, in the belief that happiness and health are connected and drawing on ancient yogic texts that highlight the beneficial effects of laughter.

Mumbai has a unique lunch service. Hot lunches are delivered to workers in their offices direct from their homes by something akin to a postal service. Before noon, dabbas, ever-hot lunch boxes, containing a home-cooked meal are collected from residencies by dabbawallas. They are sent to the city by train and dropped at various stations for lunchtime delivery by other teams of dabbawallas. Ownership and location of each lunch box is identified by markings decipherable by the dabbawallas alone. After lunch the whole process is reversed.

Crawford Market and the bazaars of Kalbadevi and Bhuleshwar sell everything from mangoes to tobacco to Alsatian puppies; if you can eat it or stroke it, you can probably find it here.

We stayed at the Taj Mahal Hotel on the waterfront next to the Gateway of India, a huge triumphal arch built in 1924 to commemorate a visit by George V and Queen Mary. The last of the British troops leaving India by sea passed through this arch. Nowadays the massive stone arch is used mainly as an embarkation point for ferries taking tourist to the Elephanta caves or down the coast to Goa. According to the Lonely Planet Guide to India (quote) Places to stay — Top End, ‘The Taj Mahal Hotel, next to the Gateway of India is one of the best hotels in the country … the Taj is second home to Mumbai’s elite and has every conceivable facility, including three quality restaurants, several bars, a coffee shop, swimming pool, gymnasium and nightclub.’ While I am the greatest fan of the Lonely Planet guides, I can only disagree with their description of the Taj Mahal Hotel — I think it is the worst hotel I have ever stayed in.

The original flying dhobi.

One of the few delights of staying in an Indian hotel is the excellent laundry service. My grease-splattered, turmeric-stained shirts would come whizzing back, splendidly clean and immaculately pressed, and very quickly and cheaply too. But, they are not washed in gleaming Launderettes–they are literally flogged clean in Bombay’s municipal laundry, locally known as the Dhobi Ghat at Mahalaxmi. Here, in a labyrinth of open-air stone and concrete basins, thousands of men scrub, wash, rinse and dry tons of dirty clothes brought from all over the city all day. Then, after they have been through hand-operated spin dryers, the clothes are spread out on some rusty old roof to dry, after which they are immaculately pressed, with charcoal-fired smoothing irons. You get a great view of this phenomenal place from the railway bridge near Mahalaxmi Station which is five stops up from Churchgate Station.