Shangri La
We were at Shangri La Paris, the Chinese restaurant, celebrating my father’s birthday on the 9th.
The first amused-bouche was a steamed tomato. Impeccable in its cherry shape, its steamed texture. I almost had it. Deep inside I wanted to have it.
But my sympathetic nervous system went on the flight mode.
It started when we were born. Tomato ketchups were banned. Soft drinks were banned. Fast food was banned.
Anything containing lumps of floating tomatoes was considered ‘bangal’, referring to the Bengalis who came from east Bengal which is now Bangladesh. They were considered uncultured and uncultivated in comparison to us West Bengalis— who basked in the glory of Tagore and Ray.
One year I think it was 1988 or 1989, we were in Berlin. It was the year or the year after the wall fell.
My father left the hotel early. He probably had a meeting.
In his absence, my mother in a hushed voice said, ‘do you want ketchup with that omelette?’
I remember that breakfast been delivered to our hotel room.
I remember sitting on the grey, plush carpet with the large porcelain plate on the coffee table. Legs crossed.
I remember the red of the sauce over the yellow of the egg like running over paint.
And then the door knob.
From that position, sitting on the floor, no more than 3 feet high, I saw the black pants of my father walking in.
I remember the shiny shoes. Also black.
And I remember the first words out of his mouth:
What is that?
He was looking directly at the coffee table, my breakfast lying there like a fragile sculpture, my fantasies, like a house of cards , about to topple over.
That was the last time I had ketchup. Or anything that reminded me of a tomato. (Pasta sauce and tomatoes in Indian food was okay since the tomatoes are so cooked you can’t tell what it is). Anything that looked or smelled or reminded of tomato. the actual vegetable, still makes me race to the bathroom.
Father rolled his eyes as I told him this story. Anything I say, he refers to a psychiatrist. This is the latest trend in our family (possibly after my twin married an American) who never believed in dentists or even headache medicine.
But he was in a good mood that day, too busy enjoying his glass of Mersault in Paris, in honor of turning seventy nine.
At some point during dinner I reminded him of yet another of his quirky behaviours— when I first moved to New York for college at the age of nineteen in 1996, every year that he used to come and visit, he would give me five hundred dollars for food and groceries. He meant this to last till his next visit, which was most likely six to twelve months later. Even back then, when Alphabet City was full of crack dealers, an outing at the local supermarket meant a minimum of fifty dollars.
My father wasn’t miserly or poor. He was far from both. It simply didn’t occur to my him that five hundred would not last anyone a whole year. You see, he never had to do his own groceries, pay for his own day-to-day food. All the budgeting and accounting of the household was done by my mother. So my father, the journalist, did not have to concern himself with such trivialities. He just truly thought five hundred was a lot of money.
The food was good as far as Chinese food can be outside China and London. The dim sum was properly good however. I’m still amused at the fact that Parisians call dim sum —ravioli.
And then came the surprise. The surprise that is really never a surprise that is because whoever had a birthday without their wife or mother organizing the finale?
The birthday cake. Baba au Rhum which is actually my mother‘s favorite dessert and not his.
Still, he must’ve been in a good mood because he ordered a digestif afterwards and kept insisting that I come up to his hotel room to charge my cell phone so that it would have at least ten percent battery.
I’m OK with a dead phone for a few minutes till I go home. Indians cannot fathom being without a cell phone. I on the other hand have dreams about losing my cell phone all the time— which does turn into reality much of the time. But I have this curse where by the cell phone always finds its way back to me—from kind taxi drivers usually who never accept money. (Except for one occasion in New York, when the Uber driver had already headed off to the airport).
After the dinner was done, my father saw me off. Saying goodbye to my father in a foreign country has always been the same.
He stands far away on the staircase while I look at him from the window of the taxi.
And then my father did something very strange— he took out a few notes from his pocket. Hundred and fifty Euros. to be exact.
Is that for 1996? I joked.
He just held out his palm, his fingers split in the middle— two on each side— like Spock from Star Trek.
My father does not hug. He has never hugged us in our entire life, but that was his way of telling us all the unsayable things.