I can still recall a day all those long years ago when, far from home, a friend and I were walking along Oxford Street after a broadcast, having eaten a canteen meal of powdered eggs and wilting lettuce leaves. We were homesick for Lucknow, the city of our birth, but not for its beauty, its refinement, the sound of its poetic language or its culture. We talked longingly of food and of one which in particular was famous.'Oh, for Toonda's kebabs!' we sighed. 'Oh, for a warm chapati!'Nowhere else were chapatis as large, as light, as delicate.Toonda, who made kebabs known to all connoisseurs of good food, was given that nickname because he had lost an arm up to his elbow and yet was a culinary artist. His kebabs were best eaten the moment they were ready and queues formed in front of his shabby shop by the old city gate. It was in the narrow street where attar makers, chikan sellers, the makers of gold and silver leaf which was used to decorate festive food and sweets, had had their shops since the days kings had ruled in Lucknow.The sound of music came from the balconies of houses overlooking the street where courtesans lived who had once taught etiquette to the aristocracy. Our nostalgia made everything a background for Toonda's kebabs.Walking along dark London streets, I would recall Diwali, the festival of lights in honour of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, when streets were bright with revelry and every house was outlined with the glow of tiny oil lamps. Our home was lit to welcome our Hindu friends and wish them good fortune and prosperity. Small animal shapes made of sugar were sold in every sweet shop and were the best gifts for children.During Christmas with nowhere to go, knowing it as a family festival, I remembered Christmas at home, visiting our friends, joining in their singing of carols, eating Christmas cake and mince pies, none as delicious as those made for us by our loving and loved Christian ayah, Sally Peters, who shared all our festivals. So too did my Amma, my wet-nurse. When I was older she was put in charge of the kitchens. She supervised the storerooms in which stood jars which would have held Ali Baba's forty thieves. In those were stored the wheat and lentils and rice, the harvest of the fields, bought from our ancestral village by bullock carts with large wooden wheels. There were tins containing ghee and mustard oil. There was a large grinding stone on which the corn and wheat were ground by women sitting on the floor of the storeroom's verandah. They made curds, buttermilk, ghee and clotted cream from the milk of cows which lived by the stables.In a smaller storeroom there were fragrant bottles of keora and rosewater, tins of sugar and spices, and baskets of onions, garlic and herbs. When special delicacies and seasonal sweets and halvas were to be prepared, Amma saw to it that everything was ready in the courtyard by the lawn and garden of the zenana. Two or three stringwoven beds with carved legs, covered with colourful durries, were brought out, and low stools, and large coal-burning braziers on which to cook. My mother, my sisters, my aunts and cousins would join in the preparation and the cooking, helped by the maids. There would be a fragrance in the air and the sound of voices laughing and gossiping.I was reprimanded because I would not join in the cooking as other girls did. I hated cooking because it stole time from my books, but I liked good food and I did not have to cook it then.But necessity is a hard teacher. In London, as a single parent with two young children, I had to learn to cook. I even wrote a cookery book thirty years ago. One had to make do then without spice shops round every corner. I learned to cut corners and save precious time.When I remember the past I still wonder how the most elaborate feasts were prepared for hundreds of guests. There were no sophisticated, automated, complicated mechanically perfected cookers, grinders, blenders, steamers, timers, gas and electricity, just brick and clay stoves, and coal and wood to burn, and heat regulated by how much was used or removed.
