The Moors Last Sigh

Five-in-a-Bite, a snaggletoothed giant who looked as if he were carrying an overcrowded cemetery inside his enormous mouth. ‘Chhaggababa is a wild man,’ said Fielding admiringly, explaining the cook’s cognomen as he made the introductions. ‘One time in a wrestle he bit off his adversary’s toes, all in one go.’ Chhaggan glowered at me – cutting an incongruously dishevelled and canteen-medalled scarecrow figure in that otherwise spotless kitchen – and began sharpening large knives and muttering direly. ‘Now, but, he is just honey,’ bellowed Fielding. ‘Isn’t it, Chhaggo? Stop sulking now. Guest chef should be greeted like a brother. Or maybe not,’ he added, turning to me heavy-lidded. ‘It was his brother who lost the wrestling match. Those toes, I swear! Looked like little kofta balls, except for the dirty nails.’ I remembered Lambajan’s old saga about having his leg bitten off by a fabulous elephant and wondered how many of these loss-of-limb tall tales were wandering around the city, attaching themselves to amputor or amputee. I congratulated Chhaggan on his kitchen’s sparkle, and told the staff that I would expect no drop in standards. A love of neatness was one thing I had in common with old snagglepuss, I averred, making no reference to Five-in-a-Bite’s somewhat haphazard personal style; also, I added quietly to myself, an instrument of war. His fangs and my hammer; even-steven, or so I reckoned. I gave him my sweetest smile. ‘Sir no problem sir,’ I said smartly to my new boss. ‘We two are going to get along just fine.’
    In those days of cooking for Mainduck I learned some of the intricacies of the man. Yes, I know there is a fashion nowadays for these Hitler’s-valet type memoirs, and many people are against, they say we should not humanise the inhuman. But the point is they are not inhuman, these Mainduck-style little Hitlers, and it is in their humanity that we must locate our collective guilt, humanity’s guilt for human beings’ misdeeds; for if they are just monsters – if it is just a question of King Kong and Godzilla wreaking havoc until the aeroplanes bring them down – then the rest of us are excused.
    I personally do not wish to be excused. I made my choice and lived my life. No more! Finish! I want to get on with the story.
    Among his many non-Hindu tastes, Fielding loved meat. Lamb (which was mutton), mutton (which was goat), keema, chicken, kababs: couldn’t get enough of it. Bombay’s meat-eating Parsis, Christians and Muslims – for whom, in so many other ways, he had nothing but contempt – were often applauded by him for their non-veg cuisine. Nor was this the only contradiction in the make-up of that fierce, illogical man. He kept up, and carefully cultivated, a façade of philistinism, but all around his house were the antique Ganeshas, the Shiva Natarajas, the Chandela bronzes, the Rajput and Kashmiri miniatures that revealed a genuine interest in Indian high culture. The ex-cartoonist had been to art school once, and while he would never have said so in public an influence remained. (I never asked Mainduck about my mother, but if indeed she was drawn to him, the evidence of his walls gave me a new reason why. Although it was also evidence of another kind, a disproof of the alleged improving power of art. Mainduck had the statues and the pictures, but his moral fibre remained of low quality, a fact which, had it been drawn to his attention, would I suspect have given him cause for pride.)
    As to the toffs on Malabar Hill, he cared about them, too; more deeply than he liked to admit. My own family background flattered him: to turn Moraes Zogoiby, great Abraham’s only son, into his personal Hammer-man was quite a titillation, disinheritance or no disinheritance. I was allotted quarters in the Bandra house, and treated, always, with just a hint of a cosseting tenderness he extended to no other employee; letting slip, on occasion, the formal Hindi ‘you’, the aap of respect, rather than the tu of command. It is to the credit of my colleagues that they gave no sign of resenting this special treatment, and to my discredit, I suppose, that I took whatever was going – regular use of a hot-and-cold-running-water bathroom, gifts of lungis and kurta-pajamas, offers of beer. A soft upbringing leaves a residue of softness in the blood.
    What was interesting was how much the city’s blue-bloods cared for Fielding. There was a steady stream of