[ WARNING: SPOILER ALERT ]
My dear readers, if you
are an avid reader like me, and like to read in your free time (especially if
that free time also includes meal times), then I don’t think this book is for
you.
I would suggest you to
read until the end before you decide to negatively react to this post over just
one sentence.
This book tells the
story of the humble beginnings of the Haji family; starting from the Haji’s
grandparents. The grandfather is a humble but rather successful businessman.
But it’s the grandmother who is the entrepreneur of the family, who thinks outside
the box and was able to transform a home based small business of lunchboxes to
a full blown restaurant business that also became a source of income to many
people around who worked for them. You have got to admire that. It gave you a
sort of inspiration to be successful as well.
(Clapped hands) Now… I
am going to tell you about why this book is not suitable to read at meal times.
I’m not sure how accurate the cultural reference is of the Indian community,
but the book mentioned the word “toilet” several times, “raw sewage”, “sweaty
armpits the size of dinner plate”, sloppy description of eating style and all
others, all before the fourth chapter. Even if you’re not eating at the time
you’re reading the book, but if you happen to have a weak stomach, you will
feel queasy nonetheless.
Unfortunately (or is it
fortunately?) I will not include quotes of the said mention, for fear my dear
readers might be having a meal when reading this.
If you are a person
easily to feel squeamish, I suggest you start the read of this book by sucking
on something to take the edge off; maybe some tangy candy, or minty ones;
really, whatever helps. But it doesn’t last the whole book, thank goodness.
Only the first few chapters.
The book however, I
guess what shocked me a little was when fifteen year old Hassan who just
arrived in London following his mother’s death, met with his London-born cousin
of the same age for the first time and was astounded by her choice of fashion
that he cannot keep his eye away from her. I know, everyone is allowed to be a
little astonished by something they very rarely see in their life. But what I
meant by I was shocked was when the vehicle they ride on, that was driven by
his late mother’s brother, rounded a roundabout so fast that the said cousin’s
knee were pressed against his thigh and he can feel his pants pitching a tent
just from that!
And as we leaned around the corner, I felt my cousin’s hot knee push back against my thigh, and instantly a cricket bat was poking up through my pants.
I really don’t
understand what brought that on. Even though the book was written from a first
person point of view, I don’t know what went through his mind when his body
reacts like that. How could you get aroused from a person’s choice of fashion
and from a simple physical touch like that?
Hassan later wondered
if his troubled relationships with women had everything to do with losing his
mother in a murder. As soon as it felt as though the relationship is about to
get serious, he will do something to screw it up. With that said, this book
contained some bam-bam in the ham storyline. Although it not really that
focused: just one sentence per woman. But with enough of an overactive imagination,
a person can jerkin with the gerkin anyway (Not that I tried).
Madam Gertrude Mallory
is a two Michelin star restaurant chef and owner, called Le Saule Pleureur,
that also double as an inn. She is so successful that people travel from Paris
just to eat at her restaurant. Madam Mallory is quite a character! She is the
sort of employer that I would get a lifetime of trauma from. She lost her
tempers easily and does not care who around them listened. When the Haji family
decided to open a restaurant right across the street from her and make
Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val as their home, she went ballistic. She did everything
to sabotage their business; such as blackmailing people of the town market she
patrons not to sell goods to the Haji family.
Plus I have a sneaking
suspicion that her loyal manager Monsieur Henri Leblanc is a little bit smitten
with her, and she him. Just a lit~tle bit smitten. Lit~tle.
But don’t let first
impressions fool you. Madam Mallory showed herself as a surprisingly emphatic
person, albeit dismissively emphatic. One bite of the food Hassan cooked, she
immediately sensed talent. Which brings me to the part where Madam Mallory sabotage
attempts, and it went back and forth between the two restaurant owners, and
finally stopped when their fight caused an accident burn to Hassan.
Madam Mallory
determined to make things good again, even staged a hunger strike in front of
the Maison Mumbai. She refused to move from where she was sitting and eat until
Abbas Haji, Hassan’s father, agree to let his son work at her restaurant where
she knew he can be great. Abbas agreed eventually.
And so Hassan’s journey
into the French culinary began. Madam Mallory’s attention to Hassan had planted
a bitter seed on her existing staff, particularly Jean-Pierre.
For if there was one human condition that Madame Mallory understood, it was jealousy, the intense pain of realising there are those in the world who simple are greater than we are, surpassing us in some profound way, in all our accomplishments.
She did not mean to
make her staff envious of Hassan. She was gentle to Jean-Pierre’s outburst and
it made him shameful of his acts.
But he is like a visitor from another planet, and in some ways he is to be pitied, for the distance he has yet to travel, and the hardships he has yet to endure.
This quote changed the
way I look at life. This quote changed the way how I look at other people,
especially when they make mistakes.
Hassan did not stay at
Le Saule Pleureur long, and since his leaving, he had been in and out of working
in many restaurants, even helping some of them earn one more Michelin Star.
“When you leave here, […] you are likely to forget most of the things I have taught you. That can’t be helped. If you retain anything, however, I wish it to be this bit of advice my father gave me when I was a little girl, after a famous and extremely difficult writer had just left our family hotel. ‘Gertrude,’ he said, ‘never forget a snob is a person utterly lacking in good taste.’ I myself forget this excellent piece of advice, but I trust you will not be so foolish.”
“I am not very good with words, but I would like to tell you that somewhere in life I lost my way, and I believe you were sent to me, perhaps by my beloved father, so that I could be restored to the world. And I thank you for this. You have made me understand that good taste is no the birthright of snobs, but a gift from God sometimes found in the most unlikely of places and in the unlikeliest of people.”
He soon settled down
with his own restaurant, that he co-owned with his sister, with the help of
Madam Mallory’s regular patron, and inheritance from his father. As any
business owner will tell you, not every day is filled with sunshine. Things got
steadily hard for Hassan financially, and it certainly did not help with his
emotion that his father, Madam Mallory and his best friend all died within less
than six months.
This was the vision that visited, in that restless space between sleeping and waking, and it greatly soothed me. For this vision of the chickens heading to slaughter reminded me that there are many points in life when we cannot see what awaits us around the corner and it is precisely at such times, when our path forward is unclear, that we must bravely keep our nerve, resolutely putting one foot before the other as we march blindly into the dark.
And it was just before I fell asleep that I remembered one of Uncle Mayur’s favourite expressions, often repeated as we walked, hand in hand. through the slums of Mumbai when I was a little boy. “Hassan, it is Allah who gives and takes away,” he liked to tell me, and with a cheerful wobble of his head. “Always remember this: His will is only revealed at the right time.”
I am always reminding myself why I got into the game in the first place. […] It’s so easy to become intoxicated by all this flimflam. […] That is what he had to teach us - all of us - in the end. Never lose sight.
But when Hassan’s
restaurant luckily earned a surprise third Michelin star, things were alright
again and the book ended and so is this blog entry. I know. I’m shocked too.
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