The day after All Saints, Dad rang from Edinburgh to say that Bhimabhai had died. Apart from my parents and sister, Bhima is the only person who has always been a part of my life. In 2002, I wrote the piece below as a tribute to him:
In India, you can do all sorts of things that are unthinkable here. Like mend objects that appear irreparably damaged, that in Australia would have been relegated to the rubbish bin long since. In India, you can take a broken rubber thong down to the man squatting on the corner, and he’ll fix it for you, good as new. Another thing you can do, apparently, is can your own marmalade.
Bhima used to be our cook when my family lived in India in the sixties. He was a Christian, but his name is straight out of the Mahabharata, where Bhima was one of the Pandava brothers, one of the heroes of the epic Hindu story. The mythological Bhima was enormously strong and, legend has it, once ate seven cartloads of rice at one sitting. So as a kid, I thought Bhima was a particularly appropriate name for a cook, although our Bhima was slim and wiry. His son and daughter were my first ever play mates.
Friends of his were emigrating to Melbourne recently, and remembering how much I loved his condiments, he made a small batch of marmalade, put it in a plastic bag, and took it to the tin man in the bazaar, who sealed it up for him.
I was lucky to get the marmalade at all. Bhima’s friends were stopped by the customs officials at Tullamarine, who wanted to know what was in the tin and confiscated it. Ten minutes later, they thought better of it, and pursued the Indian family through the sliding doors, out into the public concourse, chased them as they wove their trolley laden way past the barriers saying ‘Here, here, it’s okay, mate. You can have your jam.’
The smell of Bhima’s marmalade is subtle. It doesn’t advertise itself, doesn’t jump out and bite you on the nose. You have to get up close and personal to catch it. Bhima’s marmalade is deep golden orange, smooth and skinless, more like a jam. It is distinctively tangy. Opening the tin, unfolding the plastic and inhaling took me straight back to his dark kitchen with the deep stone sink, the meat-safe cupboards and the primus stove.
Bhima came from a family who had cooked for Irish Presbyterian missionaries for several generations, so he was a dab hand at Irish cooking. It took my Australian mother a long time to persuade Bhima that you could have a main meal without mountains of mashed spuds.
Breakfasts, though, were quintessentially English. The table was set, complete with beautiful crockery, tablemats, and white lace covers on everything to keep out the flies. These covers had small blue beads on their edges to weigh them down, so that they wouldn’t blow off when the ceiling fan started up.
Waiting for us when we got up in the morning was porridge with sugar and heated milk, tea in a pot with a cosy, toast, with butter straight from the fridge, sweating drops of water. And there was marmalade.
In 1984 I travelled through India with Alistair, who’d never been there. After trekking around the country we finally stayed in the house where I’d lived as a kid, now a guesthouse.
We got off the train at 4 am, exhausted and dishevelled after long days and nights on the Indian railways, bent under backpacks full of dirty clothes. We had very little money, and had been surviving happily on street stall food, revelling in the prices, the flavours and the atmosphere.
We arrived at my old home in a motor rickshaw, and were greeted with open arms. And one of Bhima’s British breakfasts. My husband couldn’t believe his eyes. Porridge! A teapot complete with cosy! And marmalade!
I haven’t been back since. A mob of children has a way of grounding you, in more senses than one. Every year I send a Christmas letter to Bhima’s son, my old playmate, who is a computer programmer.
The missionaries have long since left. But the house is still there. Even the earthquake that decimated so much of the city eighteen months ago didn’t knock the solid mission houses down.
Bhima is still there too, and looks after the guests who come to stay. Others in my family have been there recently, so I know that not much has changed. Bhima looks a little greyer, and moves more slowly, but he still serves up marmalade and mountains of mashed potatoes for European guests.
It’s a time warp. The house is still surrounded by cool verandahs, there are still swirling ceiling fans and smooth cement floors and heavy mahogany furniture. There is still a bathroom for each bedroom, and every last one has its complement of mice and cockroaches. There are still lizards pasted on to the ceiling, and nets to keep out the mosquitoes.
One day I guess it’ll go. Even Bhima can’t live forever, although I’d like him to, and maybe one day the Church of North India will decide to bulldoze the gracious old mission houses and put up something more functional, a school, say, or a hospital, an office block.
But for now, I breathe in the wafting scent of Bhima’s marmalade, flown straight to me from downtown Ahmedabad, and I can pretend that my enchanted childhood is still there, in every feature, intact and just waiting for me to return.
Post script
In a sense it was. In the ten years between writing this piece and now, I went back to Ahmedabad three times, stayed in our old house, spent lots of time with Bhima and his family, and enjoyed his cooking. I was hoping I would get back and see him one last time.
Vale Bhimabhai, dear, lifelong friend and wonderful cook.
