Part 7 (1/2)

I now wander the market looking for potatoes for the mash, peas and apples. Apple sauce and pork are like Astaire and Rogers, Gilbert and Sullivan, Morecambe and Wise; some things are simply meant to be together. It's a strange sort of market, a blend of food and fancy goods. Now you probably take for granted the phrase 'fancy goods'. Fancy goods however are the most troubling sorts of goods for me. Their very description is oxymoronic and deceitful. These goods are bad and they're anything but fancy. Rovi, my beloved cousin, is an expert on fancy goods. He has travelled the world sourcing fancy goods; buying fancy goods; selling fancy goods. He is the king of fancy goods. Quite how to define fancy goods is a challenge. They are curios or trinkets, made in bulk and more often than not plastic or acrylic or otherwise manmade. There isn't a good that's fancy that Rovi hasn't an opinion on. Even Rovi would survey these fancy goods and question the platonic essence of their fanciness and their goodness. A small multi-coloured, plastic monkey with a ball attached to its hand by an elastic string? Not fancy and not terribly good.

I leave the market potatoless, pea-free and without apples. Panic sets in. What is the point of roast pork belly without mash and apple sauce? Rosewell, through the gift of broken English combined with my irreparable Hindi, tells me there are some roadside stalls where we can purchase vegetables and fruit. We extricate the Amba.s.sador from the mayhem of ice delivery, which seems to be turning into a full-blown musical outside the market, and escape, the pork warm against my leg (there's a phrase I never thought I'd find myself writing).

Now, you would think it would be relatively unchallenging to purchase potatoes in a country that does more things with potatoes than the National a.s.sociation of Potato-growers on International 'Do something different with a potato' Day. You would think. Or perhaps this is my ignorance of pan-Indian vegetables. Given my Punjabi ancestry, I a.s.sume all of India is the same when it comes to food availability. The Punjab is rich in agricultural resources. There's nothing the Punjabis can't grow. Potatoes are a staple of the north Indian diet. Potatoes with everything. That would appear not to be the case in Goa.

Four stalls later I am still bereft of carbohydrate. The good news is that I've managed to purchase some peas; at least I think they're peas. If projected at high velocity, one can imagine these green spheres becoming military missiles of ma.s.s destruction, perforating any person who would dare to come into its path. They're b.l.o.o.d.y hard. Nonetheless, they are, technically, peas. I have also acquired apples. Fifty rupees for four apples; it is not much cheaper than British prices. This is explained as we drive away. Rosewell tells me these are imported apples. Even India thinks other people's apples are better than theirs. I return to Orlando's tattie-free.

'Don't worry, man,' Orlando says. 'We got some sweet potatoes somewhere.'

But sweet potatoes are nothing like potatoes at all. In fact, I've often wondered why grocers and supermarkets are not prosecuted under the trade descriptions act for wilfully misleading us into thinking that a sweet potato is a potato that's a bit sweet. With the pork belly being too fatty, what I really need is the floury mouth-filling comfort of a real potato. Don't get me wrong, I love a sweet potato like the next man. There is nothing finer to accompany Caribbean goat curry than a deep fried sweet potato. Roasted in the oven with thyme and honey, sweet potato can be a significant launch pad to any sort of main course experience. Even mashed with chilli, garlic and spring onion (a sort of Caribbean champ), it is a meal in itself. But it simply won't work with my over-fat piglet pork belly.

In the late-morning light of Orlando's first-floor kitchen, my suspicions about the fat to flesh ratio of the belly are confirmed. Not only is it too fat, the skin still has nipples on it. Thankfully, the nipples make the hair seem more palatable, unlikely though that seems. I've clearly been sold a pup. Before I spiral downward into a porcine nightmare, Rosewell returns, a bag of potatoes in his hand. Never before have I felt the desire to kiss a man full on the lips. Rosewell knows he has done a good thing and I ask him to stay for lunch. Unfortunately he can't, such is the life of a freelance cab driver in Goa. At least I have potato now to a.s.suage my issues with the pork.

I decide the best course of action is to trim the belly as much as I can. The problem with fatty belly cuts is that fat is by its very nature slippery, and grabbing hold of the fat before gently divorcing it from the flesh is trickier than one might think. Thankfully some of the fat allows itself to be removed but in amongst the nipples and hair, there seem to be mud marks on the belly; the sort of mud that even Ariel at sixty degrees would struggle to s.h.i.+ft.

In amongst shearing nipples, slicing fat and removing hair I find myself thinking of Keith in Waitrose. I never have to do this to the pork belly he sells me. But then Keith and Waitrose on Finchley Road feel like a million miles and many lifetimes away from here. Short of an oven to roast the belly, I have to rely on an old north Italian method. They are renowned for twice cooking their pork belly. First they poach the pig slowly in milk, then roast it to a crisp finish. I will poach and then fry, keeping my fingers crossed for the selfsame crispy finish.

Orlando's kitchen is not a cooking kitchen, it's a kitchen to be looked at; he can't remember the last time they didn't eat out. The de-haired, de-nippled, de-fatted and de-mudded pork fills Orlando's biggest gla.s.s pan. I can see, through the smoked gla.s.sware, the defiant pork, insolent in its milky bath, willing this recipe to fail. If I'm to be honest, I can't say I'm feeling so confident myself. As the milk starts to warm, I peel and chop the apples. I chop half the apples very finely with the hope that these will break down and dissolve more readily, forming the sauce around the larger chunks of apple; it's my intention to give Orlando and the kids a two-textured apple sauce. The apples sit in a large pan with a dash of water and more than enough sugar to help the process on its way, bearing in mind Indian sugar for some reason seems to be significantly less sweet that Tate & Lyle. My pork and apple sit hob by hob, side by side and I watch and sweat. Inspiration takes hold of me. I add a healthy slug of cashew fenny into the apples. When in Goa ... I peel the potatoes and the trinity of pans in front of me suggest a meal may well be served. As to the quality of the repast ...

I can't help but wonder about Orlando's wife stuck in London miles away from her family and then I realise the parallels with my own family. My mother was stuck in that Sinclair Drive shop while my father showed his sons his India. Are Orlando and his family any different?

The milk comes to the boil and I turn it down to simmer. The apples look about as saucy as they're going to get, which doesn't look nearly saucy enough. When you read the ingredients on the side of Bramley apple sauce, you wonder how difficult it can be to make yourself. I suggest you try it and soon you will know the alchemy of apple sauce. I hope that having turned out the apple sauce and refrigerated it, the sugary syrup will thicken, and it might just work. The pork has been simmering now for twenty minutes. I know I keep banging on about the fat content, but you have to understand, the very composition of this Goan pork has rendered my every calculation meaningless. I'm not sure whether I should boil fattier pork for less time or more time; I'm not even sure whether I'm meant to boil it at all. Too late because I have. I turn off the heat and allow my piggy friend to sit in its milk bath for a little longer. There's one thing I'm sure of; I'd rather have overcooked pork than undercooked pork. I am also acutely aware that this evening we are to return to Travellers for that elusive pork vindaloo. My pork offering had better be good.

I kill the fifteen minute wait by phoning my brother-in-law Unni in Bombay. His wife, Anu, is my wife's cousin; they're very close. Unni is a commercials director who has started making movies in the new vibrant, modern India. His love of European cinema and my love of modern India seem to be a happy intersection in our lives. He holidays annually in Goa.

'What are you doing?' he asks me.

I explain to Unni where I'm staying.

'We are buying a place there. There, in that complex.' Unni is incredulous. That makes two of us.

Now I am aware of the dimensions of the globe, the circ.u.mference, the radius, the surface area of the planet. No matter how one looks at it, this world is many things but small. It transpires that the house he has made an offer on is four houses away from Orlando's. You travel halfway round the world but coincidence is never far away.

I bring the robust peas to the boil in heavily salted water. I don't know what it is about these peas but they really scare me. My fear is well placed. I have never in all my life witnessed peas emit so much green to the water they boil in. Now, when I say green, let me explain. At the start of the cooking process, the peas were green (correct) and the water was clear (correct). By the end of the cooking process, the peas are less green (not right) and the water is radioactively green (very, very wrong). I am really not sure whether I should serve these peas, but on balance I'm serving the peas and not the radioactive water, so I feel a little more comfortable about their presence on the plate.

It's time to bring everything together. A frying pan with oil is heated on the hob. I dry the milk-soaked pork belly in the vain hope that the oil, like some biblical miracle, will manage to crisp up the skin. It's never going to happen. I place as many pieces of pork belly into the hot oil as will fit and genuinely pray. I'm not quite sure who I'm meant to be praying to, given my own personal confusion towards the supreme being and the fact that I happen to be in the most Christian place I have ever been to (including the Vatican). Nevertheless, I find myself almost audibly uttering the words, 'Please G.o.d, make them crispy.' I distract myself by mas.h.i.+ng the now boiled potatoes, embellis.h.i.+ng them with luscious Indian b.u.t.ter and a little milk. I retrieve the apple sauce from the fridge. Now I'm muttering, 'Please G.o.d, make it saucy.' Clearly, if there is a G.o.d, she or he is otherwise occupied since my apple sugar and fenny mix is sticky rather than saucy. I'm hopeful that Orlando and the kids will have very limited experience of proper apple sauce.

We eat. Carlos, being Carlos, feels it is too hot for mash and rightly deems the pork belly too fatty. Having said that, I can't ever remember seeing him eat anything. He would have been very happy with a bowl full of c.o.ke. Charlene likes the fat when it is crispy and loves the mash. Orlando leaves nothing, but then again, Orlando is a lovely man, so I wouldn't let that be any sort of reflection on the quality of the meal.

The meal over, the afternoon heat descends and with bellies full, a kip is required. So we sleep, with the promise of a drive down to the beach for sunset.

It takes no more than twenty minutes to drive to the beach, chasing the sunset full of pork for the second time in one day. A few hundred people gather at Colva to watch the sky darken, to eat ice cream and to paddle through the ebbing, incoming waters. I would have thought that coming to Goa, the very epicentre of the traveller's journey of self-discovery, might have offered me a few more answers. But I am feeling that I am leaving with yet another clutch of questions. The last thing I expected to find on this quest was an Indian duality like my British duality. Orlando is a proud Goan, but does not regard himself as Indian. Is Orlando any different from me? He is, in so far as I am engaged with my dual heritage, my Britishness and my Indian past. For Orlando, life in that regard is very simple.

Perhaps that is why Goa doesn't really feel like India. This is an alien land, a mini-nation of fiercely proud and independent people that bears very little relation to India herself. I am almost halfway through my journey and I seem to have seen a hundred different Indias and a hundred different Hardeeps on the way.

Perhaps my dad was right. Maybe I should not have bothered with Goa. And maybe cooking British food for Indians is futile. The journey is beginning to feel futile. I am not at all sure what I am learning.

The waves crash and the sky is incarnadine, the multicoloured bodies slowly become monochrome as the glorious gloom of night descends. Suddenly, for a moment, my whole journey becomes clear in fading twilight. I have travelled halfway around the world to find myself. But I now realise that I cannot truly do so until I lose myself in the experience of India.

All the while I have been travelling, from Kovalam through Mamallapuram, Mysore and Bangalore I have been trying to relate everything to what I already know, as if I were some sort of scientist. Standing on this beach, feeling the sand between my toes and the grains of time slipping silently through my fingers I begin to understand. The darkness brings light.

Then I hear in the distance an all too familiar sound. A broad Lancas.h.i.+re accent.

'Have we missed the sunset? b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. My feet are b.l.o.o.d.y throbbing ...' A fat, sunburnt tourist is waddling towards the beach, wholly unaware of her own volume and blissfully unaware of her terrible dress sense.

'My b.l.o.o.d.y feet ... '

And in an instant, clarity, like the sun, has vanished.

8.

DELHI BELLY.

'Hi, Dad.'

'How's it going? Where are you now?' He was clearly happy to hear from me. 'Left Goa this morning. I'm in Bombay now and heading for Delhi,' I said. The bus from Goa had been remarkably unremarkable. It had been the single journey I was dreading the most. Yet I have arrived in Bombay rested and relaxed. It promises to be a smooth onward journey all the way up to the north. But promises can easily be broken.

'You flying?' my dad asked.

'No, Dad. Train. Change at Bombay.'

'Are you not stopping in Bombay, son? If you are you have to meet Joggi Saini.'

'No, Dad. I'm not stopping here. Can't do everything. I'm going straight up to Delhi. I've done Banglore. How many cities can I see?'

'OK.'

'Dad, quick question. When you left India, did you know who you were, or were you trying to find yourself?' No sooner had I asked the question than I knew the answer.

'I never understood this finding yourself nonsense. Maybe it's a cultural or generational difference. I always knew who I was. Finding myself was never a luxury I could afford.'

'OK. Sorry, Dad.'

'Now, have you told Manore Uncle you are coming to Delhi? I spoke to him yesterday and they are expecting you. Rovi will look after you.'

'I'll call them today. Everything else OK, Dad?'

'Yes. Fine. How's the cooking?' he asked.

'You know ...' I allowed my answer to tail off in a noncommittal sort of a way.

'Son?'

'Yes, Dad?'