The Cambridge Curry Club Read Online Free PDF

floor. ‘She’s everything to me.’
    A murmur went round the room. ‘Ah, bless.’ Heera sniffed, before twisting herself out of his embrace to cry, ‘Who wants tiramisu, who wants apple crumble, who wants ice cream and who wants rosogulla?’
    ‘Mustn’t be naughty!’ vowed Sarah, a hand fluttering over her abdomen, as she greedily surveyed the desserts. ‘Ooh, shall I give in this once?’
    ‘Wouldn’t you rather have the cake and eat it, too?’ asked her husband Brian sourly.
    Sarah always surrendered to her sweet tooth, but rarely to her husband. She had persuaded him to exchange their house in Royston for a dilapidated farmhouse outside a Tuscan village, hoping to convert the barn and stables into luxury tourist apartments. The legalities of the transfer of property deeds were as much a nightmare for Brian as working the ancient water pump and cleaning out the well. He harvested the grapes and olives and struggled to find a match for broken kitchen tiles. She never wanted sex, only olives by the truckload to sell in the local market. He was ready to return to England, but Sarah refused. He wished he could write an autobiography with the title
My Grapes of Wrath
.
    ‘Anyone for coffee?’ Heera approached ManojDaryanani, who asked for a glass of hot water. His wife explained, ‘For his voice.’
    ‘Why, what’s wrong with it?’ queried Heera.
    ‘He sings.’
    ‘
Wah ji
, you are a gayak, you are a singer, and you did not even tell us! That means you must perform for us right now. Yes, yes, I’m not taking a “No” from you. It’s my anniversary, you have to please me. Come on,
ji
,’ cried Heera persuasively.
    Manoj Daryanani, who needed a straight-backed chair, now occupied the carpet so recently vacated by ‘Shakespeare’. Heera carried out a harmonium and a pair of tabla, but he looked disdainfully at the instruments and waved them away as he cleared his throat. ‘
Hari, meri itni suno
,’ he intoned. It was the first line of a devotional song.
    ‘Why don’t you sing a film song instead? How about “Yeh Shaam Mastani”?’ suggested Barry, now on his third Scotch and viewing the world through heavy-lidded eyes. Barry was recovering from a disagreement earlier that day with his teenage son. The drink would dull the pangs of parenting.
    He ached to leave it all and return to India. Perhaps he was not too old; he might still find a job in an Indian company. Life wouldn’t be the same, of course, none of the luxuries they took for granted in England, but at least he would never again feel the fear, the black pounding of his heart as he discovered the cannabis hidden behind his son’s physics textbook. It was still not too late to take his son back to India. Ari was a good boy in bad company, but what would Shanti say? It would kill her, the way she pampered that boy, as if he were a prince from Patiala. It was all her fault, spoiling him, letting him think he could do whatever he wanted, money from his mother any time, so what if Dad didn’t give it to him, the manipulative little bugger went to Mummy. ‘Come to Mummy, son, Mummy understands her
beta
.’
    He had told Ari from the very beginning, ‘Yes, it is hard to live in this British society. You can’t be mediocre if you want to be accepted here, you have to show you are the best at something – swimming, maths, science, computers, something at least – then they will admire you. But instead you have become a zero, a nothing, a charsi, a drug addict, and what do you think, just because you can fool your mother, you can do the same with me? You will know what your father is made of if you ever touch that stuff again.’
    ‘Yes, why don’t you sing “Yeh Shaam Mastani”,’ repeated Barry jovially, as he hitched his trouser waistband.
    Manoj Daryanani frowned at Barry’s levity. Thirty minutes later, during his rendition of ‘Raag Bageshree’, the bolder members of the audience had already escaped via the conservatory door.