WITH the passage of time, strange habits take over and you may not even be aware of it, like in R.L. Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Take the buying of meat from the butcher’s shop. What with the raging perennial foot-and-mouth disease in our livestock (our leaders suffer from it, too, for every time they open their mouth, they put their foot in it) and the Australian ship floating around with bleating 50,000 sick sheep, who in his right mind would take a stab at a lamb’s leg? The city pages also scare me stiff with assorted news of donkey meat being sold at the meatsellers. I went off meat for quite a while after reading that.
I have a love-hate relationship with the butcher I go to. It is an everlasting war between the two of us — something like the Pak-India relationship but in a minuscule way. It is his endeavour to palm off stale pieces and it is my bounded duty to resist him forcefully with a raised palm and voice. I do the picking and that hurts him. He takes it personally and goes into convulsion. According to him, I was a bad influence on his other customers as watching me, they had started having ideas of their own.
One day, I found him alone and he whispered into my ear, “Babuji, if all other buyers start being choosy like you, what would I do with these pieces?”
He pointed to the pale-coloured smelly chunks of ribs, neck and chops nicely arranged before him. He had a point. I did not want him to go under.
There is always a solution to every problem. I got fed up with these weekly skirmishes that could blow up into a full-scale battle. With those knives, cleavers, skewers and (for some strange reason, he has a couple of throwing knives as well) choppers in his armoury, the odds were heavily against me. So, I decided to pick a hanging carcass on display instead and be done with the repetitious wrangling over bits and pieces. Of course, I had to make sure there was no stain or other unhealthy mark on the flesh. So, I picked a frolicking live goat from his herd in a temporary pen nearby. He slaughtered, skinned, weighed and went on to chop it, all before my unblinking eyes. I got the best cuts of meat in town. To save myself from hassle, I delegated our Bengali cook to do the job. He had been with me on a couple of visits and I thought I could give him the assignment. I am good at delegating authority. But I noticed the quality of meat declining, so one Sunday I ambushed him, sipping gratis tea at the butcher’s who was engaged dragging a reluctant limp goat to the shop. Quite understandably, I was mad. “Dilawar. What on earth are you doing?”
“Sahib, I’m drinking soy (tea).”
“You fool, do you think that handicapped animal is going to get me across the Pul-i-Siraat? It won’t get me even through Lily Bridge!”
Strange fellow, this cook. He won’t start his business in the kitchen till he has his fill of a couple of cups of the deathly brew with 10 spoons of sugar. He repeats that performance three times a day and in between. And here he was, selling me for a cup of the hot, cheap dark stuff as if he hadn’t tasted the darned thing in years!
Now, forever, I have taken upon myself to visit the butcher on Sundays. It is a day when, after making the heavens and the earth, separating light from the darkness, even God took a rest. But not for me. That is the price I pay for the satisfaction of knowing that what I eat is genuine.
WITH the passage of time, strange habits take over and you may not even be aware of it, like in R.L. Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Take the buying of meat from the butcher’s shop. What with the raging perennial foot-and-mouth disease in our livestock (our leaders suffer from it, too, for every time they open their mouth, they put their foot in it) and the Australian ship floating around with bleating 50,000 sick sheep, who in his right mind would take a stab at a lamb’s leg? The city pages also scare me stiff with assorted news of donkey meat being sold at the meatsellers. I went off meat for quite a while after reading that.
