Read Online The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais - Free Book Online
Authors: Richard C. Morais
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Abhidha, I was regularly dropping by the basement lair of Deepak, a boy from the neighborhood in Southall. Deepak was one of the Anglo Peacocks and his parents, wishing he would just go away, turned over their entire basement to their son, who promptly filled it with state-of-the-art hi-fi and TV, the floor covered in fat beanbags. And in the corner—a foosball table.
Foosball, I tell you, it is a devilish invention of the West. Makes you forget everything in the world. Nothing but twirling that handle and smacking that little ball, just so you can hear the marvelous sound of that white sphere whizzing through the air and smacking the back of the goal with a satisfying wooden
thwock
. Increasingly I was down in Deepak’s basement, the two of us first smoking a couple of spleefs of hashish, and then, my God, four hours gone, just like that, and we were still twirling handles and sending those little wooden men into deadly head spins.
On the Friday before I was supposed to meet Abhidha’s university friends in an East End flat, I went down to Deepak’s basement, and there were two giggly English girls sunk like plump little peaches among the beanbags. Deepak introduced me to Angie, a chubby little thing with an upturned nose, her blond hair swirled up in a kind of rat’s nest and fastened atop her head with hairpins. She wore a shiny black miniskirt, and the way she was reclined in that beanbag, I kept on getting a peek of her blue cotton panties. And those chubby white legs, I tell you, swinging open and shut, banging up against my knee.
We chatted for I’m not sure how long, and then, when I passed Angie the joint, she put her hand on my leg, ran her chipped nail polish down the seam of my jeans, and I got all pokey down there. In no time, heavy snogging. Well, I won’t go into all the details, but she and I, we eventually went over to her house—her parents were gone for the weekend—and spent two days in bed.
I never went to Abhidha’s party. I never even called to say I wouldn’t be there, just didn’t show up. A few days later, full of remorse, I did call, again and again. And when Abhidha finally came to the phone, to listen to my groveling apologies, she was as lovely as she always was.
“It’s all right, Hassan,” she said. “It’s not the end of the world. I’m a big girl. But I do think it’s time you found someone your own age to be with. Don’t you agree?”
This, then, became my lifelong pattern with women: as soon as things between us were on the verge of becoming close, I withdrew. Difficult to admit, but my sister Mehtab—who oversees the restaurant’s accounts and maintains my flat—is really the only woman I have ever maintained a relationship with over time. And she insists my emotional clock stopped, that part to do with women, when Mummy died.
Perhaps. But remember this, too: freed from the emotional demands of wife and children, I was able to spend my life in the warm embrace of the kitchen.
But back to the rest of the Haji family, none of whom were faring much better. We didn’t think anything wrong, at first, when Ammi sang the old Gujarati songs and forgot our names. But then she became obsessed with her teeth, pulling her lips wide as she forced us children to examine her diseased gums, the rotten and bleeding stumps that made us gag. And I’ll always remember that horrible night when I came home, opened the front door, only to see Ammi becoming incontinent on her way up the staircase, a river of urine running down her leg.
It was, however, my irritating London-born cousin who first made us aware Ammi was suffering from dementia. Every time the university boy strutted through the General’s Hole—lecturing us on macroeconomic this and money-supply that—tiny Ammi could be seen quietly maneuvering herself to his side of the room. He would go on so, and then, midsentence, he would yelp in pain, furiously turning on the tiny crouching figure behind him. The sight of
Foosball, I tell you, it is a devilish invention of the West. Makes you forget everything in the world. Nothing but twirling that handle and smacking that little ball, just so you can hear the marvelous sound of that white sphere whizzing through the air and smacking the back of the goal with a satisfying wooden
thwock
. Increasingly I was down in Deepak’s basement, the two of us first smoking a couple of spleefs of hashish, and then, my God, four hours gone, just like that, and we were still twirling handles and sending those little wooden men into deadly head spins.
On the Friday before I was supposed to meet Abhidha’s university friends in an East End flat, I went down to Deepak’s basement, and there were two giggly English girls sunk like plump little peaches among the beanbags. Deepak introduced me to Angie, a chubby little thing with an upturned nose, her blond hair swirled up in a kind of rat’s nest and fastened atop her head with hairpins. She wore a shiny black miniskirt, and the way she was reclined in that beanbag, I kept on getting a peek of her blue cotton panties. And those chubby white legs, I tell you, swinging open and shut, banging up against my knee.
We chatted for I’m not sure how long, and then, when I passed Angie the joint, she put her hand on my leg, ran her chipped nail polish down the seam of my jeans, and I got all pokey down there. In no time, heavy snogging. Well, I won’t go into all the details, but she and I, we eventually went over to her house—her parents were gone for the weekend—and spent two days in bed.
I never went to Abhidha’s party. I never even called to say I wouldn’t be there, just didn’t show up. A few days later, full of remorse, I did call, again and again. And when Abhidha finally came to the phone, to listen to my groveling apologies, she was as lovely as she always was.
“It’s all right, Hassan,” she said. “It’s not the end of the world. I’m a big girl. But I do think it’s time you found someone your own age to be with. Don’t you agree?”
This, then, became my lifelong pattern with women: as soon as things between us were on the verge of becoming close, I withdrew. Difficult to admit, but my sister Mehtab—who oversees the restaurant’s accounts and maintains my flat—is really the only woman I have ever maintained a relationship with over time. And she insists my emotional clock stopped, that part to do with women, when Mummy died.
Perhaps. But remember this, too: freed from the emotional demands of wife and children, I was able to spend my life in the warm embrace of the kitchen.
But back to the rest of the Haji family, none of whom were faring much better. We didn’t think anything wrong, at first, when Ammi sang the old Gujarati songs and forgot our names. But then she became obsessed with her teeth, pulling her lips wide as she forced us children to examine her diseased gums, the rotten and bleeding stumps that made us gag. And I’ll always remember that horrible night when I came home, opened the front door, only to see Ammi becoming incontinent on her way up the staircase, a river of urine running down her leg.
It was, however, my irritating London-born cousin who first made us aware Ammi was suffering from dementia. Every time the university boy strutted through the General’s Hole—lecturing us on macroeconomic this and money-supply that—tiny Ammi could be seen quietly maneuvering herself to his side of the room. He would go on so, and then, midsentence, he would yelp in pain, furiously turning on the tiny crouching figure behind him. The sight of
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