Ever since our vegetarian visitor last week, Bins and I have been swapping insults. "You're an anti-national BRINJAL!" Bins hurls at me. "And you're a hypocritical PUMPKIN," I respond. "You don't like food fanatics any more than I do."
"Yes -- but he was your countryman! And he was hungry!" Bins feels strongly about all matters of the stomach. In his view, if someone is hungry, they are immediately elevated to victim-sainthood. "Not so hungry that he'd eat my curry," I retort. "Whose fault is it that he believes his food habits are superior to mine? Who's forcing him to be picky?" Bins cannot refute this logic, but he continues firing. "ARTICHOKE!!" he roars. I return fire with "GORGONZOLA!" He sucks in his breath and starts out on "BISI BELE HOOLI ..." when there's a knock on the door.
To my amazement, it's Jiggs, the vegetarian. He's grinning broadly, holding a stadium-sized pizza-box in his hands. "Hello, please!" he yodels in his nasal Indo-US accent, "I'm not disturbing, of course? I myself have brought the lunch this time! Pure vegetarian pie – enough for everyone to eat–" He dashes in and plonks the steaming monstrosity down on the desk in the middle of the room. Right over my laptop.
I snatch my precious machine out of harm's way as Jiggs says, "The chef at Pizza Plaza is an Indian and my friend. He is vegetarian too! We are everywhere!" He aims a smirk in my direction. "He makes my pizza to order. Completely safe, not even one grain of meat!" Bins is standing behind Jiggs and hurling warning glances at me. So I smile through clenched teeth as I sit down. "How nice," I say. "Thank you." As Jiggs opens the box he says, "He is also an artist, just like you Mrs Manju. Look what he has made!" With a flourish he reveals the pizza within. It's in the colours of the Indian flag: shredded carrot on top, shredded white radish in the middle and chopped dhaniya below, in three neat stripes. In the centre there's a charkha carved out of a brinjal.
"Umm," says Bins, looking a little green. "No cheese?" Nothing, nothing!" chortles Jiggs. "I told you it is purest of pure veg! Even neither garlic nor onion!" There's no place for plates, so the three of us dig in right there -- or try to: the pizza is much too soggy to pick up. Jiggs rolls up his slice like a paratha, stuffing one end into his mouth and munching away. I try to do the same but gag on my first mouthful of dhaniya. Bins drapes his slice across both hands and tries to slurp up the mush, failing miserably.
Jiggs lectures us on the holy merits of vegetarianism for two hours. The moment he leaves, Bins leaps up and vomits luxuriously in the bathroom. Then he eats the left-over pot of beef curry, cold, straight from the fridge. "That Jiggs," he says in a weak voice, "is a total UTTAPAM. A boring, sanctimonious CURD." I smile happily. For once, we're in agreement.
Manjula Padmanabhan, author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column
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