An evening with Anthony Bourdain

Raaja Bhasin   

Some five years ago, my good friend the late Kanwar Ratanjit Singh of Kapurthala called to say that he was hosting a dinner that was to be televised. I had been asked to be present by the television company from the US, and would I accept? Television company or not, to be at one of Ratanjit’s (Reggie to his friends) dinners at his magnificent Shimla home, Chapslee, was always a delight. The hospitality and table were well past comparison. Of course, I accepted. 

Within an hour or so, a fixer from the TV company also called. In a polite but firm way that fixers seem to have imbibed from headmasters and headmistresses around the world, I was told that I would have to sign a release form; there was no payment involved; and there was ‘great publicity’ to be had. The dress code was explained: ‘reasonably formal.’ 

In my wisdom, I did not ask who the television people were and what the dinner was about. And then, it was just too late and rude to do so.  In one of my late father’s Harris tweeds, I was there at the appointed date and time. 

Anthony Bourdain was already in the drawing room talking to the only other guest, lawyer Rakeshwar Lal Sood. Anthony Bourdain? Of course, I’d heard of him, but not enough. As far as the world of international jetsetters was concerned, we lived in the boondocks. I knew he was projected as the bad boy of an international community of celebrity chef-traveller-authors.  Anthony Bourdain was a ‘big-time’revolutionary chef; he  was the Mick Jagger of gourmets. 

Six-feet something of a well-photographed and filmed frame unwound from the low couch and there was an exchange of pleasantries. For all the aura of fame and a long list of awards, there was an easy, warm air to the man. None of the reported hedonistic lifestyle was apparent. Here was someone charming, polite and very much in control. The evening had been set, the lights and cameras were in position around the dining table. The director shook hands, the cameramen nodded affably, the wine for decorative purposes was positioned and one of Reggie’s specialities, Eggs Benedict, was served.

Anthony Bourdain was in India as a part of the famed international series he hosted, Parts Unknown.  Between a telecast on Detroit and another on Las Vegas, he covered the Punjab. From Wagah-Attari, the scene shifted to Amritsar and the langar at the Golden Temple.  Across Punjab, he ate by the roadside and in an open field. He stuck his head out of the train on the Kalka-Shimla railway. He seemed to love what he did and he was obviously very successful at it. 

What did we talk about at dinner? Food obviously, but much more. We spoke of the history woven with what became a fairly distinctive form of cuisine, ‘Anglo-Indian food.’ How lifestyles adapted to food and food to lifestyle. It was an evening to be remembered.  

The news broke on June 8 that Anthony Bourdain, the most successful of all chefs, a celebrity with a fan following that would put many a film star in the shade, had committed suicide in a hotel room. He was sixty-one. There was the all too visible public success and a private darkness. The Greeks have long had a word for it, thanatos, the death wish. It has been written about since time immemorial.  We may never know why the most successful of people, who are also the most driven, have their own ghosts.

Within a month of each other, both host Ratanjit and guest Bourdain are gone. There must be that better place somewhere; a part unknown.