Recipe for a difficult stint made easy

THERE’S an old saying that the army marches on its stomach. Nothing can be truer, especially for a foodie like me. In my four decades in uniform, amongst the events and people I vividly remember are the men who fed me. Nothing can make life under difficult circumstances in isolated locations better than good food. I am sure most Army personnel fondly remember their cooks — simple, earthy people who with sheer experience and basic tools transformed routine cooking into an art form. There were plenty during my stint, too.

We were in the North-East in the 1980s. The CO (a 1971 war Vir Chakra awardee) had a weight issue and would skip dinner. He would come to the mess for lunch but unfortunately, since he was fond of continental food, the menu was always the same. Most officers yearned for dal-chawal, but had to pretend liking the western spread. A mess cook (now called chef mess) was posted and I interviewed him. ‘What all can you make?’ I asked. The senior mess staff would take young Second Lieutenants very lightly and the chef, Nk Bishambar, haughtily replied, ‘Saab, I can make 28 types of chutneys alone’. As it turned out, Bishambar was an exceptional cook. He made sure no continental dish was repeated in a fortnight. We ate dishes we didn’t know names of till one discovered Italian food much later. And this was the no cheese, pasta, mayo period.

I moved to a new raising where the chef, Nk Padam Singh, was a Pahari who had learnt cooking only in the Army, but had fine-tuned his talent. He was proficient in any cuisine; his mastery over puddings was phenomenal. However, I can never forget his barbeques after 24-hour marination and for which a bottle each of brandy and rum were sought. But Padam was always a hardy Kumaoni soldier first. We were in Arunachal (Bumla sector) and one fine Sunday morning, a blizzard struck. It snowed for over three hours and the door of our FRP (an igloo-type fabricated hut) got jammed in 2-foot snow. The two of us inside hadn’t eaten breakfast and by noon, our stomachs were rumbling. Communication had been disrupted, so we were resigned to someone discovering us. Suddenly, we heard voices outside. Nk Padam had marshaled the mess staff and shoveled the snow to open the doors. In he walked with a pressure cooker full of hot khichdi. Never had khichdi tasted better!

I remember at Binnaguri, our chef Siddiqui (known as Khan in the entire station) could create magic with almost any ingredient. Such was his reputation that we received several requests for him, especially on raising days. But this one is not about Khan. A new chef, Suresh, had recently joined. He was from a farmer family of Haryana, and had been enrolled without realising it was a vacancy for a cook. He knew nothing about cooking and to put it in Khan’s words, not even how to boil water! Khan employed Suresh mainly for chopping and cleaning. During that period, an enterprising officer at Army HQ tied up with some five-star hotels to train chefs. Suresh was detailed and he spent the next three months at Delhi’s Maurya. He returned a changed man, so confident of his culinary abilities. I immediately sent Khan on short leave lest he ruin his learning with ‘that’s not how it’s done’! But I kept Suresh’s new-found talent under wraps.

Soon, we moved to Siachen where deployment is in two lots. Half the battalion under the CO would stay on top for three months and the others under the 2IC (me) for the next three. I ensured that the CO got the senior cook, Khan, for his stint and I humbly settled for Suresh. Cooking on the glacier is extremely difficult: the cook’s day starts with gathering shovelled snow into a huge tub to convert it into water so that the rest of the cooking activities can start. I can reveal today that my glacier tenure was made that much more comfortable since Suresh satisfied all my foodie cravings. Much later, someone leaked my smart act to the CO, who laughed, ‘So that’s how you came down from the glacier with your weight intact!’

In the Army, the mess staff’s bond with the unit and the officers is life-long. Though Suresh retired, he somehow found my number and rang me up close to my son’s wedding. ‘Shall I come to help, saab?’ he asked. ‘No, but do come and attend the wedding,’ I said. He did, finding fault with the reception caterer’s preparations!