The Mutton Curry from Lahore

In Calcutta, in the good old days, eating chicken was distinctly déclassé. Your ‘class' was determined by whether you served - among other fishy courses -- good-quality mutton (there were ‘select shops' catering to the ‘good-quality' demand) on occasions ranging from family dinners to weddings. This was much before the health lobbyists had started their anti-red meat campaign in right earnest.

My grandfather, a spoilt brat in his growing-up years (he was the only son), would come back home from school in the late afternoons (after playing cricket post-school) and get half-a-kilo mutton cooked to perfection (kosha mangsho, as the Bengalis call it), along with scores of luchis that were served piping hot. This he had every day (and he lived to be 85). Once, when he was served vegetarian fare (because mutton was not available that day), he, in a fit of pique, threw his plate on the floor, breaking the fine china into fine bits. His tearful mother vowed that never, ever would such a mistake be repeated. Such used to be the power of mutton.

Funnily enough, I was never a mutton fan. I've always preferred chicken. And, these days, I am vegetarian at least five days in a week.

Nevertheless, I used to dig my maternal grandmother's (I call her Dimma) mutton curry; her culinary skills are legendary. My mother didn't quite inherit the same traits from Dimma, but she too makes a mean mutton vindaloo once in a while. My paternal grandmother used to make awesome mutton roasts. And then, there is my best friend's mother's bhuna mutton, which is pretty divine. These were the four preparations of mutton I enjoy/enjoyed eating, other than occasional meat dishes I'd partake at restaurants.

When I was in Delhi this time, I took Brian to Oh Calcutta, and we ordered both fish and mutton, cooked Bong-style. I have a feeling he enjoyed the fish more (it was cooked in mustard sauce), but I'm not sure. Brian?

But poor Brian has not had the Lahori mutton: it's not some random dish called so because a restaurant-owner thought it might be an exotic-sounding sobriquet. It comes from Lahore. My Lahori friend in Dubai first got me this mutton - in vacuum-packed tins - when she went home early this year for a four-day break. "I don't know if you'll like it, but I want you to sample some Lahori food," she said defensively as she handed me the tin. It was cooked, she explained, by a husband-wife team who her mother knows pretty well.

With no expectations whatsoever, I opened the can of mutton, spooned out a few pieces, and had it with a couple of triangular parathas. I've never eaten something like that before. It's easily the best mutton I've had in my life. It actually beats Dimma's famous mutton curry hollow (sorry, Dimma!).

I made a friend eat a bit of it (I was too greedy to give him a substantial portion from my tin), and he almost had tears in his eyes. "It's such a pity that India and Pakistan have a Line of Control dividing them: imagine if the two countries had been one... we could have had this Lahori mutton every now and then... every day maybe... Life would have been so much better," he sighed.

I keep hustling my friend to get me more mutton. So each time any Lahori known to her mother - friends, relatives, even neighbours - comes to Dubai, a few tins of mutton are sent for me. I've even presented my friend with a business proposition: I want to team up with her mother's Lahori cooks and open a restaurant in Delhi. She laughed, and joked about how the Indian right-wingers may not take that kindly.

But I'm dead serious, I told her. "Hmmm, not a bad idea actually," she said. "I'm dying to go to India, and if I become a partner in this restaurant business, I can be there often."

Years ago, when I was in school, somebody had read out an article from a kiddie Bengali magazine called Anandamela about a dream line-up in cricket if India and Pakistan had not been partitioned. Imran Khan and Wasim Akram could have opened the bowling attack along with Kapil Dev, and Javed Miandad could have been first down.

On hindsight, I think I'd have taken the Lahori mutton over Imran Khan/Wasim Akram/Javed Miandad any day.