The Cambridge Curry Club is not about curry, even if the plump blonde at the sandwich shop in Cambridge did drool, “Ooh, I love a spicy Indian, when can I buy the book?” Nor is it about a dimly lit Bollywood club. There arent any dancing girls. Sorry.
It is about Cambridge, city of colleges and spires, strolling through the colleges and real-life streets and locations, the reader always arrives at colourful, earthy Mill Road and at fictional charity shop IndiaNeed. The two worlds of town and gown co-exist in the book like a carrot smoothie with chunky unblended bits.
I chose unglamorous and mostly middle-aged women as my focal characters and stirred and tested their resilience by sending them on a bizarre rollercoaster ride of events and emotions. Their apparent enemy Lady Di is none other than Diana Wellington-Smythe, imperious director of IndiaNeed, arrogant in Armani and undisputed matriarch of a dysfunctional family. The four reluctant heroines working at the shop are:
Heera: ebullient but edgy shop manager fond of salacious gossip and samosas. Her English husband Bob unwittingly times a terrible revelation to her first course of hormone replacement therapy.
Swarnakumari: pukka Bengali madam and volunteer with a keen eye for shop bargains. Shocked over the wicked ways of the world, she stutters a stock response: “These things do not happen in good Indian families”. Adopts a spiritual guru timed to retired husband Mr Chatterjees discovery of Asian Babes on the Internet and their daughters friendship with African neighbour Joseph.
Eileen: fiercely Irish. An eccentric mathematics teacher, she enrols as the shops first volunteer after her plumber husband Watts realises his body now springs incontinent leaks of its own.
Durga: attractive but prickly Cambridge graduate with an acerbic wit. Belongs to the world of the charity shop like china in a bullring. Harbours a secret past and a longing for true love and chocolate.
The book can be read anywhere – as the beach companion to suntan oil, on the bench in the park, in a library where the only sound is that of the librarians chuckles. Underneath the laughs wriggle a number of questions that wont go quietly. Where is home? If life is a struggle, is it about taking control, holding on or letting go?
My heroine should have been a gawky but gorgeous nineteen-year-old caught between bhangra and ballet, pointillism and pakoras. Given the current popularity of chick lit and themes of teen angst, I should have written The Asian Who Wore Armani, Chicken Tikka Acne or a thriller titled Never Love a Stranger – Unless Its An Arranged Marriage.
I wrote The Cambridge Curry Club instead.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Excerpted from The Cambridge Curry Club by Saumya Balsari. Copyright © 2004. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
It was 15 August, the anniversary of India s Independence and of their marriage. Heera Malkani Moore still celebrated the first of the two with pride. She looked at her husband, Bob; he was sprawled across the bed, his mouth slightly open in sleep. How thin his lips were, she thought. A gingery grey for a sunny day.
Adam! he had called out gruffly, and she awoke instantly. Who was Adam? she wondered.
Heera s transparent, bubbly exterior concealed an edgy sexuality; she was a forgotten kettle boiling over. Only once had she known real passion, at eighteen, with lithe Javed in his tight blue Terylene trousers. He had exuded an animal vigour, demonstrating clever stealth in their assignations. Heera cherished a velvet memory; they had watched the teen romance Bobby in the back row at the local cinema in Hyderabad, and Javed s fingers had splayed interrogatively across her breasts while he popped peanuts into his mouth with his other hand. He had retained a last peanut for the moment when the lights came on, despatching it with studied nonchalance as other couples leaped to their feet to shuffle demurely out of the hall.
Bob s contribution to the anniversary was a generous Marks and Spencer gift voucher. On the advice of his aunt he had presented Heera with English cookery books to mark the first, and Heera had dutifully noted the recipes for Yorkshire pudding and mince pies. On the second anniversary they drove to a caravan site in Cornwall. Heera now used the vouchers for the acquisition of white six-pack tummy control undergarments.
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