{"id":26411,"date":"2017-01-03T13:27:09","date_gmt":"2017-01-03T12:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/?page_id=26411"},"modified":"2017-08-03T14:37:09","modified_gmt":"2017-08-03T13:37:09","slug":"sample-translation-mama-tandoori","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/foreignrights\/authors\/ernest-van-der-kwast\/ernest-kwast-mama-tandoori\/sample-translation-mama-tandoori\/","title":{"rendered":"Sample translation – Mama Tandoori<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ernest van der Kwast –\u00a0Mama Tandoori<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Two suitcases<\/strong><\/p>\n

It all started with two suitcases. My mother arrived in the Netherlands in 1976 with two suitcases stuffed with bracelets, necklaces and earrings. She managed to get a room in a local convent and started work as a nurse. She hid the cases under the bed, the safest place to keep your valuables Indians say. My mother once told me in confidence: \u2018Burglars never check under the bed.\u2019 My father whispered in my ear: \u2018Almost no one has a bed in India.\u2019<\/p>\n

The two suitcases stayed under my mother\u2019s bed for years, until my father, a clumsy jug-eared man and a typical Hollander, fell in love with the exotic woman he believed my mother to be. I\u2019m not really sure how it happened exactly, and I\u2019m not sure I want to either. Anyway, the suitcases were moved at a given moment to a little house on Bloemstraat and found their way under a double bed.<\/p>\n

My father studied medicine and spent the entire day up to his jug-ears in books. My mother worked as a nurse and made sure we had bread on the table, or in her case, nan. My mother told me in confidence: \u2018Your father was as poor as a church mouse in Delhi.\u2019 My father whispered in my ear: \u2018If only I\u2019d been a church mouse in Delhi.\u2019<\/p>\n

The house on Bloemstraat was noisy, lopsided and the smell was worse than my father\u2019s armpits. At least that\u2019s my mother\u2019s version of things and there\u2019s no way to verify it because the houses on Bloemstraat were demolished long ago and replaced by high-rise flats. Time feeds on whatever it can get; it\u2019s a hideous and insatiable omnivore. Only the apparently imperishable smell of my father\u2019s armpits seems to have survived. According to my mother it has to do with his job. My father is an anatomical pathologist.<\/p>\n

\u2018What\u2019s that smell?\u2019 my mother would often ask at table.<\/p>\n

\u2018Hmm,\u2019 my father would say. \u2018Chicken tandoori.\u2019<\/p>\n

My mother: \u2018I smell corpses! The smell of death is spoiling my dinner.\u2019<\/p>\n

My father would lift his plate to his nose: \u2018Delicious,\u2019 he would say. \u2018Chicken tandoori.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s coming from your armpits,\u2019 my mother would snarl. \u2018The stench of those corpses is in your armpits! You should hold your arms closer to your body!\u2019<\/p>\n

When I think about the old days, I can picture my father sitting at the head of the table, his arms pressed hard against his body, his cutlery dangling clumsily. I never went to see where my father worked when I was young. I was afraid I would discover him up to his armpits in corpse.<\/p>\n

The house on Bloemstraat was lopsided, stinking and noisy, and its days were numbered. My mother wasted no time in looking for new accommodation and she found it on Jericholaan, in a fancy part of Rotterdam called Kralingen. Number 81 was a town house with three floors, a spacious garden, and a lodger, Mr Gerritsen. I never had the chance to meet Mr Gerritsen. By the time I was born he had already fled the place, yelling with a catch in his voice: \u2018She\u2019s the devil! She\u2019s the devil!<\/p>\n

The house on Jericholaan cost a fortune, but my mother managed to haggle on the asking price, as she haggled on everything: clothes, furniture, kitchen appliances, breasts of chicken. Haggling was more than a hobby, it was a sport. I spent half my youth in shops and department stores, waiting to see if the sales staff would give her a reduction. I remember a shop that sold beds and my mother saying to the assistant: \u2018In India I could buy a hundred bunk beds for that price.\u2019 It never occurred to me to say that India didn\u2019t have any beds. I did as I was told. I lay flat out on a mattress and wasn\u2019t allowed to move until my mother gave me the signal. It was four-thirty in the afternoon and we had been in the shop for six hours by that time. The sales assistant looked as if he\u2019d done twelve rounds in a boxing ring. My mother had a triumphant grin on her face. She had managed to haggle eighty percent off the asking price.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The estate agent who sold us the house on Jericholaan was also beaten into submission. The story goes that my mother wanted to exchange the two suitcases for the house. The estate agent didn\u2019t understand: \u2018You have to pay cash,\u2019 he said, which drove my mother into an immediate rage. \u2018What an insult!\u2019 she roared. \u2018In India I could buy a whole city with these two suitcases!\u2019 The estate agent looked at the suitcases as a deep frown appeared on his forehead and his expression became more downcast by the minute. Perhaps he was thinking about looking for another job. If you ask me, it was pretty normal for people to wonder whether they\u2019d chosen the wrong path in life after meeting my mother.<\/p>\n

My mother interpreted the estate agent\u2019s silence as interest and started listing the items in the suitcases: nose rings, ankle chains, bracelets, necklaces, even a golden crown. The estate agent looked in desperation at my father, but he had been sworn to silence and was only allowed to breathe and nod (the latter, of course, only in response to a remark from my mother.)<\/p>\n

The estate agent cautiously repeated the asking price. My mother shook her head and divided it in half, deducted ten thousand, compared it with the price in rupees, divided it in half a second time and then announced the result. My father helped the estate agent to his feet and whispered in his ear: \u2018It\u2019ll be fine, it\u2019ll all be fine. Remember, you\u2019re not married to the woman.\u2019<\/p>\n

They viewed the house of Jericholaan several times after that, and my mother tried to get the price down every time. The estate agent no longer fainted, but he always needed time to get his breath back on the stone stairs in front of the house after every visit. I\u2019m sure he also looked as if he\u2019d done twelve rounds in a boxing ring.<\/p>\n

My mother finally sold the contents of the two suitcases to the best jeweller in Rotterdam and she used the proceeds to buy Jericholaan 81.<\/p>\n

Anyone daring to question this transaction should watch out for my mother\u2019s rolling pin. It happened often enough in my childhood that there was no roti served at table because the rolling pin was broken.<\/p>\n

I also have a picture of my father holding a bag of ice to his head and muttering incessantly: \u2018if only I\u2019d been a church mouse in Delhi\u2026 if only I\u2019d been a church mouse in Delhi\u2026\u2019 There were no more suitcases under my parent\u2019s bed in the house on Jericholaan, although other valuable things had taken their place, such as an inherited microscope and sacks of basmati rice. My father had graduated by this time and was earning a living as doctor in training. According to my mother, his salary was the same as that of a porter at Bombay train station.<\/p>\n

Bombay, the city of my birth. I\u2019m still puzzled by the fact that my two brothers were born in the Netherlands and I was born in India. What was my father doing in Rotterdam while my mother was giving birth in Bombay, I ask myself? I think it had to do with a special offer of some kind. My mother is drawn to special offers like a bull to a red rag. I can picture the following scenario: Air India offers free seats for children. Outward journey: three for the price of one; return journey: four for the price of one. My father would have to stay at home, of course, but we could count on him for that, whether my mother pressured him or not.<\/p>\n

Just after I was born, uncle Sharma called my father. He thought that I was a girl. \u2018There were birds on the line,\u2019 my father once whispered in my ear after my mother told me that my father was deaf as a post, and that he only heard the things he wanted to hear. \u2018Deodorant is a word your father never hears. Soap is a word your father never hears. Isn\u2019t it time you took a shower? is a question your father never hears.<\/p>\n

But I digress. Back to the two suitcases. They had taken the shape of an imposing town house in Kralingen. My parents lived on the ground floor and the first floor, Mr Gerritsen had the attic. Everything was moving along nicely until my mother learned the expression \u2018rent control\u2019. Mr Gerritsen brought it up. My mother exploded. \u2018Rent control,\u2019 she shouted, as if it were some kind of highly contagious venereal disease. \u2018Out of my house! This minute! Out of my house!\u2019 But Mr Gerritsen managed to survive another three days. On day one, my mother burnt black bin bags in the back garden. As the skies filled with dark smoke, she shouted: \u2018Leave this place, spirit. Evil spirit of Mr Gerritsen, depart!\u2019 She also got up at three in the morning to thump the ceiling with a broom handle as she recited a text traditionally used in India when people are terminally ill.<\/p>\n

On day two, my mother headed off to a children\u2019s farm in the woods outside Kralingen and pinched a pile of cow dung. They almost caught her because she was determined that the dung had to be fresh. A toddler raised the alarm: \u2018Mummy! Mummy! That woman\u2019s stuffing Bella\u2019s pooh in her bag.\u2019 Once back inside the safety of the house, she put on her rubber gloves and set about baking cakes for the upstairs neighbour. On day three Mr Gerritsen had the runs and my mother decided to cut off the water supply. She also thumped the ceiling incessantly with her broom handle and recited the traditional text.<\/p>\n

On day four, my mother prepared a festive meal to thank all the Hindu gods for the sudden departure of Mr Gerritsen.<\/p>\n

The suitcases thus increased in value and were now the equal of a town house without a lodger.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My parents lived on Jericholaan for ten years and the family now had five members. My mother had given up nursing by this time and had her hands full with her three sons. My father finally qualified as a doctor and stared to earn the salary of \u2018a rickshaw runner in Bangalore\u2019.<\/p>\n

I had a decent enough childhood, but that was perhaps because I was too young to grasp everything that was going on around me. I thought we were a normal family, that every household had a mother like mine, and a father who muttered: \u2018If only I was a church mouse,\u2019 whether it be in Delhi, Rotterdam, Deventer or Goes.<\/p>\n

My oldest brother is mentally disabled. He\u2019s the only one who still thinks it\u2019s normal for fathers to sit at the table with their arms pressed against their sides, for bin bags to be burned in the back garden, and for estate agents to get clubbed with rolling pins. The latter took place when they were selling the house on Jericholaan, a decade after my parents had moved in to number 81.<\/p>\n

My mother had spotted a better house. A villa with a garage, a patio and a view of the local pond. \u2018We can\u2019t afford it,\u2019 said my father, to which my mother responded directly \u2018You can\u2019t afford it.\u2019<\/p>\n

My mother\u2019s plan was to sell the house on Jericholaan at a profit and use the surplus money to buy the villa. The estate agent she commissioned for the job wasn\u2019t the same as the one who arranged the sale of the house on Jericholaan. That estate agent was probably a librarian by this time, working in complete silence surrounded by endless rows of books. The new estate agent described the price my mother was asking for the house on Jericholaan as \u2018disproportionate\u2019. My mother didn\u2019t seem to understand the word at first so she looked it up in a dictionary. But then she returned to the living room armed with her trusty rolling pin. \u2018Disproportionate,\u2019 she screamed as if it were yet another venereal disease. \u2018Out of my house!\u2019<\/p>\n

My father said: \u2018Run for it.\u2019<\/p>\n

The estate agent jumped to his feet and raced to the front door.<\/p>\n

My oldest brother shouted: \u2018Go mama, go mama.\u2019<\/p>\n

My other brother and I cringed with shame. We knew by this time that we were not a normal family.<\/p>\n

The estate agent didn\u2019t come back and my mother decided to sell the house by herself. Now we enjoyed the spectacle of a new person fleeing the house every week. My mother had been a promising athlete in her youth and there were huge cups on her bedside cabinet to prove it. They may have been dull and rusty, but my mother\u2019s legs sparkled like new. At the age of forty she could still sprint like the devil. Sometimes she would grab a potential buyer by the collar and launch into her perpetual lament: \u2018You couldn\u2019t even buy a sheet of corrugated iron in India for that price.\u2019<\/p>\n

The lobby was starting to show signs of serious wear and tear when an elderly man named a price one day that my mother could live with. Two versions are still doing the rounds on the amount, my father\u2019s and my mother\u2019s. Since my mother was always right, the amount must have been as she said, twice the asking price of the villa. My mother could easily have been related to W.F. Hermans. Hermans was always right and was prone to more than the occasional flaming row, in his case with his publisher rather than an estate agent. I remember reading an exchange of letters about an advance payment. Geert Lubberhuizen, Hermans\u2019 publisher at De Bezige Bij, wrote: \u2018I only deducted one zero.\u2019 My mother would have known how to respond to such a reaction. She would have grabbed her rolling pin,<\/p>\n

forced her way into Lubberhuizen\u2019s offices on Van Mierenveldstraat in Amsterdam, and hammered that zero back into the man\u2019s sorry head.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The sale finally went through. An acquaintance of my mother did the removal in his blue delivery van. Recognised removers were too expensive, and in India they didn\u2019t even exist. The clapped-out old banger shuttled back and forth no less than thirty-seven times between Jericholaan and Tiberiaslaan. My mother had developed an almost pathological obsession with collecting things over the years. She would sort through the trash with Salvation Army single-mindedness and haul the stuff other people left out for the bin man into the house. Broken radios, rusty bicycles, tattered furniture, all lugged into our house on Jericholaan. She planned to take it to India one day and make people happy. That was my mother\u2019s dream. She was convinced that the poor, the pariahs, the people with nothing but their own arms and legs, would be happy with anything, even a TV without a screen.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a dark stain in my mother\u2019s distant past. I know very little about it. Shame keeps her mouth locked tight, but sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night after dreaming about life as a beggar many years ago. A scream breaks her silence and the dark of the night becomes her comfort, a hundred times lighter than the dark stain of her distant memories.<\/p>\n

The residents of Tiberiaslaan peered apprehensively at the removal activities from behind their venetian blinds. They must have thought the blue delivery van was a glorified garbage truck, dumping one load of refuse after the other on the villa\u2019s doorstep. A mountain of electrical appliances, bicycles and furniture quickly formed, a mountain that was still there at dawn the next day. The removal had been on the go for more than twenty-eight hours. After every trip my father exclaimed: \u2018Never again!\u2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My parents moved house three more times after that, or better said, two and a half times.<\/p>\n

On the day my first novel was published \u2013 February 24th 2005 \u2013 my parents announced they were planning to emigrate to Canada. My father had been offered a job in Toronto. According to my mother, the salary was a considerable improvement, average in Indian terms.<\/p>\n

My parents travelled to Toronto as if they were the royal family: in different planes. But their reason for doing so wasn\u2019t particularly regal. My mother had spent three months packing boxes for the trip. While my father was already living and working on the other side of the Atlantic, my mother prepared her collection for the journey day and night. During the day she cycled all over the city, relieving Rotterdam\u2019s supermarkets of their empty boxes. At night she filled them. Boxes originally intended for chocolate vermicelli, coffee or fruit, were now stuffed with garbage. Discarded telephones, dog-eared saddles, you name it.<\/p>\n

My mother left India with two suitcases, but two containers weren\u2019t enough for her trip to Canada. The emigration had taken on extraordinary proportions, like an army being supplied with provisions.<\/p>\n

My father welcomed my mother into their new temporary accommodation, an apartment in a neighbourhood full of men in leather trousers. He hadn\u2019t been allowed to buy a house on his own. According to my mother, such things were beyond him. That\u2019s why he opted for rented accommodation. \u2018Surrounded by homosexuals,\u2019 my mother exclaimed.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s cheap,\u2019 said my father, who had come to believe he was poor. That was the easy version of his life. His wife came from India with jewels; she bought a house, then another one, then another one. He earned the salary of a Bhopal tailor… It kept the peace at home and allowed my father to read the paper on the sofa like any other man without the menace of a rolling pin.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take long before my mother had found a new home, this time on Bloor Street, in the imposing Rosedale condominium complex (swimming pool, gym, library). The four lifts that spent the best part of a day hoisting her boxes to the 23rd floor caused a traffic jam. \u2018Are you opening a supermarket,\u2019 an old lady inquired. The janitor was less na\u00efve and had my mother sussed from day one: stay out of her way.<\/p>\n

George was a short, elderly man with horn-rimmed spectacles who spent the entire day manning the reception at the condominium complex. His job consisted of greeting the residents (\u2018Good morning, Miss Henderson!\u2019 \u2018Have a nice day, Mr Glennon!\u2019) and answering the phone every now and then. It was his ideal job. He didn\u2019t have to budge from his chair the whole day long, and it passed the time and allowed him to relax as the days trickled past towards his retirement. But everything changed when my mother entered George\u2019s life. She paid the service charge just like all the other Rosedale residents, but she was the only one to conclude that the janitor was her servant, little more than a slave in fact, the kind you found in well-to-do families in India.<\/p>\n

\u2018Georrrrge,\u2019 she shouted incessantly. \u2018Can you pick up those banana boxes and bring them to my apartment?\u2019 Or: \u2018My flowers are dying, don\u2019t you forget to water them today.\u2019<\/p>\n

Or: \u2018Please, my husband really needs deodorant.\u2019<\/p>\n

As a result, George would make himself scarce every time he heard my mother\u2019s voice booming down the marble hallway. There were other janitors, but she only ever asked them: \u2018Do you know where George is?\u2019 They would tell her that he wasn\u2019t on duty until the afternoon or the evening.<\/p>\n

The winters were severe and the summers were long. And then George received good news, perhaps the best news he had ever received in his entire life: my parents were planning to move. He was crouched under the reception counter when he overheard my mother say to a neighbour: \u2018We\u2019re going to move.\u2019 And she listed the advantages of the new condominium: two bathrooms, high ceilings, a conservatory. George jumped to his feet when my mother said: \u2018Of course we\u2019ll miss George terribly…\u2019 It brought tears to his eyes.<\/p>\n

After three years in Rosedale, my mother was ready for another move. She had seen a luxury condominium under construction near Mount Sinai Hospital. It was within walking distance for my father, and better than cycling twenty minutes every day through the traffic of a major metropolis like Toronto, especially when it was snowing or fifteen below zero. My mother had stolen a bicycle from the garage at Rosedale. There were two deserted bicycles in the garage, their saddles covered with a thick layer of dust: one for my mother, one for my father. If I close my eyes I can picture my mother working at the padlock and chain with a file while my father is standing guard. He\u2019s muttering to himself, praying to all the gods of India: \u2018My wife has lost her mind, help her find it again.\u2019 My mother files on undisturbed. She\u2019s doing nothing wrong, just taking pity on a couple of bicycles. And when I open my eyes, I see the following words: I hope I\u2019m not doing anything wrong, I\u2019m just taking pity on my parents.<\/p>\n

As George\u2019s condition improved by the day, my parents sat with the developer to pick the marble they wanted for the bathrooms, the wood for the floors and the colour for the walls. They also had their choice of kitchen: granite or metal counters, red or lemon cabinets. Four months later everything was fitted and my parents took delivery of their brand new apartment on the 40th floor.<\/p>\n

But my parents didn\u2019t move in. Unofficially, because the living room was too small,\u00a0 the new swimming pool had no windows, and almost all their neighbours were Chinese. Not that my mother had anything in particular against the Chinese. She only has a problem with people who don\u2019t understand her. Add them up and they easily outnumber the entire population of China.<\/p>\n

The real reason was that my mother found the removal costs too expensive. Their transport exceptionnel from Rotterdam to Toronto had been paid by my father\u2019s employer, but the move to the new apartment was their own affair. My mother couldn\u2019t get rid of the key to the apartment fast enough when she was confronted with the official estimates of a number of recognised removal firms. The Brits say: \u2018Pennywise pound foolish,\u2019 an expression that fits my mother\u2019s approach to things to a tee, and makes my father\u2019s lot all the more tragic.<\/p>\n

My parents were lucky that the Rosedale apartment had not yet been sold. George was inconsolable. He collapsed when my mother announced: \u2018I have such good news. We\u2019re not going to move,\u2019 and had to spend a week in hospital. He returned to work after that, but he was never the same.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, my mother had started the search for a new estate agent. She wanted to have nothing to do with old agent who was supposed to have sold their Rosedale apartment. Indian logic, by definition, is unparalleled.<\/p>\n

A new estate agent was quickly found, but not a buyer. Articles had started to appear in American newspapers about people who couldn\u2019t afford to pay their mortgage, and my mother was asking one hundred thousand dollars more than the original price. \u2018It\u2019s the only apartment in the condominium that\u2019s up for sale,\u2019 she reasoned. The estate agent gulped and looked at my father. But, as usual, he had been warned to keep his mouth shut. Wonder of wonders, the apartment finally sold after seven months to a millionaire from Shanghai who wanted it for his daughter. In the not too distant future she would be waltzing over the walnut floor my parents had selected, poking around the red kitchen cabinets that best matched the pots and pans she\u2019d never have the chance to cook with, and dripping all over the grey marble bathroom my father had always dreamed of. The two suitcases thus increased in value by one hundred thousand dollars.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My mother inspected another condominium on her own. My father was on a stopover in Europe for his work and he took the time to visit me in Italy. He held his grandson in his arms for the first time and his grandson vomited for the first time all over his grandfather. \u2018It\u2019s that corpse smell,\u2019 said my mother on the phone. My father whispered in his grandchild\u2019s ear: \u2018If you want to live a long and happy life, never marry an Indian woman.\u2019<\/p>\n

My son, six weeks old, hands like starfish, looked around wide-eyed. He didn\u2019t understand, and everything he saw or heard would soon be forgotten. One day I would tell him about his grandma, who found the price of a flight \u2013 and the chance to admire her grandchild \u2013 too much, but didn\u2019t mind visiting a penthouse apartment with her new estate agent. \u2018She has her eye on something else,\u2019 said my father at dinner. His arms were relaxed, but the cutlery still dangled awkwardly in his hands. \u2018They want three million dollars for it.\u2019<\/p>\n

I closed my eyes and pictured my mother in front of me. She parks her stolen bicycle against the wall of the condominium and then bends down to remove the elastic band that protects her trouser leg from the chain. The estate agent is waiting for her in the glittering hallway. She quickly stuffs the elastic band into her pocket and shakes his hand. A few moments later they\u2019re in the elevator whooshing upwards. The agent opens the door to the penthouse to reveal a veritable sea of space. My mother steps inside. And on the top floor of the condominium, at the height of the credit crisis, she inspects the bathrooms, the bedrooms, the design kitchen, the living room with views over Lake Ontario.<\/p>\n

No one has ever seen what was inside the two suitcases, the jewels, the bracelets, the chains, the earrings.<\/p>\n

\u2018Magnificent,\u2019 says my mother.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ernest van der Kwast –\u00a0Mama Tandoori   Two suitcases It all started with two suitcases. My mother arrived in the Netherlands in 1976 with two suitcases stuffed with bracelets, necklaces and earrings. She managed to get a room in a local convent and started work as a nurse. She hid the cases under the bed,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1135,"featured_media":0,"parent":26408,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-26411","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/1135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26411\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}