I established something of a routine. Breakfast would be provided in our private quarters, prepared for the Dalai Lama. Then, around midmorning, I’d head down to Café Franc, where Jigme and Ngawang Dragpa were at work on the lunchtime menu. Prepared by noon, the first and finest morsels of the menu du jour were reserved for Rinpoche. I’d eat my meal with relish before sleeping it off for an hour or so on the top shelf. By the time I made my appearance at Jokhang between 3 and 4 P.M., Mrs. Trinci would be finishing up in the kitchen. As I hopped up on the kitchen bench, all it took was a single meow, and she’d bring me a meal, along with bountiful reassurances of my refined good looks, charm, intelligence, breeding, and any other of my numberless superior qualities that struck her at that particular moment.
All of this would have been enough—some would say more than enough—to satisfy the most discerning feline palate. But to repeat that question to which both philosophers and financial advisers devote so much of their energy: how much is enough?
This brings me to the day that I began down the slippery slope from gourmet to gourmand.
I was making my way up the hill from Café Franc, where I had indulged in a particularly generous serving of roast duck à l’orange. Almost certainly because of this, climbing the hill was more of a struggle than usual, and, for the first time, I paused on the pavement outside Cut Price Bazaar.
It so happened that Mrs. Patel, proprietor of the establishment, was sitting on a stool by the door and immediately recognized me as His Holiness’s Cat. In a state of high excitement, she ordered her daughter to fetch me a saucer of milk from the back of the shop and urged me not to continue until I’d lapped up enough to gather my strength. Not wishing to cause offense, I indulged her.
As I did, Mrs. Patel sent her daughter to the grocer next door for a small tin of tuna, which she tipped onto a saucer as a further offering. I am not in the habit of accepting food from complete strangers, but I had observed Mrs. Patel many times before. A stout matriarch who spent a lot of time talking to passersby, she seemed a kind-hearted and gentle woman. As she set the saucer down, the delicious, briny tang of tuna made my nostrils flare.
Just a couple of mouthfuls, I thought, to show I was willing.
The following afternoon on my way up the hill, even before I’d reached Cut Price Bazaar, Mrs. Patel had milk and tuna waiting. A one-off indulgence began to take the form of a more insidious habit.
Worse was to follow.
Only days later, a benevolent Mrs. Patel intercepted me on my way down to Café Franc. Munching on a piece of naan bread stuffed with chicken, she extracted a few choice pieces for me—a midmorning snack that soon became routine.
“Cats know what?
??s good for them” is a phrase I sometimes hear. “A cat will only eat when it’s hungry” is another. Sadly, dear reader, this simply isn’t true! Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I had started on a perilous road to unhappiness.
Up at Jokhang, the stream of visitors seemed to be increasing. Last-minute schedule changes and long-distance telephone calls from the four corners of the world led to even more guests making the journey from Indira Gandhi Airport to McLeod Ganj. As always, Mrs. Trinci was diligent in matching cuisine to clients. Whether it was krasnye blini for the Russian guests or dulce de leche for the Argentineans, nothing was spared to surprise and delight His Holiness’s visitors.
But who would ever forget the raspberry sorbet she planned for the extremely famous Indian medical doctor, public speaker, and writer who was visiting from California? Not any of the Dalai Lama’s staff. Certainly not Mrs. Trinci herself.
The visitor was the third high-profile visitor in a week, after two kitchen experiences that had sorely tried Mrs. Trinci’s limited patience. The first had involved an overnight refrigeration failure in the main kitchen—an inexplicable but disastrously timed event. Half the produce in the fridge had been ruined, demanding frantic last-minute visits to the market, grocers, and specialty shops to find replacements. To say that Mrs. Trinci was in a state of nervous decline by the end of the afternoon would not be going too far.
Two days later, no sooner had the main course gone on the gas rings than the fuel cut out. The tanks supplying the kitchen had emptied. There were no replacements. Runners were sent to the Namgyal Monastery kitchen to round up all available electric cookers, creating a hiatus that was, as far as the head chef was concerned, unforgivable.
Could it happen a third time in a row? Mrs. Trinci had done her utmost to make sure not. This time the gas was checked. The staff fridge upstairs, temporarily used while a replacement was on its way, had been thoroughly examined, its contents checked and double-checked. Every ingredient and utensil in the kitchen had been subjected to a rigor never before seen. Nothing was going to make this lunch go wrong.
And it didn't.
At least, not to begin with. Well ahead of schedule, Mrs. Trinci brought out the chocolate zucchini cake and carob nut balls that she’d prepared overnight for dessert. Anxious, drawn, and laboring under the superstition that bad things always came in threes, Mrs. Trinci arrived soon after His Holiness had gone to a midmorning appointment in the temple. She was leaving nothing to chance.
The asparagus niçoise was soon plated, the basmati safely consigned to the rice cooker and the vegetables to the grill. It was time to begin the coconut green beans.
But on opening bags of beans from the fridge upstairs, Mrs. Trinci discovered that they had spoiled. Somehow, as they were transferred from kitchen fridge to staff fridge, they hadn’t been thoroughly checked. While the top layer was all right, beneath it many of the beans were limp and slimy. They simply wouldn’t do.
Mrs. Trinci’s features became more foreboding than the monsoon clouds that rolled across the Kangra Valley. Barking at the three hapless monks who’d been assigned to kitchen duty that day, she sent two to the market to find replacement beans, the other to Namgyal Monastery for emergency staff. Stressed, snapping, gold bracelets clashing every time she shook her arms, Mrs. Trinci took the bean oversight as a bad omen of worse to come.
Which it surely was.
The two assistants still hadn’t returned from the market with replacement beans. The clock was ticking. The third assistant had failed to find any replacement helpers at Namgyal. Mrs. Trinci roared at him to ask upstairs. This is how His Holiness’s executive assistant Chogyal found himself in the unlikely role of sous chef for as long as it took for Mrs. Trinci’s full complement of staff to be restored.
His first task was to fetch the raspberries from the staff fridge, to begin preparation of an Ayurvedic raspberry sorbet.
“There are no raspberries,” he reported, when he returned to the kitchen after a few minutes.
“Not possible. I checked last night. The red bag in the freezer.” Mrs. Trinci jangled percussively as she gestured for him to return upstairs. “The red bag. SACCHETTO ROSSO!”
But it was no good.
“They’re definitely not there,” he confirmed on his return a short while later. “No red bag.”
“Merda!” Mrs. Trinci slammed a drawer she had open back into its cabinet, unleashing a jangle of cutlery before storming upstairs. “Watch the vegetables under the grill!”