Chicken and Deconstructionism at the Ruprahs
The Ruprahs are having a few people over for a chicken cookout and they say, "Sandy, don’t make any plans Friday night. Eat with us." Mr. Ruprah says only a few people will show up this time. There are 16 of us. It is in celebration of Mr. Ruprah’s birthday, which is the same as mine: June 8. And in celebration of Raju’s 22nd birthday: June 12. (Mrs. Ruprah’s birthday is January 5, the same as Jaime, my daughter!).
Mr. Ruprah pours a pint of cold Tusker for me straight away. He sits me next to the men, who are preparing the large, shallow aluminum "bowl" that sits on the jiko (coal stove). Everything in Kenya is aluminum and I wonder if it’s true Alzheimer’s has been linked to aluminum deposits in the brain from years of eating food cooked in aluminum pots. Perhaps someone with knowledge about the connection between aluminum and Alzheimer’s can share it here.
Sitting across from Mr. Ruprah, who is again talking about best-selling beer brands in the UK, I’m settling down to an evening of commonplace conversation, anticipating the chicken. We were scheduled to start cooking at 8, but it’s 9:30 before the guys light the coal. There’s a huge square of butter floating in aluminum, then about 10 pounds of sliced purple onions. Then lots of spices are added from Mrs. Ruprah wooden box. It’s multi-compartmented and deep, holding lots of each spice and comes complete with little scoops for distributing. The potatoes have been peeled are in sitting in a bucket of water. A grasshopper floats on the surface. But Mrs. Ruprah rinses the potatoes before handing them to the chef.
Then the evening’s lovely surprise happens. A young couple arrives, brother to the chef. They’re visiting from Nairobi. He must be in his late 20s and stylish. His wife is a Montessori instructor and he’s an architect of the deconstructionist persuasion. I like him right away. And when he begins to talk bad about Mahatma Gandhi, he has my full attention. We discuss Gandhi’s passive-resistance method, borrowed from Leo Tolstoy, who borrowed it from Jesus Christ. We talk about Martin Luther King, Jr., who borrowed from Gandhi’s passive-resistance model to gain civil rights for blacks in America. We talk about the downside of self-renunciation and the general state of mind of most Indians, now numbering one billion on their subcontinent. We discuss the Israeli influence on modern architecture and I lament the absence of Eastern architecture (mosques, temples) from most books that are western-centric. Ayn Rand somehow fits into the deconstructionist part of the conversation, for our young architect friend recently used the cover artwork from "Atlas Shrugged" to design a five-story office building in Nairobi.
The other men, who struggle slightly with English, just sit and stare as the young architect and I talk quickly. We talk so much I begin to feel I’m hogging this guest. But I can’t stop, for his insights are interesting and amusing and turn some of my conceptions on their head. My head. Whatever, it’s jolly good fun to explore these ideas on the Ruprah’s back patio, when all I expected was nice chit-chat, a cold beer and really tasty, local (as-free-range-as-you-can-get) chicken.
Mr. Ruprah is very competent at keeping all beer glasses topped off. He even talks the architect’s young wife into drinking a beer. She and I are the only women consuming alcohol. And she’s Indian! But she wears her hair short, as does her husband, which goes against the Sikh traditional of never cutting the hair. They’re obviously a modern couple. I drink slowly, aware of the amount. It does help to soothe the heat of the spices. The men, however, don’t seem to realize Mr. Ruprah is topping them off consistently and they become a little tongue-loose. They talk about how young I look, "She’s 28-years-old!!" they say in defiance of my true 42 years. The young architect starts talking about a ghost, a deceased young woman killed in a car accident, who haunted his house for a week. The chicken is finally ready at Midnight. Of course, we’ve all tasted it along and along, checking the tenderness of the potatoes. It is delicious, requiring a few swigs of beer to hold back the sting. The coal embers darken, a baby cries and ladies run indoors, the ghost moves on to the next world and my young architect friend goes to the restroom.
I move into the living room with the ladies and watch an Indian soap opera, recalling what the architect had just said about Indians loving to torment themselves. "Watch an Indian show, someone is always crying," he tells me over the chicken. Now, there they are on the screen, all the beautiful faces stricken with worry when the old man has a heart attack. Tortured and heartbroken are the two young people in love who must now postpone their wedding. Close-ups of anguished faces and people fainting. Not bad for late night tv and chicken on the Ruprahs patio.
Mr. Ruprah pours a pint of cold Tusker for me straight away. He sits me next to the men, who are preparing the large, shallow aluminum "bowl" that sits on the jiko (coal stove). Everything in Kenya is aluminum and I wonder if it’s true Alzheimer’s has been linked to aluminum deposits in the brain from years of eating food cooked in aluminum pots. Perhaps someone with knowledge about the connection between aluminum and Alzheimer’s can share it here.
Sitting across from Mr. Ruprah, who is again talking about best-selling beer brands in the UK, I’m settling down to an evening of commonplace conversation, anticipating the chicken. We were scheduled to start cooking at 8, but it’s 9:30 before the guys light the coal. There’s a huge square of butter floating in aluminum, then about 10 pounds of sliced purple onions. Then lots of spices are added from Mrs. Ruprah wooden box. It’s multi-compartmented and deep, holding lots of each spice and comes complete with little scoops for distributing. The potatoes have been peeled are in sitting in a bucket of water. A grasshopper floats on the surface. But Mrs. Ruprah rinses the potatoes before handing them to the chef.
Then the evening’s lovely surprise happens. A young couple arrives, brother to the chef. They’re visiting from Nairobi. He must be in his late 20s and stylish. His wife is a Montessori instructor and he’s an architect of the deconstructionist persuasion. I like him right away. And when he begins to talk bad about Mahatma Gandhi, he has my full attention. We discuss Gandhi’s passive-resistance method, borrowed from Leo Tolstoy, who borrowed it from Jesus Christ. We talk about Martin Luther King, Jr., who borrowed from Gandhi’s passive-resistance model to gain civil rights for blacks in America. We talk about the downside of self-renunciation and the general state of mind of most Indians, now numbering one billion on their subcontinent. We discuss the Israeli influence on modern architecture and I lament the absence of Eastern architecture (mosques, temples) from most books that are western-centric. Ayn Rand somehow fits into the deconstructionist part of the conversation, for our young architect friend recently used the cover artwork from "Atlas Shrugged" to design a five-story office building in Nairobi.
The other men, who struggle slightly with English, just sit and stare as the young architect and I talk quickly. We talk so much I begin to feel I’m hogging this guest. But I can’t stop, for his insights are interesting and amusing and turn some of my conceptions on their head. My head. Whatever, it’s jolly good fun to explore these ideas on the Ruprah’s back patio, when all I expected was nice chit-chat, a cold beer and really tasty, local (as-free-range-as-you-can-get) chicken.
Mr. Ruprah is very competent at keeping all beer glasses topped off. He even talks the architect’s young wife into drinking a beer. She and I are the only women consuming alcohol. And she’s Indian! But she wears her hair short, as does her husband, which goes against the Sikh traditional of never cutting the hair. They’re obviously a modern couple. I drink slowly, aware of the amount. It does help to soothe the heat of the spices. The men, however, don’t seem to realize Mr. Ruprah is topping them off consistently and they become a little tongue-loose. They talk about how young I look, "She’s 28-years-old!!" they say in defiance of my true 42 years. The young architect starts talking about a ghost, a deceased young woman killed in a car accident, who haunted his house for a week. The chicken is finally ready at Midnight. Of course, we’ve all tasted it along and along, checking the tenderness of the potatoes. It is delicious, requiring a few swigs of beer to hold back the sting. The coal embers darken, a baby cries and ladies run indoors, the ghost moves on to the next world and my young architect friend goes to the restroom.
I move into the living room with the ladies and watch an Indian soap opera, recalling what the architect had just said about Indians loving to torment themselves. "Watch an Indian show, someone is always crying," he tells me over the chicken. Now, there they are on the screen, all the beautiful faces stricken with worry when the old man has a heart attack. Tortured and heartbroken are the two young people in love who must now postpone their wedding. Close-ups of anguished faces and people fainting. Not bad for late night tv and chicken on the Ruprahs patio.
posted by Cindi at 4:23 AM
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