Word: delhi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Indian cuisine, one of the world's richest, is poorly represented in print and on restaurant row. So voyage to India with Madhur Jaffrey and Indian Cooking (Barren's; $7.95). The Delhi-born actress, who won wide acclaim in Britain with a BBC series on which this book is based, traces the varied outside influences-Mogul, Portuguese, British-as well as regional and religious traditions that have formed the subcontinent's unique culinary character. Its only common denominator is the symphonic interweaving of spices, seasonings and flavorings...
Much more notable is Rushdie's skill at making historical facts and sheer inventiveness seem equally true and equally preposterous. On the eve of India's independence, the owner of a moviehouse in Delhi tries to appease both Hindus and Muslims by showing a double feature. One is a vegetarian epic "about a lone, masked hero who roamed the Indo-Gangetic plain liberating herds of beef cattle from their keepers," the other a Randolph Scott western of the genre "in which cows got massacred and the good guys feasted on steaks." Nobody comes, and then the theater...
...state of Punjab, become the center of a bitter feud between Sikhs and Hindus. Distinguished by their traditional beards and turbans, the Sikhs follow their own casteless, monotheistic religion, and over the past 15 months those in the Punjab have mounted a determined drive for greater autonomy from New Delhi. The more the government of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi has resisted, the more savage the Sikh campaign has become. Last month six men hijacked a night bus at gunpoint, herded eleven Hindu men into a field and, with cold-blooded efficiency, shot six of them dead (five escaped). Hours later...
These outbursts prompted New Delhi to impose President's rule, effectively removing power from local authorities. More than 3,000 government troops in Amritsar were then licensed to shoot on sight, arrest without warrants and even penetrate traditionally off-limits Sikh sanctuaries (a step they have yet to take). But the violence has not abated. Two weeks ago, 17 were killed and 133 wounded when terrorists derailed a crowded train. Since the bloodshed began last year, more than 150 people have been killed, and 150,000 Sikhs have been arrested...
...violence has shattered centuries of friendship between Sikhs and Hindus, and it is spreading. Three bombs have already exploded in Delhi, and last week, in Punjab's neighboring state of Haryana, Hindu mobs began storming Sikh-owned shops. With neither side giving way, tensions seem sure to mount. In the ominous words of senior Akali Leader Prakash Singh Badal, "The central government has already taken the Punjab problem to the point of no return...