The recipe

“I got the recipe when I spent almost ten years stuck in nineteenth century India. You won’t even last ten days.” Archana said, her eyes locked on mine. She had just two shots of her special kala-khatta cocktail, but sounded very drunk.

“Yeah, sure. A patriarchal system. No restrictions on drugs. It would be so.. hard.” I said sarcastically. “Just give me the recipe.”

“Guess it,” she said with a wink.

“It has lemon, yogurt, cannabis extract, kombucha, and cinnamon…definitely cinnamon,” I said. 

“Eww… not even close.” She said, laughing. “Besides, aren’t you trying to quit drinking?”

“I’ll quit after the next drink.” I said. “How about a bet? Each ingredient I guess correctly, you do the paperwork for one of my jumps. For each one wrong, I do one for you.”

She smiled. “How about a barter instead? You jump to the 1820s, and finish this Sati Pratha report for me, and you’ll have the recipe.”

So here I was, embarking on an unsolicited time jump to the eighteen twenties. I blame the kala khatta. It definitely had weed in it, why else would I go along with this? There was alcohol there, because I felt the heat rise with each swallow. What else? Cocaine? LSD? Caffeine shots?

As Chrono-historians, our job was cut and dry. Jump to the past, mingle with the locals, and figure out what was going on in their heads when they did something so ridiculous that it made their descendants cringe. Like grown man marrying nine-year olds, or men trading men in slave markets, or sane adults going to grad school. My mission was about the Sati Pratha, a ritual where they would burn a perfectly healthy woman with her deceased husband in the funeral pyre. 

No matter how nonsensical and idiotic an issue seems in hindsight, you gotta hear both sides of the story. History is retconned by the victors, so you never get to hear the loser’s side. That’s why we mingled, blended in, and just… listened.

It paid well, and had an early retirement options. But it had its risks.

If you got lost, you’d have to integrate with the society. Nobody was coming to get you. 

The cocktail gave a strange sense of calm, like nothing would go wrong. It didn’t affect me that I was breaking about fifty rules of the historian-code by subbing in for her, and that seven historians go missing each year while jumping under the influence. The drugs and liquor…they helped us forget. And the kala khatta, it was the best combination of them.

I stood next to a pond, looking at my reflection. The watch gave me a disguise appropriate for the era. I had a yellowish brown toga. The watch was now a bracelet made of rudraksh beads, which was mingled with an assortment of other ornaments on my arms. I had a long, healthy beard, and there was soot on my face. The watch told me that I am a Sanyasi - an ascetic - who most people would be friendly to, in this era. The disguise, along with the drugs coursing through my veins gave me a sense of detachment, like I wasn’t a historian anymore, but truly a sage, someone with no ties to the world. I took another swig from my hip-flask, with more of the cocktail. I look like Gandalf the Yellow.

I heard a commotion up ahead. It was a procession, with people dancing, and playing drums. My head throbbed with each drumbeat, and I saw a splash of colors around me. Get your faculties in order, a sane part of me - probably the watch-AI, told me. Just go with the flow, said the drugs. That seemed more fun.

The dim light of the torches (which were rapidly changing colors thanks to the chemicals in my blood) got brighter as the procession drew closer. I tried to move out of the way, but someone slammed into me, and bounced back.

“You okay, Guruji?”, the man spoke in old Bengali. The minor in ancient Bangla scripts finally had some use.

“Sure.”

“It’s an auspicious day. We are going to the cemetery.” The man said. “Where are you off to?”

“I’m new to these parts.” I said. This would be a piece of cake, I thought. I didn’t even have to look for them! “Nice party you got going there!” I said. Stupid! said my watch. Nice! said the drugs.

“Not a celebration, Guruji, the man said with a morbid tone. “We are going to a funeral.”

“‘Death’ is just ‘life’ spelled backwards.” I said wisely. Go with the flow.

He looked confused, but ushered me to the center of the crowd anyway, where people were drinking, singing and dancing.

They offered me bhaang in a claypot. One sip of it fired some circuits in my brain. This is Kala Khatta! Not the one Archana made, but definitely its ancestor. All I needed was the recipe, and I could reverse engineer it.

I still had to probe them for information. I saw a casket with an old, deceased man being carried by four people. Behind him, surrounded by an entourage of wailing women in white saris, was a girl in her early twenties. 

“How are you related to the deceased?” I asked my acquaintance, trying to sound not too cheerful.

“He’s my son in law.” He said. “And the poor girl clad in white behind him, that’s my daughter, Guruji. We’ll burn her alive.” Crackers popped somewhere in the background.

This is probably not the best time to ask him for the recipe. I told myself. 

“Why would you burn her? Is she diseased? Cholera, Smallpox perhaps? Is it to save the rest of you from infection?”

He looked around. The others were out of earshot. 

“It’s tradition, Guruji. If I die with an unwed daughter, I can’t go to heaven, and neither would she. And nobody her age would marry her, because she’s so old. She looks younger, but she’s almost twenty five. My wife had five kids by her age. So when the elder of the next village wanted to marry her, I couldn’t say no. Besides, I didn’t have a strong case to protest. She’s adopted, you see.”

They had adoption back then? I took a mental note.

“We found her at the edge of the village, all thirsty and feverish. Couldn’t even speak our language. She was in her late teens then. As the village elder, I adopted her, and she became my responsibility. I tried to marry her off to her peers, but nobody interested her. She was too smart for them. She picked up our language, worked side by side with the men. It felt like she was born in the wrong time. You know what I mean?”

I nodded. “Aren’t we all? Born in the wrong time, and dead in the wrong place?” The bhaang made me quite wise, I felt.

“Of course, Guruji,” He said, taking another swig of bhaang. “But the villagers didn’t. I tried to justify her behavior. I told them about the sage Gargi in the Puranas, of the warrior Chitrangada from Mahabharata, during the golden age of Hinduism. But you know, we’re in a backwards place far from Calcutta, and these are dark times. They forced me to get her married.”

I sighed. Traditions? This was going to be a run of the mill article. Nothing out of ordinary. Just dumb people doing dumb things. If only people were wise, if only they had more of this sweet, sweet bhaang.

“Pity. A real pity.” I told him. “Any way I can make you feel better? Would you like a refill of this bhaang? What do you put in this, anyway? It’s so good.”

“It’s our secret recipe, Guruji. We can’t share.” He said.

God dammit.

“But, if you could make her talk to me one last time… if she could forgive this failure of her father.” He hiccuped. “I’d feel a lot better, and I’ll give you the recipe if you do.”

I looked at the girl. Her head was shaved. She had a white cotton sari draped about her, with no ornaments. Sensing my gaze, she looked back at me.

“I’ll go talk to her.” 

The crowd had stopped in a forest clearing. The widow sat under a banyan tree, surrounded by the wailing women, apparently guarding her.

I elbowed my way to her. The other mourners moved away, giving us some space. 

She seemed quite unfazed my me. I guess impending death makes you a little carefree.

“Father sent you to talk some sense into me, to convince me not to run away?” She said.

“Why’d you try to run away?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Because I don’t want to be burned alive?”

I felt terrible for the poor thing. But because of the non-interference rule, there wasn’t anything I could do to save her. 

“We’re all burning, some more slowly than others,” the bhaang made me say.

She looked at me again, her eyes narrowing. “You aren’t from around here.”

“I am just a traveler, passing by.” I said. “I have a few questions for you. I can reward you.”

“What can you offer a dying woman?” She smirked. She has a very shiny head, said the drugs.

“You can have a sip from my flask. It’s way better than the bhaang they are trying to roofie you with.” I showed her my hip-flask.

She took one large swig, draining the flask. Her eyes grew wide.

“It’s like bhaang, but different… better.” She said.

“You know, the bhaang isn’t too bad either. You wouldn’t happen to know how they make it, would you?”

“Village secret.” She said, smiling mischievously. “Ask me something else.”

Psychology 101, I sighed, denying me this information is the only control she has in the world. Poor woman.

Back to the interview, then. “How did he die, your husband?”

“The same way anybody dies,” She said. “One moment his heart was ticking, and the next moment it was not.”

I was annoyed now. Why did I give her the last of the kala khatta before the interview?

“You know, you can’t go to heaven if you piss off a Sannyasi.”

“I am going somewhere, but it ain’t heaven.” she said with a snort, You’re out of drinks. What else do you have for me?”

I realized that I didn’t have anything else that might interest her.

“What about that bracelet?” She pointed at my time-jumper watch.

“You can’t have this. It’s…sacred.”

“I had one just like that when I was younger.” Her eyes locked in mine, and she looked so sad. “Can I hold it, for a little bit? I’ll tell you something I didn’t tell anyone until today.” 

Her nineteenth century eyes wouldn’t be able to see past the watch’s cloaking. And she was about to die.

“The recipe?” I said. She nodded, fervently.

I took it off and let her hold it. She slipped it in her wrist.

“It looks a little different from the one I had when I was younger. It has more dials and knobs. Mine was touchscreen.”

My bhaang addled brain tried to make sense of what she just said, but it was too late.

She adjusted the dials and began to fade out, the first sign before a time jump.

“First law of time travel. Never let go of your watch.” She said. “I lost mine years ago during a mission. Been stuck here ever since, trying to… integrate.” 

She winked at me in a way that was all too familiar.

“Archana?”

“I’ll send someone back for you. Try not to die.” She disappeared.

Somebody screamed. Seeing someone vanish into thin air has that effect.

“You sent her directly to heaven!” her father cried. “The recipe is yours.”

“No thanks.” I told him. “I quit drinking.”