A little backstory about me: I like food. My husband and I and one of our good friends have what we call a “dining club,” which essentially amounts to the three of us going out to dinner about once a month, ordering a bunch of wine, and seeing how many witticisms ludicrous statements and/or Monty Python quotes the two guys can drop into the conversation before I lose it. It’s a good time.
In February, we went to an Indian restaurant in Glendale, California called the All India Cafe, which is rated very highly on Yelp. The food was excellent, the wine was inexpensive, but the waiter–phenomenal! We were attended to by a wonderful gentleman named Rajesh, the type of waiter every restaurant should strive to hire. He asked our preferences and guided us through the menu. He stayed after his shift ended to finish waiting on us. As we were figuring out the bill and calculating the gratuity, he overheard us and said, “Please, you don’t need to tip, it was my pleasure to serve you.” (Don’t worry, we tipped.)
During the course of the evening, as we poured our second bottle of wine, we started asking Rajesh about himself and learned that he has a finance background and used to work for Nestlé, which was headquartered in Glendale until 2018. We also learned that he had written a book. Super excited at this point (good food must make me chatty for some reason), I told him I write reviews for this awesome blog and would love to read his book! So he gave me his business card and we ordered it as soon as we got home that evening (we took Lyft; we are a responsible dining club). A few days later, Bonds of Destiny arrived at my door.
Bonds of Destiny recounts the story of the author’s father, called Bhushan, an officer who served in the British army during World War II, and his loyal assistant or orderly (or, as Bhushan calls him, his “ardali”) Shingara Singh. When a soldier who had insulted Bhushan disappears, suspicion falls on Singh. During the course of the investigation, Singh lashes out verbally at a British officer and touches his hand to his kirpan, a ceremonial knife, which the army considers to be a threat to an officer. Singh is court-martialed and sentenced to execution. A short time later, Bhushan falls ill to a particularly bad case of cholera and spends the remainder of the war convalescing, where he meets several individuals who hear his story and help him clear Singh of the charges. This is all true. But, it’s not really what the book is about.
This book is about the bond that formed between Bhushan and Singh and how that bond was passed down to their families through storytelling. Many years after the main events of the story, Bhushan went back to India to track Singh down only to discover that he had passed away. Nevertheless, Bhushan connected with Singh’s family, and he passed that connection on to his son Rajesh (the author), who made the same journey to India with his wife in 1996. Twelve years later, in 2008, Rajesh returned again with his children, thus keeping the bond alive through three generations.
In different hands, with tighter editing and a different focus, this could make for a really compelling story, or even a movie. Yet while I wouldn’t place it the realm of literary greatness, I’m touched by how deeply personal this book is. Rajesh first learned about Singh through the bed-time stories his father told him. He refers to these stories as “gems” that he then worked to string together into a book. He writes, “An essential part of childhood innocence is that children simply listen and absorb. . . .It never occurred to me to ask for details, or for the missing links connected with the key episode or incident that forms the foundation of this book. By the time I started putting together Bonds of Destiny in the early 1990s, it was too late for me to go back to my father and ask for details, to beg him to share with me just one more story.” Varma felt compelled to pursue this project, perhaps as an honor to his father or as a gift to his children. He spent years researching the details that his father omitted and tracking down individuals involved in the events. He put it all in a binder and referred to it as a “personal narrative.”
I’m inspired by the very idea of this book. While it is certainly flawed, I admire the author. To take something so intimate and then share it with the world, well all I can say to that is we should all be so brave. Rajesh Varma deserves the title “storyteller.” He’s also a damn fine waiter.
Bravo, good sir!