Kirpal Singh is travelling on the slow train to Kashmir. As India passes by the window in a stream of tiny lights, glistening fields & huddled, noisy towns, he reflects on his destination, which is also his past: a military camp to which he has not returned for fourteen years... Kirpal, Kip to his friends, is timorous & barely twenty when he arrives for the first time at General Kumar`s camp, nestled in the shadow of the mighty Siachen Glacier that claimed his father`s life. He is placed under the supervision of Chef Kishen, a fiery, anarchic mentor with long earlobes & a caustic tongue, who guides Kip towards the heady spheres of food & women. ` The smell of a woman is a thousand times better than cooking the most sumptuous dinner, kid, ` he muses, over an evening beer. Kip is embarrassed
- he has never slept with a woman, though a loose-limbed nurse in the local hospital has caught his eye. In Srinagar, Kashmir, a contradictory place of erratic violence, extremes of temperature & high-altitude privilege, Kip learns to prepare indulgent Kashmiri dishes such as Mughlai mutton & slow-cooked Nahari, as well as delicacies from Florence, Madrid, Athens & Tokyo. Months pass &, though he is Sikh, Kip feels secure in his allegiance to India, the right side of this interminable conflict. Then, one muggy day, a Pakistani `terrorist` with long, flowing hair is swept up on the banks of the river, & changes everything. Mesmeric, mournful & intensely lyrical, Chef is a brave & compassionate debut about hope, love & memory, set against the devastatingly beautiful, war-scarred backdrop of occupied Kashmir.