I read in The Guardian that Agatha Christie’s 125th birthday, this September, will be celebrated at a “cookery competition with a poisonous twist”. What fun that sounds like; hopefully no one will be killed. Cyanide, I think, was the favourite poison that Christie used to bump off her characters — laced in tea, in cakes, in fish sauce and so on.
There is something deliciously made-for-each-other about murder and food, and I must confess this is something on my bucket list. Not murder, but running a small café where, besides food, I will stock whodunits. I will call it Cakes & Crime. My second outlet will be named Murder & Muffins… and so on.
We will read aloud mystery books and commemorate birthdays of Christie and P.D. James and Ruth Rendell.
We will hold regular quizzes and we shall call them “Who killed the butler?” Eerie music will play in the background: Kahin deep jale kahin dil kind of songs. Or we will have someone sing them for us. We will screen Kohra and Woh Kaun Thi , Teesri Manzil and Psycho . And will have regular “At Holmes”.
My customers have to love whodunits. They will come in, place their order and sink into comfortable chairs and reach out for a whodunit and read it while sipping their filter coffee. If they don’t tip me well, I will put on my mean face and tell them, “The butler did it.” There will be no internet and mobiles will be jammed; but may be e-book readers will be allowed in.
This café made it to my list while I was wandering around Notting Hill in London; I spotted this fabulous place in called Books for Cooks — they claim to stock every cookbook ever written on this planet. The people who run it also try out recipes from those books and sell the dishes to visitors. They organise cooking classes in a small room as well.
Like them, I have decided there will be master chef classes in my café too, where we will create Bloody Brownies and Khooni Quiches.
Who knows? They may inspire me to write a cookbook myself; one that I might call Killing you with Curry or Deadly Delicious .
