I'd like to Curry a Favour

The courage that we had at sea with the Asian crew tended to be different to what the Bangladeshi bandari cooked for the engine room hands all the deck bandari cooked the deck crew I think the main reason was that because we had pork the actual chief cook was from Goa on most of the Clans ships with the Asian crew that I was on and being Goanese he was Christian and could cook anything . The main Currys we had were Kemma ,Kopta ,Kaptain , chicken etc . Mainly what I would call Currys for the English in India rather than the food the Indians would cook themselves . Chicken was always thighs and always skin on . Chapatis are always available too . Talking to ex colleagues in other shipping companies I think it was very common even amongst UK pool cruise to find a lot of curry on the menu . We used to get stuffed parathas as a 6 a.m. breakfast call when the Agwallah went up to call the day workers out . For Eid at the end of Ramadan the Bangladesh's would be given live chickens which they would keep on Deck until the last day of Ramadan and then they would go about their ritual and slaughter them cooking them fresh they are unfortunately used to put everything in the Korai including the head defeat the claws the neck if it wasn't feathers it went in that pan

Best Curry I ever had was in the Indian market in Durban, eaten by fingers off a Banana leaf.

But in Indonesia I have had some very tasty ones and hot as well.


Guy I knew as a lecturer here in Melbourne opened the first Indian restaurant there way back.

Had dinner there with him once long after he had sold it on, had a stone oven in the middle of the restaurant where so much was cooked while you waited.
Such wonderful food came out of there.

Many Indian restaurants now, some good some very ordinary, but the good ones you will always have to book well ahead.

When i was on the Indian coast circa 1961, while lying at anchor we had to clear away everything from under the side decks in one of the hold, so that the dockers working the ship could cook there own food on open fires on the steel deck, the curries they cooked were the real Mcoy, and truly delicious, we do swappsies with various things in return for a curry on the banana leaf.
We also had to rig stages over the side, with tin cans on string for their thunder box, but when we weighed anchor we found they had been using the spurring pipe instead, the language was pretty ripe when we had to hose it down, kt