Humanity never came closer to general enlightenment than in May 1964.

It all started with an immigrant. Make a note, class. People breaking free from their homeland’s constraints are always the ones to watch out for. They’re the dangerous ones, the disruptors. An adrenaline-fuelled mix of desperation and stubbornness propels them forward. Immigrants don’t all become rocket scientists, but they do strive to excel, as they know full well that only outperforming the locals by a mile will earn them a modicum of acceptance — or a bullet in the head, but that’s a different course.

Ramayya Thummalapalli came to Britain in 1958. He was the eighth and youngest son of a military man, Wing Commander Narayanachetti Thummalapalli. All of his brothers joined the military, but Ramayya didn’t. Ramayya was a culinary genius. He learnt the trade in his mother’s and aunties’ kitchens and by observing the many street cart food vendors in his hometown. Ramayya’s lower-caste obsession earned him his father’s undying scorn, and he decided to emigrate. He worked his way to Britain on freight ships and reached Portsmouth on a drizzly April morning. Three years later, he had his own restaurant in London. London in the 1960s wasn’t today’s foodie heaven. Britain had overcome its worst post-war deprivations, but eating out was limited to only the fortunate few, and general food standards still made Britain the world’s laughing stock.

Ramayya was particularly appalled by how the English treated their vegetables — that mainly meant carrots and peas; everything else was considered highly suspect. They used to boil them to a formless gloop devoid of nutritional value and taste. Salads weren’t a thing. Spices, except for some salt and pepper, were altogether unexplored territory. Mushy peas, usually served on Fridays with a greasy batch of deep-fried battered cod, were the worst.

Ramayya decided to get to work on the green peas. He simmered them over a candle-like flame. Right before serving, he added finely chopped raw red onions, his own blend of masala spices, and salt. Then, he sprinkled the whole with chilli flakes. Ramayya put the mix in a separate bowl and finished the dish with a generous squeeze of lime juice over the still crispy peas.

It was an instant hit. An epiphany. A quasi-religious experience. Customers started queuing at the restaurant door; newspapers wrote about Ramayya’s unorthodox but effective approach to peas; Judith Chalmers interviewed him on Woman’s Hour on BBC television. People quit their jobs after eating Ramayya’s peas and set out to see the world. Rock stars sampled his peas and decided to learn to play the sitar and get a guru. Cults of Annapurna, the Hindu goddess of food, sprang up — first in London, and then they spread like wildfire in every direction. The Church of England had to fend off demands to convert churches into Hindu temples, and the queen’s favourite fashion designer convinced Her Majesty to start wearing saris. When the Tory Party split in two over whether to adopt ‘Let our Peas be Mushy Again’ as its election slogan, every political observer had to acknowledge that Ramayya’s peas were the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Ramayya’s success had us frazzled. His green pea recipe wasn’t perfect yet, but it came dangerously close. If he found the single missing ingredient, the consequences would be dire. The irrevocable spiritual awakening of the masses would be unavoidable. Britain as we know it would come to an end. People would retire from society and enter a self-sustained life of serene contemplation and home gardening. The Army and even the Navy would cease to exist for lack of recruits. Business schools would have to close their doors; the City would become a wasteland; real estate values would tumble. The House of Lords would empty when its members realised their existence’s devastating futility. Only politicians elected by popular vote would govern the country — that is, if the people still wanted to vote. It’d be a proper nightmare.

Lydia Byrd was a forty-year-old Slade School-educated painter. Her discovery of Ramayya’s peas cleared up both her palate and palette. She gave up her infinite variations of beige and grey and spiced up her paintings with fiery red, emerald green, and indigo blue. Byrd was struggling. She clung to figurative painting when art collectors only wanted abstract expressionism. Byrd had tried her hand at abstraction, thinking that if she immersed herself into it, the result wouldn’t look like a half-hearted attempt to jump on the get-rich-quick bandwagon of con artists that filled London’s fanciest galleries. It didn’t work. Her conscience turned increasingly obstreperous, and she put down her painting brushes in disgust.

Resigned to remain a portraitist for the rest of her life, she asked Ramayya on her next restaurant visit whether he’d like to come to her studio and sit for a painting. Ramayya first thought Byrd was joking, and he politely declined. She asked him again on her next visit, and again, and again until the Indian chef finally relented. Since his restaurant was closed on Mondays, they agreed to meet in Byrd’s studio on the first day of the week.

When Ramayya first visited Byrd’s studio, they drank tea in her kitchen. The professional chef instinctively scrutinised the one shelf the painter had sparsely stocked with condiments. Just as Byrd wanted to protest she wasn’t much of a cook, Ramayya’s eye fell on an unlabelled glass container with a dark-red content. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing at the jar.

Byrd felt embarrassed. ‘It’s pickled beetroot,’ she said. ‘My Uncle Edward in Somerset fancies himself a bit of a gardener. He gives me a jar for Christmas each year. I never use any of it. I just toss out the old jar when the new one arrives.’

‘Beetroot pickle, interesting,’ Ramayya commented. ‘One of my aunties used to make it with spicy vinegar, chopped mint leaves, green chillies, cinnamon sticks, and star anise.’

‘Well, I don’t expect Uncle Edward to make such a fuss over it,’ Byrd supposed. ‘He doesn’t even cut up his beets. I think he just adds salt and vinegar.’

Ramayya sat for his picture all afternoon. On his way home, he couldn’t get the pickled beetroots out of his head and bought a batch of fresh ones at the local grocer. In his kitchen, he pickled them using three different recipes he remembered from back home. A month later, he opened the jars and sampled their contents. He mixed some of the beetroots into his green peas dish and felt strangely dissatisfied.

His portrait was nearly finished. He’d sat for four sessions, but Byrd continued to work on it in his absence. She was good, Ramayya had to admit. The artist caught the timid look in his eyes and his awkward smile just right, as well as the peculiar way he held his left hand in his lap. For his last session, she’d asked him to bring along a bowl of his green peas dish. Byrd intended to work it into the picture. She first put the finishing touches on his portrait, adding highlights to his eyes, tip of the nose, and lips. Byrd took a step back and then deepened the shadow under the chef’s right cheekbone and earlobe.

‘How do you know it’s finished?’ Ramayya asked her.

‘How do you know a dish is finished?’ she asked him in return. ‘I have no rules. I just know. As a young artist, I tended to fiddle too much — I kept adding details. I’m more confident now. Leaving things unfinished adds character, I think.’

When Byrd was satisfied, Ramayya went to the kitchen and warmed up a portion of his green peas. He transferred the dish to a plain porcelain bowl and handed it to the painter, who immediately started adding it to the painting. While waiting for Byrd to finish, Ramayya again noticed the pickled beetroot jar on the shelf. Maybe he’d been too fiddly in his pickling efforts, using too many ingredients. What would Uncle Edward’s beetroots taste like? Ramayya returned to the studio and asked Byrd whether he could open the jar and sample her uncle’s pickles. She only grunted affirmatively, concentrating on the steaming bowl of peas.

Ramayya took the jar from the shelf. The whole beetroots looked like red pickled eggs. He carefully unscrewed the lid, lifted one beetroot from its container and put it on a cutting board. Ramayya sliced off a fine slither from the pickled tuber and put it in his mouth. Byrd had sold her uncle short; he’d done more than just add vinegar and salt. The chef detected a spicy taste. Uncle Edward must have added horseradish, he decided. That single ingredient turned the beetroot’s bland flavour into an entirely more exciting taste experience.

Ramayya unpacked a second portion of green peas from his bag. He’d planned to offer it to his portraitist when she’d finished the painting. Ramayya hesitated. Then, he julienned half a beetroot and briefly sautéed the thin strips of vegetable in a pan. When Byrd called out that the picture was ready, the chef began heating the peas on a low fire and gently stirred in the tiny twigs of red tuber.

The painting looked fab. Ramayya wasn’t a vain person. When the chef looked in the bathroom mirror, all he saw was a plain man with droopy eyes, an all-too-prominent lower lip, and jowls that started to sag disappointingly early — he was only thirty-four, after all; he shouldn’t look like a Basset Hound. But Byrd had caught him well, Ramayya had to admit, and he complimented her on her accomplishment. The bowl of peas brought just the right splash of colour in the lower-left corner, and the wisp of steam curling upwards from the green vegetables added a distinctly whimsical touch to the painting.

‘I made you a little treat,’ Ramayya said, ushering his host into her kitchen. He filled two small bowls with the peas and mixed in the raw red onions and a squeeze of lime juice at the very last moment.

Byrd looked a bit perplexed at the dish. ‘You changed the recipe,’ she said, noticing the slender sprigs of beetroot. It wasn’t entirely clear whether she was disappointed or intrigued.

‘It’s a bit of an experiment,’ Ramayya explained. ‘I thought your Uncle Edward’s pickles might be just the thing to take this dish to the next level.’

They both dipped a spoon in the chef’s new creation.

We decided to intervene right then and there. It was even worse than we anticipated. Ramayya’s twist to his already perilous dish would have sparked a cataclysm of cosmic proportions. Both Byrd and he were on the verge of instantaneously turning into Arahants — beings who’ve reached the ultimate level of enlightenment. All the veils of perception that have kept humans from going batshit crazy since the eve of creation were about to be torn asunder. The couple would have become all-knowing in a single thought-instant. Then, they’d inevitably have engaged in endless hours of tantric sex, reversing the Universe’s polar energies and initiating a roll-back of entropy. The Universe would have entered a state of everlasting and unchanging harmony. We erased Ramayya Thummalapalli and Lydia Byrd from Earth’s history. They never existed, and their pernicious influence will never make itself felt. We saved the day. It was our finest hour.

In my next class, I’ll tell you about how we successfully advised a morphine-addicted ex-confederate soldier to turn a sham nerve tonic into a worldwide brand of carbonated soft drinks. Then, I’ll reveal how we helped that brand join forces with two visionary brothers from San Bernardino, California, to promote a food culture that is sure to keep humankind as far from total enlightenment as can be reasonably expected.

Both subjects are part of the curriculum for the following exams. So make sure to take notes carefully and study them well. Class dismissed.