Today is kinda breezy outside…it is just like the Holi season in Delhi, except that there are no kids on the rooftops, just waiting to throw water balloons, eggs and anything else that is liquidy(I know there is no such word..) or gooey at you and there are no uncles standing on the rooftops waiting to ogle at young, wet dames…I mean there are uncles, but as there are no young, wet dames around, they do not have much to ogle at, their best bet would be to pray for it to rain, I mean, had I been a desperate uncle, I would be praying to Indra THIS VERY MINUTE!
The climate outside makes me really miss my Delhi days, sigh!…We would go out walking everyday and in every season with just one mission- FOOD!
We were an odd group- diverse culturally- two Punjabis, one Haryanvi, one Telugu, one Tamilian, one mallu raised in Orissa and yours truly, another mallu, raised all over India…and yet there was one thing that brought us together, one thing that kept us toghether through stress, fights and heartbreaks, the one thing that was a common passion- FOOD! (I mean that was kind of obvious, wasn’t it? Did all my senti nonsense fool you people into thinking that I was going to write about something serious???)
We would walk down the roads- out first stop would be for some HOT vada at “Madras Cafe”, which was nothing more than a glorified parapet sheet supported by four bamboos, right next to the open drainage providing additional delight! The best ambience ever…as you inhaled the excellent smell of the drain, you ate oil-rich vada and were entertained by the live mosquito orchestra…which would occasionally eat a bit of you, or occasionally form a part of you food intake, such SYMBIOSIS!
Up the street, the next stop would be Agarwal’s…here I just had to have the “protozoan water balls” as my sir called it, also known as “golguppa”, “pochka” or “pani puri”. They were again served next to the open drain and as the day progressed, the number of germs in the golguppa proportionately increased. I know the stuck-up ones reading this might be crinkling their noses, but you do not know the true India. I mean, we live for the street food- hospitals, stomach upsets, typhoid, cholera, diphtheria, malaria, jaundice, dysentery etc are just things you learn to live with…I mean, you would die anyway, who would want to die without having first tasted such delights? Street food is good ‘coz:
a.You prove your love for the culinary traditions of the country
b.You improve your immune system by exposing it to the ruthless world out there
c.You help a man (or woman, let’s not be sexist here…) earn a living
d.You once and for all establish the dominance of The Tongue over all other systems of the body
e.Your boring walk to any place becomes instantly interesting
See? And this is all that I could think up right now, if I thought some more, I am sure I’ll find more points. But coming back to Dilli days…Agarwal’s was also great place for hot jalebis, gulab jamuns, bread pakodas, samosas, mathri, kachori…. the list is long…
We would then stop at a bakery-Duke’s- yes the hoity-toity ones sitting there can at last exhale in relief…we are now on “clean grounds”. Here it would be Kathi rolls, rum balls, truffles, burgers or whatever caught our fancy and then we would head for a juice shop to wash it all down with a shake….
I mean, how can one concentrate on studies, without a little something in the tummy?
I realize I have a whole list of places still uncovered… have I made you hungry yet, or should I go on???? Forget it, let me go grab a snack….bon appetite y’all.
