Good food triumphs
- The Hindu Divine food. Photos: Shanker Chakravarty
- Delhi's pandals have a lot to offer.
There’s more to pandal hopping than dhunuchi nritya and dhaks
When I was growing up in a village in Muzaffarnagar, I
don’t really think the Pujas touched me in any way. But in recent years,
I have really taken to Durga puja. And there’s mainly one reason—before
the start of the Pujas, many localities in the city spring up all kinds
of food. This is called Ananda Mela, and I must say it gives me a lot
of ananda (joy).
The neighbourhood’s mashimas and boudis— and some dadas,
too— prepare all kinds of delicious food and sell it for a nominal
amount at the mela. For the last three or four years, I have been
diligently going to one of the Ananda Melas in I.P. Extension. I take a
lot of empty boxes— and come back with all kinds of goodies such as
mutton chops, biryani, ghugni (chickpeas, sometimes cooked with coconut,
and sometimes with minced meat), payesh, pithey (a family of sweets)
and so on.
This time, my job was a bit more onerous —
I had to not just eat, but judge the food too. I was asked by the Aram
Bagh Puja Samiti to judge their Ananda Mela. So I went there,
resplendent in my new red kurta, accompanied by two able assistants. I
sat demurely at a table while a bevy of women lined up with their
home-cooked delicacies. I tried out some 15 kinds of dishes (thankfully
some 5 or 10 contestants had by then packed up and gone home). I took a
bite out of each dish— and was again struck by the variety of snacks
that we have.
Let me tell you about some of them. The
most popular is the ghugni. This time, I ate some ghugni with bits of
paneer (cottage cheese) in it and another with keema (minced meat). Two
of the dishes consisted of chicken biryani. There were two kinds of
payesh – one regular (with rice) and the other a delightful concoction
of nuts and thickened milk. I had some nice momos dribbled with chilli
sauce and, dimer devil— a kind of chop with a boiled egg in it. Then
there were two kinds of fried chicken, one served with home-cooked
chilli and green chutney. I had some spicy chatpata aloo and also ate a
special paneer cutlet— which was made memorable by the presence of
grated coconut in the filling. Then I had malpua. Somebody else had
cooked chicken noodles— and I was most impressed to see that the noodles
had been prepared fresh at home with kneaded flour.
I
know some of you are grinding your teeth because this year’s Ananda
Mela is already over. But do not fret. One, the delicious food that I
have listed out will prompt you to keep this important date in mind next
year (in most places, it’s held on the fifth day of the navratras— that
is one day before the Pujas begin). And two, the food fest is not yet
over. In almost every big Puja pandal, you’ll find one or two— if not
more— stalls selling food. Chittaranjan Park’s Mughlai paratha— a deep
fried paratha with keema and egg — is a huge draw, as are the chops and
the cutlets. People queue up for the biryani in Kashmiri Gate. And Kali
Bari has a line of people selling everything from jhal muri and lal
chhola to gola (flavoured ice popsicles).
So this Puja, as good conquers evil, let good food prevail too.
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