There are grey clouds of different densities: Tragedies, calamities, mishaps and catastrophes. But there's always a silver lining. Last week my laptop crashed — I don't know which category that falls under — but for me, the silver lining is always to do with food. First the laptop slowed… to a standstill. Then it presented me with a blue screen that wouldn't go away, and which said there had been a fatal error. Cognoscenti told me that this was the Blue Wall of Death, so I took it to Nehru Place, the Vellore of IT, up some dark, greasy stairs to a vast piazza surrounded by skyscrapers.
Making of a paratha
On the way I heard, saw and smelt street food, the kind that is special to working districts: Hot, fast and cheap. Under a pall of smoke, two chaps were cooking and selling anda paratha , off a five-ft square pushcart with a makeshift waist-high wooden shelf around, feeding about six hungry men in a hurry. No one was complaining. Despite what should have been more pressing concerns, I had to pause and watch. They were working so fast that it was hard to tell who was doing what, how the work was divided, but between them, they would roll out a paratha, set it to fry on a kerosene stove, and, when they judged that the time was right, insert the tip of a knife between layers with one hand and, with the other, pick up an egg from a pile of trays, crack it on the edge of the trolley, prise the shell open with his thumb, and cast its contents unerringly inside the opened paratha . Meanwhile, his colleague would have a steel tray ready — the compartmented railway kind — and slosh some steaming brown gravy thing — probably kabuli chana — into one depression, grated radish in another, drop some green chutney on the “salad”, have the crisp, brown, dripping-with-oil paratha flipped in straight from the tawa . Two pickled green chillies were the cherries on top. I asked the paratha maker how many eggs he put into each paratha . He said Ek, do, teen — jaise aap bolein : just as you like. At 20 rupees, I like.
When I reached the Toshiba workshop, the laptop recovered miraculously, much like a listless, fevered child who perks up the moment the doctor appears. They said I just had to reformat Windows, which I could do at home. So I gave up on the idea of matra kulcha , bread pakoras and went home, only to discover that Windows could not be reformatted because the DVD reader was dead. The next day I went back, this time to be told that a new reader would cost 20K and take 20 days to be procured and fitted, so I decided to up the expense and buy an entirely new laptop. By this time it was getting on to lunchtime and I thought I'd just do some window-shopping (no pun intended) and compare brands. Showrooms apart, the place was a shopper's delight: Piles of “Nikie” socks, “Hellfigure” jeans, and men who accost you in the shaded corridors, hissing “Software! Software!” So I looked at laptops, conscientiously ignoring the stalls heaped with khasta kachoris , golden and flaky, and alu ki sabzi , yellow and reeking of heeng and fresh coriander leaves, and proceeded to take a leap of faith and buy a MacBook Air.
Fried golden squares
As they say, patience is its own reward. I'm getting to like the new operating system, and I certainly loved the lunch I'd waited for. Had it been elevenses time, a small fried snack would have been fine. It was 2.30 in the afternoon, so I started with pakoras . From a pyramid of neat already fried golden squares the restaurateur/ chef took out one, added a long thick green chilli pakora and refried both in viscous black oil. Served in a foil plate, there was a choice of sweet tamarind sonth and ketchup. The paneer pakora , with its crisp brown shell and “sandwiched” filling of dark green chutney, was hot, but the sweet-and sour sonth was cold. The green chilli in the pakora had been slit and filled with amchoor , dried mango, and the frying had taken away only some of its bite. Fortunately he had an icebox from which he pulled out a chilled can of Pepsi, and my meal was complete. But just then a man walked past, holding a plate of oily yellow rice with pieces of mutton nestling within. The rice smelt good, and the meat over-fried, almost burnt.
So I followed my nose and reached Punjab di Shaan, “Specialist in Rajma Chawal , Meet Chawal (Plao) and Chana Chawal ”. I ordered Chicken Rice Plao , which came within the minute, in the steel thalis that seem to be de rigueur . The dips in the tray had raita with large chunks of crunchy raw onion, grated radish and the vile and ubiquitous Pachranga pickle. Halved lemons if you asked. The rice was dry — some kind of cross between boiled rice, pulao and biryani: Sautéed with cumin and some yellow colouring, it had no masala , just pieces of cooked chicken here and there. But they served a helping of chicken gravy, included in the price, which helped it go down. Haute cuisine it was not, but it hit the spot. The dessert, though, was a delightful surprise: Perfect, identical, red-brown spheres floating in golden syrup, the soft-hearted gulab jamuns were perfect.
