At about 5 pm on a Friday evening, when most normal humans start to shut down and head home for the weekend, I realised I had to write a column.
I also realised that I had gone brain-dead or, more importantly, feeling-dead. It’s been a month of rollercoaster emotions — rage and sorrow and disgust and rage and sorrow. I just could not bring myself to talk about what people are talking about anymore.
And so, dear reader, this week I write not of feminism or politics or Sabarimala or fake news, but of a sweet and simple Madras staple. The butter biscuit.
One of my fondest memories of childhood trips to Madras is of a tiny, dark shop that shared a boundary wall with my uncle’s home. We would rush here with 25 paise coins clutched in sweaty palms, and a tall boy would let us fish out tiny, round ‘dollar’ biscuits from a tall jar ourselves. It was a great honour.
And it’s in this shop that I discovered the butter biscuit. It was love at first bite.
This humble cookie, sans branding, sans marketing, is one of the city’s best-kept secrets. A regular of any self-respecting tea shop or potti kadai, it beats hollow any pretenders it might have on the snobbish streets of Delhi, the gourmet gallis of Kolkata, or the bustling roads of Mumbai.
Nestling in those glass jars, it looks so ordinary you’ll almost miss it. Like the doughnut we discovered in small-town Belgaum. Decades before the ‘real’ ones came to our cities in their fancy, branded avatars, we stumbled upon beautifully soft and sugar-dusted doughnuts — fried in front of our eyes — in the most unlikely tea shops in and around what is now Belagavi; served warm on squares of newspaper.
And that’s exactly how butter biscuits come to you — large, irregular circles nestled in newspaper, often still warm from the baker, perfect with tea. There’s a sweet and a salt variant, but both are Goldilocks confections — not too sweet, not too salty, but just right for you.
What I love most is how crisp they are. And how filling. Often when peckish on long drives, we stop at roadside tea shops to dunk a couple in tea for an instant pick-me-up. For me, the butter biscuit is as synonymous with Madras as the milagai or chilli bajji . Superlative in taste. And perfect in their settings, tea shop or beach, like well-framed paintings.
You’ll never see a brand name or a scrap of packaging, and yet I’ve never known the taste to vary. I’ve always wondered about its origin: where did it come from? Whose recipe is it? Which baker made it first?
On sleepy Sunday afternoons, a funny little biscuit man comes calling with a cycle cart. He speaks a pidgin Hindi, claims to be Hyderabadi, and is probably a Muslim baker from Anywherebad. He has an assistant who knocks on all the doors of the street and proffers trays piled with rather dubious offerings: some ordinary, some in violent shades of green or pink, some embedded with tutti-frutti. If you fall prey to his persuasions (he’s one slick salesman) he will ply you with at least five specimens from his boxes — nankhatai, pista, badam , blah, and blah.
But no, the pristine butter biscuit, that superior creature, never features on his cart. I would have been offended if it had. I mean, you don’t get to be this classic cookie practically synonymous with Madras and then just come calling on the street, do you?
It can’t be seen in such lowly company. In fact, it’s too good even for the neighbours it has in the tea shops — the dodgy murukkus , the iffy chikkis , the utterly ordinary branded stuff — but one can live with that.
For years, I would eat them only when on the road, or on some errand or assignment that required a long wait and chai and biscuits for placation. Until suddenly I began to see butter biscuits sealed in plastic packets and displayed in kirana stores and supermarkets. I went into deep shock, and for the longest time refused to touch them there.
Then, one day, a Judas brought them home. They were good. Very good. But — I noted with grim satisfaction — they were just not the same as the ones in the tea kadai. Must be something about the roadside air.
The writer, who tries to make sense of society with seven hundred words, will return with her customary snark next fortnight.
