Lets enjoy food
Korma,
Kheer and Kismet: Five
Seasons in Old Delhi
Pamela
Timms
2014
At one
of the panel-discussions at the India Non Fiction Festival at
New Delhi I recall Ira Trivedi (co-panelist
with Pamela Timms)
asking her if she did not worry falling sick (eating the street food at Old Delhi that she was then happily describing).
Quickly came the reply that had me intrigued about the book – ‘the only 2 times I have fallen sick in Delhi
is when I have had meals at star hotels in the city, street food is absolutely
safe and lovely’. I later recalled reading couple of articles by Pamela
Timms in Mint
with lines like ‘I soon discovered a
whole new world of food and flavours to obsess over and crave, light years away
from the shrink-wrapped sanitized food culture I had left behind in Scotland,
and even the gloopy bland curries I had eaten in Indian restaurants at home’.
Finally
got the book in recent weeks and loved the cover – there’s something about the
yellow on it. The book makes one want to go to old Delhi, walk and enjoy food. Each
of the three evenings I read it I had an uncharacteristic late evening craving
for food. This despite my having quit meat and as a corollary majority dishes,
described in the book, being out of bounds for me.
One of
the lines that stayed with me: ‘Despite
boasting some of the world’s most beautiful parks and monuments the Delhi
authorities seem to do everything in their power to discourage walking!’
This resonated all the more on account of my love for walking. On one hand walking
helps me establish connect with surroundings and get lost in thoughts while on
the other hand stark lack of support for walking, in our cities, makes me
experience an irritation bordering helplessness. Walking is anything but
encouraged; it is almost as if a caste system is at work with walkers at the unfavourable
end. I also recalled Amitav Ghosh’s line in one of his essays of ‘our having one of the world’s best urban
gardens: Lodhi Garden!’
Without
being preachy the author talks of the niceties of each season as also the
locally available seasonal fruits and vegetable. Of it all being available
despite the onslaught of mass produced fast-food and how it is also cheaper and,
of course, fresher and healthier. She has done her research as the quotes gently
sprinkled across the pages suggest and has a penchant for one-liners. Sample
this – ‘the signature scent of the season
was ‘eau de mothball’, as thick tweedy jerkins and handmade woolens were hauled
about of hibernation’. Her acceptance of the hygiene conditions in old
Delhi is positively interesting, especially in today’s times of our showcasing
more faith in the ‘safety’ of bottled drinking water (however old) and ‘cleanness’ of malls!
Pamela
Timms reminded me, at more than one juncture, of Fanny Parkes in her effable
Begums, Thugs and Englishmen – love for all Indian – albeit in journeys of
another kind in a different age! Also of William Dalrymple take in City of Djinns :
A Year in Delhi of Delhi being a city in layers. What little I have read of
Ballimaran I had associated with Mirza Ghalib and never with bakeries!
I
recalled a conversation with a colleague during my initial days in Mizoram. As
I had shared posts on our meanderings, from my then fresh blog, he had remarked
– you can write of these details only as you have grown up in a place very
different from Mizoram. I felt the same of Pamela Timms and Old Delhi. Dr. Ganesh Devy states that languages have
survived in India despite odds, unlike in other places. Pamela Timms tells us –
so have recipes and practices – amidst one of the largest human assemblages in
the world. History is quite alive at Delhi – eat it out of your hands!
Back to
the panel-discussion; the session moderater Suhel Seth had then spoken of lack
of utility of the recipes at the end of each chapter – pointing that they
actually hindered the flow. Quite agree with him that recipes, usually, do not
do justice. What then to say of dishes that have been evolving since the Taj
Mahal has been standing! She, in a way, contradicts herself by giving the recipes.
I skipped the recipe pages.
On a
personal note I wish I had come across this book a few years
earlier.I would have read it to dadi and
discussed food with her. It would have been interesting to put across some of
these pages in Kachchhi and listen to food stories from Karachi and Calcutta! The
probable excitement of eating with friends, fun with food excesses, of experimenting
and failing with dishes. In some cases, there is never ‘another time’. Glad though to have had these moments with her as i wrote these lines.
Three reviews
of the book I came across online:
Comments
Post a Comment