Food is history, geography, a tug of nostalgia, a memory, a personal story, an emotion, a smell, an aftertaste, a sense of home. Though I am not a foodie, my first book replayed the compounded smell of agarbatties and rasgullas in a cinema hall canteen in Missamari. And the street food in Patiala. The kind I have never found anywhere else because it was more than just food to me. It was my childhood. And the familiarity and warmth that only your home town can give you. It was also the unalloyed joy of eating that somehow gets broken down into calories and portion sizes as you grow older.
Punjab is usually mistaken for a place where non-vegetarian food sizzles in every street kiosk. It is not. For our predominantly vegetarian family, Patiala was the toasted goodness of tandoori rotis that an old woman pulled from a make-shift mud oven lit up with red hot coals.
It was the taste of matar paneer and creamy, smoky maah ki daal that you sampled at the famous Corner Dhaba near the bus stand.
Then there was the famous paranthe wallah near Rajindra Hospital who dished out the most deliciously layered surprises with dollops of melting butter and pickle right from his small cart. His gobhi, mooli and aloo paranthas would be eaten on the spot or carried home in paper parcels, to be enjoyed at leisure along with sips of milky tea.
At Topkhana Mod, was the little alcove in the wall from where a Sikh gentleman with Zen calm served his legendary chhola bhaturas and kulchas to hundreds of hungry regulars who would queue up with steel dibbas or eat from leaf doonas ravenously and then ask for another serving and then another. The taste of those chholas was the secret of everything in life. It was the taste of ingredients that sang together in perfect harmony, of temperance, of the balance between too little and too much. Of spice. tang, consistency, slow cooking, patience.
Then Adalat Bazaar with its tawa food, especially Aloo ki Tikki made by a Sikh vendor who browned the potato patty on a large, sizzling tawa and then served it with a special anardaana and coriander chutney and slivers of onions. And Chainna Murghi that a man sold at night from a little glass container. These pieces of paneer caramalised in sugar syrup just melted in your mouth, forever imprinting your memory with pop and crackle and crunch you would never get from any other sweet.
The khoya barfi near the Shiv Mandir in Quila Chowk that you bought ostensibly to please the Lord but mostly to eat by yourself. The boy from UP who cut little pieces of malai kulfi, topped them with scoops of falooda, swirls of rabri,nuts and a few other indescribably delightful overtures and served it to us from his Shiv Shakti Kulfi Bhandaar.
The famous rewris and gajaks (dry sweets made with gur and til) that every winter travelled from Arjun’s shop to different corners of the country. The mixed fruit ice-cream sold at this shop in old-fashioned glass cups. Crystal’s famous lemon soda. Kashyap’s cassata ice cream. The elongated gulab jamuns swimming in kewra scented, scalding sugar chaashni near Sheran Wallah Gate. The gol gappas with mint fresh water. Jaljeera sold in earthern pots wrapped up in moist red cloth. Carts of fleshy, summery jamuns and bers.Pickles gleaming like jewels from hundreds of jars in Acharon Wala Bazaar. Crisp brown jalebis. Pure ghee pooris. Glasses of Rooh Afza water and lemon shikanjvi being served by Sikh devotees during Guru Parb. Sweet shops that extended themselves into the streets with extra layers of goodies during Diwali. Stretched sugar candies. Cream rolls. Samosas and kachauris. Birthday cakes with sugar pearls from Lamba’s Bakery.
And most of all, the taste of simple abundance, honest to goodness flavours and the joy of connection with a moment in time, a place called home, and a piece of your soul with Patiala scribbled on it.
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