Parantha Supreme

Published in Sunday Deccan Herald 9th August 2010

For lovers of Indian food, although Mughlai would be the actual equivalent of gourmet cuisine, the ubiquitous north Indian Parantha (stuffed flat bread), has a place second to none. And any mention of parantha naturally leads to the Paranthe Wali Gali or the ‘Parantha Lane’ in Old Delhi—home to the world’s most delicious, mouth-watering, perfectly browned paranthas!

Paranthe Wali Gali is perhaps the only lane in the world to be named after a food item, and the Parantha is perhaps the only food in the world to have an entire lane named after it. Paranthe Wali Gaali is infact a narrow lane off the road that runs parallel to the Chandni Chowk Metro and has been a popular culinary destination for nearly a century and a half, numbering among its clientele, many celebrities from various arenas, including politics, media, as well as the glitterati of Bollywood (being the birth place of cine idol Akshay Kumar).

At the mouth of the lane stands Kanwarji, the 100 year old sweet
shop whose delicacies like sohan halwa and dalbiji mixture are bywords in the homes of native Delhiites to this day. The gali itself, with its jostling crowds, bicycles, and narrow-fronted shops far below the road level, has the ambience of a period drama.

In the time of the Mughal emperors, the Gali was known as Dariba Kalan or ‘Mini Dariba’ and was a popular destination for clothes and jewellery shopping. It was only in 1911 when the lane, having become home to about 16 shops turning out the world’s most succulent paranthas, and attracting both commoners and celebrities from far and wide, was rechristened Paranthe Wali Gali.

The first impression of the Gali is still that of a bustling, narrow by-lane lined with shops selling sarees, jewellery and thousands of varieties of kinari—decorative traditional laces and piping for garments and traditional handicrafts. Penetrating deeper into the lane, however, one experiences an onslaught of mouth-watering aromas on one’s nostrils, as the soul-stirring sizzle of the world’s most sumptuous paranthas being fried in pure desi ghee in deep, curved griddles by some of the master chefs in Indian cuisine assails one’s senses.

The paranthas here are unlike any others. Lovingly prepared by chefs hailing from families with generations of culinary expertise in their genes, each parantha is a masterpiece in its own right. With the finest of ingredients and the choicest stuffings, and served with potato and cottage cheese gravy, pickle and sweet-and-sour pumpkin, these paranthas make for a sublime gastronomical experience.

No wonder then, that despite the original 16 shops having dwindled to four, the gali remains a popular hang-out in Old Delhi.

Apart from the tourists and celebrities it attracts, the Paranthe Wali Gali is also an everyday haunt of many of the residents of Old Delhi —a popular venue for working brunches and lunches, as well as a favourite dating place for youngsters. Many a deal has been finalised over these paranthas, and many a proposal accepted (or rejected, as the case may be!), as habitués continue to throng the parantha shops here.

“Our regular customers cannot bear to eat their breakfast anywhere else,” proudly claim the shop-owners here. The customers agree. “Tasting the paranthas here is like a tiger tasting human blood,” pronounces one, perhaps not very felicitously, sending all those present into fits of laughter. “I mean,” he smiles, “you get one taste, and you are compelled to come back for more …”

“It’s a swell place to bring your date,” confides a youngster who has been enjoying a plate of rabdi parantha with his girlfriend. “It has so much going for it: it’s world famous, so your girl is impressed; the food is out of this world; the prices are so reasonable—what more can a guy ask for?”

It all started in 1872, when Pandit Gaya Prasad Shiv Charan, scion of a family of royal chefs in Bhadawali, Madhya Pradesh, who had relocated to take up agriculture near Agra due to the dacoit menace in the area, was impelled by a hankering to revisit his culinary roots, to set up a parantha shop in this lane. And the rest, as they say, is history.

People whose families have lived in Chandni Chowk for generations now narrate how, six generations ago, Pandit Gaya Prasad Shiv Charan’s paranthas worked their magic on the palates of Old Delhi, making rapid inroads into the traditional poori-kachori territory. Soon his parantha joint had more business than he could possibly handle, and more and more of his family followed him into the greener pastures of Chandni Chowk, eventually creating a gastronomic empire of 16 parantha joints!

The food served by these shops is strictly vegetarian or ‘Vaishnav’, without even garlic or onions! The first shop started out in 1872 by serving four types of paranthas: potato, dal (cooked lentils), besan(gram flour) and methi(fenugreek leaves). Today these shops serve paranthas with 25 different types of stuffings, including exotic ones such as dry fruits and rabri, as well as improbable-sounding ones like tomato and karela (bitter gourd)—you name it, they have it!

Post-independence, the shops of the Gali were patronised by political bigwigs like Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Vijaylakshmi Pandit, Jayaprakash Narayan and Atal Behari Bajpayee. The oldest shop, started by Pandit Gaya Prasad Shiv Charan himself, proudly displays framed photographs of those golden days.

The 1980s witnessed a drop in the fortunes of the Gali, with a number of shops being either sold, or given over to other businesses such as dairy, sweets, or even fabrics.
Says Manish Sharma, the sixth generation descendant of Pandit Gaya Prasad Shiv Charan: “Families whose direct male lines became extinct gradually sold out their interests in the parantha business and moved out. Some others too wanted to do something else and left’.

He is, however, optimistic about the future: “At one point there were only three of the original shops left. But recently, another member from a branch of the family that had quit the parantha business has set up the fourth parantha shop in the Gali.”

Be that as it may, four shops or 16, the fame of Paranthe Wali Gali is an intrinsic part of India’s gastronomic lore and continues to tempt and to grow.