Delhi Beat: The place to be

Published on Unboxed Writers on 26th April 2011

Netaji Subhash Place at Pitampura, flush by Wazirpur Depot on the Ring Road, is perhaps the only commercial complex in Delhi to felicitously combine the attributes of an office complex, shopping hub and food court. The complex, along with the expanse of assorted shops selling an eclectic mix of clothes, jewellery, street food of all kinds, sweets, household gadgets as also provision stores, realtors, automobile dealers, photographers, restaurants, bakeries, electronics, tuition bureaus, hobby classes, specialized coaching centres and pavement bookstalls, that stretch from Wazirpur Depot on Ring Road (inner) to Madhuban Chowk on Outer Ring Road, constitutes what has been dubbed ‘North Extension’ or simply ‘North-Ex’, as a counterpoint to the ‘happening’ South-Ex.

An obscure, unheard-of, downmarket locality till about two decades ago, North-Ex is now an integral part as well as the face of the changing realities of the capital. One of the first areas to be served by the Delhi Metro, it has grown by leaps and bounds. Today, with its easy access to upcoming trendy residential complexes by the best builders, schools, cultural centres, movie theatres, malls, adventure parks, restaurants and newest five star hotels, it is rapidly coming up as the place to be in the Capital.

Thus runs the story of Delhi. At one time, it used to be Chandni Chowk market for traditional finery and jewellery; Pahar Ganj for chaat and chhole bhature; Jama Masjid for traditional non-vegetarian food; Karol Bagh, Kamla Nagar and Lajpat Nagar markets for medium-range everyday shopping; Defence Colony market, Khan Market, GK market and South Extension (South-Ex) market for the fashionistas and trendsetters; and Sarojini Nagar Market for patri or pavement shopping. And at the heart of it was Connaught Place, where it all came together, and where you could do it all at the same place. This was at a less congested time when the population of Delhi was less than a million and the capital stretched from the Yamuna River in the east to Najafgarh village in the west, and from Pithampur village (now Pitampura administrative zone) in the north to Mehrauli in the South.

And then came the decade of the 1990s, and with it, the spread of Delhi in all directions. As immigrants from rural to urban areas who initially used to flock to Mumbai—the country’s de facto industrial capital—in search of livelihoods, grew insecure in the wake of Shiv Sena’s activities, the more secular and tolerant Delhi with its rapidly developing infrastructure, industries, employment prospects and facilities became the country’s new ‘land of opportunity’.

In the past two decades, the population of the city has soared from 0.82 million to nearly 19 million at the most recent count. And to accommodate the burgeoning population, the city has extended itself to its present area of 1483 square kilometres, initially spanning the Yamuna and spreading to its eastern side, and then engulfing neighbouring towns and areas such as Noida, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Badarpur, Bahadurgarh, Sonipat and Gurgaon into the National Capital Territory (NCT) Delhi. And this is the present Delhi—an extremely congested cosmopolis, with an average population density of over 9000 persons per square kilometres, and a highly developed public transport system as well as network of roads which, however, falls perpetually short of the requirements of its almost impossibly dynamic populace!

The combination of the city’s sheer geographical spread and its extremely high population density resulted in the inevitable outcome. No longer were these ‘specialized’ markets sufficient to serve the needs of the people of the city. The interminable commutes and the humungous traffic jams clogging the roads spawned the universal demand for everything much closer home, even if it came with a higher price tag—anything to avoid a needless tussle with the traffic in extreme weather!

And so came the era of self-sufficient markets in every area of the city, preceding the ‘mall culture’. No more trudging through the alleys of Chandni Chowk and Karol Bagh for wedding finery—Ushnak Mal Mool Chand, Rati Ram Ram Vinod, Ram Chandra Krishna Chandra, and now Chhabras and Narangs all have outlets in various parts of the city, as do all the top jewellers, plus a host of new ones. No more battling the traffic to browse the pavement markets at Sarojini Nagar and Lajpat Nagar—you have it all at almost walking distance! And no more lugging the family to Connaught Place for a Nirula’s ice cream or to South-Ex for Baskin Robbins. Nirula’s and Baskin Robbins (along with the newest ice-cream chain, Giani’s) have all come to your doorstep, so to speak—either in a market accessible almost on foot, or at the nearest mall. And even today, though nuclear families with little children might find air-conditioned, brightly decorated malls with the latest trendy retail outlets and play areas more convenient, really avid shoppers worth their salt still prefer to browse the open air markets for their needs as well as for unexpected surprises and treasures.

It was in this era that North and West Delhi, considered slightly infra dig till about two decades ago by inhabitants of Central and South Delhi, started coming into their own. From being looked down upon as the bastions of ‘refugees’ (from Punjab) and laalas (residents of the old, walled city relocating to escape the congestion), these most thickly populated localities of the Capital became, almost overnight, the most promising markets in post-liberalization Delhi. The original ‘refugees’ and lalaas with their immense drive and ‘go-getter’ spirit made it good and have been replaced by their second and third generations, now living amid the city’s most modern civic infrastructure and cosmopolitan amenities (the last to be developed, hence, the best).

The current inhabitants of these areas, thus, have the advantages of both, the money and luxury provided by their progenitors and the most updated infrastructure and civic amenities provided by the government. They have studied in the best schools, imbibed the global culture and have brought together the choicest elements of commercial, industrial and cultural development into ‘their area’—shopping complexes, offices, eateries, malls, adventure parks, movie halls; even Dilli Haat—and all conveniently located to be accessible from the Delhi Metro! ‘North-Ex’, thus, truly epitomises the ‘immigrant revolution’ that is underway in Delhi.

Keeping our children safe

published on Unboxed Writers on 19th April 2011

Yesterday’s newspapers were ablaze with the horrendous story of the five year-old child in Ghaziabad who died as a result of sexual assault while the parents kept the incident under wraps as the perpetrator was a family member. According to statistics released by Tulir Centre for Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA), 40 per cent girls and 25 per cent boys below 16 in India are victims of such predators. The Bill against CSA, currently in Parliament, provides for stringent punitive action against perpetrators of CSA as well as for the protection of the identities of the victims and their families. However, the fact remains that CSA is one of the most terrible, yet least acknowledged horrors of our society.

Paedophilia or sexual abuse of children—a parent’s worst nightmare— is hardly something unknown. The mental disorder that drives adults or almost-adults to sexual abuse of pre-pubescent children has existed throughout recorded history of humankind. However, even more horrifying than the vile acts of paedophiles, is the fact that in an unbelievably large number of cases of child sexual abuse (CSA), the victims’ family members, whose responsibility it supposedly is to safeguard them, either choose to look the other way, as though wishing away the unpalatable truth, or else, sweep it under the carpet out of considerations of ‘family’ or ‘honour’. But the fact remains that children who have been victims of sexual abuse end up with serious psychological issues related to self-esteem, self-image and confidence which, if not addressed promptly, become a baggage that they carry all their lives and are liable to taint all their relationships, rendering them dysfunctional, asocial, or even anti-social.

Threat from ‘near ones’

In an alarming number of instances the perpetrators of these heinous acts are either close family members or family friends. A case that comes to mind is that of a neighbour’s extremely aggressive and rebellious young niece, who was openly contemptuous of her parents. She was later discovered to have been raped repeatedly by her uncle (father’s brother) when she was less than five. Her parents had refused to believe her, choosing to ignore the entire incident and warning her to be careful, rather than open the can of worms within the family, especially since the girl was too young for ‘visible’ consequences like an accidental pregnancy. Warped for life, the abused girl started wielding her sexuality like a tool while in her early teens, perversely going out of her way to shame her parents publicly. As she grew into an adult, it became obvious that she could neither sustain a job nor a relationship. Then at about 30 years of age she was involved in a serious road accident that crippled her for six months. Lying in bed with nothing to do, she was visited by an old neighbour who initiated her into an alternate healing therapy. That was a turning point in her life. After she was cured, she left home to work as a healing therapist and has exorcised her own demons in the process.

When protectors turn predators

There was also the case of an ex-colleague who left her home in one of India’s interior towns with her two daughters at a moment’s notice when her maid alerted her to the fact her husband was trying to sexually abuse their 12 year-old elder daughter, thinking that she had gone to the market. Landing in Delhi with nothing but an airbag of clothes for all three, some of her mother’s jewelry and the phone number of an old school friend—who, along with her husband, miraculously came through for her—she eked out a living for herself and her daughters as a journalist for years, cutting herself off from her family as well as his, because if word of this were to get around, the shame to the family would mean that no one in their caste and community would marry her daughters! This was 20 years ago. Today both her daughters are married and well settled and she has become a nun in a convent. No one in the family has any idea of all this, even to date!

Harmful helping hands

Another common source of CSA is household help. With the number of double income families on the rise, it is very common for young children to be left in the care of hired help, sometimes (though not always) under the supervision of older family members. And although there have been instances of extremely caring and loyal caregivers, there are also plenty of cases where the child has been abused, either by the caregiver, or by the boyfriend of the female caregiver who visits her in the absence of the child’s parents.

Newly-wed Bela’s sister-in-law (husband’s sister) used to leave her 15 month-old daughter with her mother (Bela’s mother-in-law) on her way to work every morning and collect her on her way back home every evening. A 14 year-old male servant used to help the arthritic mother-in-law with childcare tasks like heating the baby’s milk, fetching and carrying, etc since both Bela and the child’s mother were at work during the day. As the baby grew older and more active and unmanageable for the grandmother, she relegated more and more of her tasks to the servant, such as rocking her to sleep and pacing with her whenever she was restless. Soon she let him take her out. It was Bela who saw something amiss and alerted her mother-in-law, who chose to turn a blind eye to the matter, realizing that she would have to stretch herself beyond her physical capacity to take care of the child herself. Next Bela alerted the child’s mother, but she too chose to ignore the matter, since to take remedial action would have disrupted her well-ordered professional life. She then broached the matter with her husband. He was snubbed when he discussed it with his mother and sister, but deeply disturbed, he fired the servant immediately. The child is now sixteen, and a lovely, confident young lady, and hopefully, has no memory of theseincidents of her infancy.

Prevention and pre-emption

The menace of CSA is a reality that cannot be denied. It is high time we face it head-on and take preventive measures, the most important one being educating our children and building enough trust and rapport with them to enable them to share their darkest secrets with their parents. Innumerable cases of CSA go undetected, even by the victims’ parents and near ones, because some atavistic instinct of shame or fear impels them to keep the secret, even though it is something that they don’t understand.

A few years ago I noticed that my seven year-old daughter winced as I changed her underpants. Filled with foreboding, I questioned her gently. Hesitating, she said that for the past two days a ten year-old boy in her school van would push apart the legs of the six and seven year-old girls in the van and prod them with his boot. I was filled with a murderous rage as I heard my baby stammer out this atrocity, but controlled my own reactions. I asked her if this had been going on longer than the past two days. She denied it, and I believed her because it was the first time that she had shown such signs of discomfort. When I asked why she and the other little girls did not scream or complain to the driver or the teachers in the van (there were two of them!), she said they had protested and complained, but that no one had paid any attention. Deeply disturbed and upset, I pondered over the best way to handle this, fully aware that the situation called for immediate action. After a lot of thought I decided to confront the situation head-on.

Next morning I requested the teachers in the van and the driver to give me two minutes and told them the entire story. I demanded the telephone number of the offender’s parents from the van driver, preferring to take the matter to them. I then politely asked the teachers what they were about to let such things happen while they were present in the van. The teachers looked sheepish and admitted that they thought that the little girls had been screaming and complaining because one of the boys must have been bullying them, as usual. The van driver was mortified, and apologized, and although he did not then give me the numbers I asked for, he promised to personally inform the child’s parents of this incident and to discontinue his usage of the van with immediate effect. He was as good as his word. I did, however, inform the parents of the other little girls in the van about the incident so that they would be on their guard in future. And as it chances, my daughter took no harm from the incident, but has now, hopefully, been warned for life against objectionable behaviour by anyone.

CSA is a social disease that needs to be dealt with the pesticide of exposure, education and prevention. More important than anything else is the need to divest it of its aura of shame and secrecy, and bring it out in the open, to be understood and condemned by society at large, while extending understanding and help to the unfortunate victims, so that parents take proactive measures to help their children instead of turning their ‘shameful secret’ into skeletons in the cupboard.

For more information about CSA Awareness Month, visit www.csaawarenessmonth.wordpress.com

The objectionable servant

For CSA Awareness month: A real life story with names changed

Bela was newly married. Besides her and her husband there was only her widowed mother-in-law in the family. Her husband’s sister used to leave her fifteen month-old daughter with her mother on her way to work every morning and collect her on her way back home every evening. There was a fourteen year-old male servant in the house who helped Bela with the housework and her arthritic mother-in-law with childcare, heating the baby’s milk, fetching and carrying, etc.

As the baby grew older and more active, it became more and more difficult for the grandmother to cope with her since both Bela and the child’s mother were out at work the whole day. She gradually began to let the servant take care of more and more of the child’s needs. He used to rock her to sleep and pace with her whenever she was restless. Soon she let him take her out into the colony, or on the terrace to show her the birds and trees whenever she was troublesome. And after some time she even started letting him wash the child whenever she needed to be changed.

Soon Bela became pregnant, and was ordered bed rest for the first twelve weeks due to low hormone levels. It was when she started staying home that she noticed the servant’s peculiar behaviour with the child and the objectionable way he would fondle her. Then she realized that the servant was even washing the child when she dirtied herself, and that she would scream in pain every time he washed her. Bela alerted her mother-in-law, who chose to turn a blind eye to the matter, realizing that she would have to stretch herself beyond her physical capacity to take care of the child herself if she paid attention to Bela. Next Bela alerted the child’s mother, but she too chose to ignore the matter, since to take remedial action would have disrupted her well-ordered professional life.

Bela couldn’t believe that a child’s mother and grandmother could be so callous towards her welfare simply to avoid disrupting their everyday lives! She then broached the matter with her husband. He discussed it with his mother and sister, but they snubbed him too, telling him that his wife had too active an imagination and that they would have known if the servant really were acting objectionably. But Bela’s husband was very disturbed by all this and took two days’ leave from office to judge matters for himself. What he saw made him realize the truth of his wife’s story and he fired the servant immediately.

The child’s pubic area remained extremely sore and painful for a few years after this. However, she is now sixteen, and a lovely, confident young lady, and hopefully, has no memory of these incidents of her infancy.

In the school van

For CSA Awareness Month

A few years ago I noticed that my seven year-old daughter winced as I changed her underpants. Filled with foreboding, I questioned her gently. Hesitating, she said that for the past two days a ten year-old boy in her school van would push apart the legs of the six and seven year-old girls in the van and prod the juncture of their thighs with the toe of his boot.

Filled with a murderous rage, I controlled my own reactions, so as not to scare the already scared child, and asked her if this had been going on longer than two days. She denied it, and I believed her because it was the first time that she had shown signs of discomfort. I was also reassured at finding no signs of any laceration or inflammation when I examined her to be double sure. I asked her why she and the other little girls did not scream or complain to the driver or the teachers in the van (there were two of them!). She told me they had protested and complained, but no one had paid any attention.

I was deeply upset and angry, and pondered over the best way to handle this. I was fully aware that the situation called for immediate action and after a lot of thought I decided to confront the situation head-on.

Next morning I requested the teachers in the van and the driver to give me two minutes and related the entire story. Then I demanded the telephone number of the offender’s parents, preferring to take the matter to them, rather than to the school authorities, because I realized that a ten year-old would hardly know what he was doing, and as a mother I had no wish to court notoriety either for that child, or for my own. I then politely asked the teachers what they were about to let such things happen while they were present in the van. The teachers looked sheepish and admitted that they thought that the little girls’ screams had been due to the usual bullying behaviour of boys towards girls.

The van driver, however, was thunderstruck, and apologised to me for his remiss behaviour. Although he did not give me the numbers I asked for, he promised that he would personally inform the child’s parents of this and would not let him enter his van again. He requested me to give him twenty four hours. If he failed to address the situation satisfactorily within that time, he said, I should feel free to take the matter up before the school authorities.

He was as good as his word. However, I did inform the parents of the other little girls in the van about the incident so that they would be on their guard in future. And as it chances, my daughter took no harm from the incident, but has now, hopefully, been warned for life against objectionable behaviour by anyone.

Feasting and Fasting

Published on Unboxed Writers on 4th April 2011

It’s the Basant Navratri again—the nine day spring festival that heralds the onset of the New Year according to the traditional Hindu Vikrami calendar—when devotees observe fasts that culminate in the celebration of Durga Ashtami on the eighth lunar day and Ram Navami (the birth of Lord Rama) on the ninth day.

“Now, who will fast with me tomorrow?” I remember my grandmother asking us hopefully, the day before the Navratri began, as she cleansed the house of all traces of onions, garlic and eggs (ours being a vegetarian household, there was no question of meat!) and requested Dad to refrain from having over any guests during this period who would have to be served hard drinks. Looking back, I realize she was trying to instil into us some sanskaars (grounding in our own traditions), lest we be completely ‘corrupted’ by ‘western influences’!

Although we looked forward to Navratri (in anticipation of Ashtami, when little girls, as avtars (incarnations) of the Mother Goddess, are pampered in North India with gifts and offerings of the choicest foods), we would all duck out, appalled by the thought of fasting for eight days at a stretch. Grandma would cajole us into fasting on the last day at least, with promises of kuttu pakodas (fritters), aloo chaat, kuttu and potato pooris, and kheer.

Mom would roll her eyes in amusement and demand whether this was the agenda for a vrat (fast) or a charat (a spree of continuous feasting)! And Dad would tell his favourite Navratri anecdote.

“When we were in Engineering College hostel in Kharagpur, one of our friends was warned by his mother about the dates of Navratri and strictly adjured not to touch food with onions in it for that duration. The poor, deluded lady, of course, had no idea that her son used to eat eggs on a regular basis while away from home. And the next thing we knew, the silly fellow asked the canteen cook to prepare his daily omelette without onions!”

The semi-annual Navratri festival (the second one falls in the nine days before Dussehra in October) was probably designated in our traditionally agricultural society as the time for celebrating the harvest, as well as for spiritual and physical spring-cleaning through prayers and fasting during the mild weather preceding the cruel summers and hard winters.

In the course of my Navratri fasts, I have discovered some delicious, low-calorie, quick-to-prepare dishes that take the strain out of fasting—in terms of both hunger as well as time spent in the kitchen! So, here goes:

Potato Kadhi with Kuttu-lauki chillas (serves 4)

(Kuttu is a kind of fruit/nut with a hard shell-like peel that grows in mountainous regions. You crush it to break the shell , sift the chaff and grind the rest to a powder … you get the powder in packages in all the stores in North India during Navratri. A lot of people prefer to substitute singhada flour in the recipes)

Ingredients for the Potato Kadhi:
 4 medium-sized potatoes, boiled soft, peeled and coarsely mashed
 1 tbsp grated ginger
 1 green chilli, finely chopped
 2 tbsp fresh dhania (coriander) leaves, finely chopped.
 1 tsp zeera (cumin seeds)
 ½ litre water
 2 cups beaten fresh yogurt (dahi)
 I tsp ghee
 Haldi (turmeric) powder, garam masala, red chilli powder, dhania (coriander) powder and salt to taste
Procedure:
• Melt the ghee in a pan. Splutter the cumin seeds and add the grated ginger, turmeric, red chillies, dhania powder and chopped green chillies. Saute for a few seconds.
• Add the potatoes and mix well for a minute. Add the water and bring to a boil. Add the fresh coriander leaves, a pinch of garam masala and salt (a little more salt than normal, to accommodate the yogurt that is added later).
• Boil for about five minutes on a low flame and take the pan off the fire. Add the beaten yogurt after two minutes, mixing continuously all the time to prevent curdling.

Ingredients for kuttu-lauki chillas (pancakes)
 500 grams grated lauki (gourd)
 100 grams powdered kuttu
 Salt and red chilli powder to taste
 Water to make a batter
 Ghee for shallow-frying
Procedure
• Mix all the ingredients into a batter of spreading consistency. Spread into round pancakes on a heated tawa (griddle) and shallow-fry with ghee. For low-calorie chillas use a non-stick pan or tawa.

Delhi Beat: Flags of Faith

Published on Unboxed Writers on 11th April 2011

During Navratri, the nine-day festival of the Mother Goddess, the entire five-mile radius around the Jhandewalan temple complex on Rani Jhansi Road in central Delhi is a beehive of activity round-the-clock, giving a whole new meaning to the term, ‘the city never sleeps’! The sight of the affluent in all their finery, arriving in large flashy cars, standing in miles-long queues and rubbing shoulders with equally devout dwellers of the surrounding slums also demonstrates like nothing else can, that in the eyes of the Almighty everyone is equal!


Festivals in Delhi are an experience unlike any other—the name of the festival, the religion it stems from, the region or community that claims ‘ownership’ of it are irrelevant details. Dilliwalas just need a reason to celebrate, and what better reason than a festival? And what could lend itself better to pomp and splendour, than Navratri?

The past two decades have seen Delhi transform from a bastion of austere sophisticates and wannabe sophisticates whose festival celebrations are carried out in hushed tones, muted colours and decorous gatherings, to a stronghold of unabashedly exuberant immigrants who have adopted the city as their own and have become part of its fibre, painting it in bold, bright colours of their multi-cultural existence. To this potent mix has been added the culture of family-based soap operas on television, where the celebration of every festival is extremely ‘filmy’ and larger than life. And the result has been an explosion of light, colour and sound—not to mention nightmarishly congested roads and markets—and when it’s a nine-day festival , the happy chaos has to be seen to be believed.

At the Jhandewalan temple, during Navratri, devotees start lining up for darshan from the wee hours, into queues that snake around the complex for miles and go on late into the night. The temple is situated at a stone’s throw from Connaught Place, the largest and busiest commercial centre of the Capital—in the heart of Delhi, as it were. Thus, the entire area, five miles around the temple in every direction, is set up with barricades and sandbags for snipers, days in advance of Navratri, to provide for crowd related contingencies. Alleyways of bamboo poles and corrugated metal sheets are constructed on the pavements for miles outside the temple complex to keep the throngs of devotees moving in ordered lines and prevent them from either stampeding or blocking some of the busiest thoroughfares of the Capital.

The name’ Jhandewalan’ was bestowed upon this shrine of the Goddess Shri Aadi Shakti during Shah Jahan’s reign, and derives from the tradition of offering prayer flags or ‘jhandas‘ to the diety. This ancient temple has a subterranean shrine as well. The upper level of the temple houses an idol of the Goddess Jhandewali, along with those of other Gods. The original idol of the Goddess Jhandewali, however, stands in the subterranean shrine in solitary splendour.

An interesting story connected to this temple is that Badri Bhagat, a great devotee of the Goddess in the twelfth century, had a dream in which she informed him of the whereabouts of this idol. Upon excavation, the idol was found on the exact spot, and is thus called ‘Swayambhu’ (an idol that has appeared out of the earth by declaring itself to mortals by divine means). Thus, the mystique associated with the temple, which, along with its antiquity, makes it a great draw for devotees of the Goddess, and especially so during the ‘days of the Goddess’, the Navratri.

The entire temple complex hosts the ‘Jhandewali ka mela’ or the fair of the ‘Goddess of the Flags’. The atmosphere buzzes with innumerable stalls, not only of prayer-related materials and food, but also toys, books, clothing, jewellery and household appliances. There are also practitioners of Astrology, other occult sciences, natural healing, parallel therapies—in fact, everything under the sun that one can possibly think of!

All eating places in Delhi, almost without exception, be it roadside stalls, or sweet shops, or high-profile chains like Haldiram, Bikanerwala and Nathu, or even restaurants and hotels—serve ‘Navratri special’ food or ‘phalahaar’ for those who observe the Navratri fasts (and the number of Delhiites fasting is not a joke!)—food usually prepared from kuttu or singhada flour, potatoes, fruits and milk products, and seasoned with rock salt (sendha namak)—in fact, just yesterday, a young couple (the female half of whom was fasting) was overheard at an outlet of the Giani chain of ice cream parlours, asking whether they served any ‘vrat ice cream’ (special ice cream for those who were fasting)!

And as the Navratri draws to a close, the markets are flooded with what shopkeepers quaintly refer to as ‘novelty items’ and what mothers of young daughters are wont to refer to as ‘rubbish to clutter the house’—gift items like fancy hairclips, colour sets, tiffin boxes, water bottles, pencil cases and other miscellaneous merchandise sporting the children’s favourite cartoon or TV soap characters—to be gifted to the ‘kanjaks’ or young girls who are worshipped as incarnations of the Goddess on the final day of Navratri. This is one day that little girls from Delhi’s slums have a field day, making the rounds of affluent colonies and hanging around outside temples in groups, dressed in their ‘best’, collecting goodies, gifts and money, for this is one day when no one will turn away the ‘Kanya Devis’ (little Goddesses)!

Delhi Beat: A mouthful of memories

Published on Unboxed Writers on 18th April 2011

“Every time I come to Delhi, I find it completely changed”, wails a childhood friend who has lived away from the city of her birth ever since she got married. Indeed, she has reason to lament. Her annual, long visits to the capital are enlivened by manic shopping excursions to all the main markets of the city. However, by her next visit most of the old shops are gone without a trace, so she first has to acquaint herself with the new market configuration before she can start her shopping frenzy. Well, Delhi is like that!

However, what is worse, according to her, is the disappearance of good eating places—and I couldn’t agree more! An eating place that is conveniently located and easy on the pocket, and that gives you delicious, hygienic food when you are out battling shopkeepers and fellow-shoppers in the unending quest to buy the maximum stuff with minimum possible outlay, is a treasure—and then, to find it gone one fine day, replaced by the offices of an insurance company or the ATM of a bank, is provoking, to put it mildly.

So, this time when she was here, shopping in Kamla Nagar market and bewailing the demise of the Coffee House on Bungalow Road near Delhi University (it vanished a number of years ago, but she has never ceased to lament its loss), I took her to one of our favourite old-time haunts that is still around and doing brisk business—chhole bhature at Chache di Hatti! The eatery serving possibly the world’s most delicious chhole bhature—the popular street food from North India that originated in Rawalpindi—has been around for more than 40 years, looking exactly the same as it used to in our college days—and probably the same as when it started. It has stood the test of time—neither growing, nor giving way under the onslaught of change and still attracting foodies in droves.

I remember my own initiation into Delhi University, and among the other pearls of wisdom from mom, the low-down on ‘good’ and ‘safe’ eating places accessible from North Campus whenever there were a couple of free classes—among others, LMB (Lakshmi Mishthan Bhandar) for golgappe, and Chache di Hatti for chhole bhature. Making new friends in college, I realized that those whose parents/ aunts/ uncles/ elder siblings had studied at DU had also come primed with this knowledge. Our five years at DU were enriched with frequent visits to the joint, with standing instructions to get the goodies packed for the folks back home. And this time around too, when we went, I had instructions to get it packed for the folks back home (both my parents’ and my in-laws)!

A tiny shop at the corner of the first right turn as you go from Bungalow Road to the Kamla Nagar roundabout, you can’t miss the mile-long queues that snake around the corner, spilling out onto the main road. The ladies’ queue extends from the shop counter deep into the gully in the other direction. The shop is open from 11 am to 3 pm every day (except Mondays) serving top quality food at rock bottom prices, and does record business despite limited timings.

As we await our turn in the queue, I take stock of the joint, mentally comparing it with the way it was 20 years ago, and find little difference, except that I’m 20 years older. The customers are a little more orderly, thanks to the two queues that are now strictly enforced. The tiny, eight by four shop is the same, except for the marble tiles on the wall, and the professionally painted price list. No expansion of space or branches, no new seating arrangement or fancy ambience, no marketing (not even a hoarding on the main road—just a modest pointer to inform the fans where to turn in from the main street)—not even longer hours, in spite of the fact that literally hundreds have to go away disappointed if they are delayed by traffic hold-ups or long shopping lists.

The aficionados thronging the shop are the same eclectic mix of old-timers from near and far, current university students and people from all classes living in the locality. The ‘Chacha’ at the counter, taking your orders, passing them on to underlings, and handing you your stuff (be it a plate of freshly prepared chhole bhature, a packed order, or simply packets of his famous chhole masala) is the same, albeit older—a large gentleman right out of a black-and-white movie featuring respectable immigrants from partitioned Punjab—an island of calm and self-possession amidst the chaos of more customers than anyone can handle.

And the masala! With real generosity of spirit Chacha chooses to let his loyal customers have his special, secret chhole masala, which he prepares himself, for a very reasonable price. Indeed, his chhole masala even figures prominently on the ‘must buy’ list of old Chacha fans, living in far-flung areas of the country and the world, whenever they pass through Delhi!

Soon our steaming, aromatic plates are handed to us. We balance them on our palms and manage to find a place to stand at the single round plastic table that is provided in the gully to accommodate those who wish to eat on the spot. The first bite tells us that the magic is still alive. We polish off the last melt-in-the-mouth morsel with voluptuous sighs of repletion and wish the exigencies of growing years and weakening digestion did not deter us from going back for a second plateful.

I have a question for Chacha, but he is fully occupied with his customers. So, I wait for him to wind up for the day. As he is closing, I ask: “Uncle, why have you never ever enlarged your establishment?” He smiles in understanding, reading all the things I have been unable to articulate—why in this era of commercialization, when it supposedly makes good business sense to milk every minute advantage and ‘leverage’ it via marketing techniques and fancy add-ons to play in the big leagues, are you content to remain in this little shop, attending to the shop counter yourself and never exploring the many avenues that could open up for you?

His answer is typical of the man himself and his product: simple, humble, grounded in reality and with true worth in every syllable: “God has given me enough for my family’s needs, and there is no limit to desires”!

Tryst with Euphoria

Published on Unboxed Writers

Photo credit: Amit Gupta
As India took to the streets at midnight to celebrate the World Cup victory, my grandfather’s reminiscences about the night of independence, when the whole of Delhi converged to the Red Fort to usher in freedom from British rule, came forcibly to mind. The only difference was that this time the crowds converged to India Gate, as Delhiites do when they want to express joy (and to Jantar Mantar when they want to protest)! And if there was no Pandit Nehru to deliver the ‘Tryst with Destiny’ speech, there were Tricolours galore being waved by untiring arms, as people danced to the beat of dhols and the ice-cream vendors of India Gate had a field day (night)!

With one mind, the whole of Delhi (or so it felt like)—the old and the young; the rich, the middle class and the poor—came dancing out on the streets, as the night was set ablaze with fireworks, the headlights of vehicles and the euphoria of the populace. The emotions of the Indians fizzed like vintage champagne, as complete strangers in passing vehicles nodded and smiled, and gave each other the high five!

Within minutes the roads of the Capital, which had seemed under curfew since late afternoon, were congested with vehicles of all shapes, sizes and descriptions, full of people intoxicated with victory, looking for an outlet for their exuberance. Not a single sound of irritated honking or angry remonstrance could be heard as the revellers smiled benignly at the milling crowds that blocked the traffic at midnight. Every few feet or so, there were groups of people dancing in the open street, as they are wont to do in wedding processions!

The Delhiites, most of whom normally tend to be acrid people with sharp edges, and a current of aggression running just under the surface, now overflowed with bonhomie! What a difference this shared sense of achievement has made to the nation, if only for a short while!

As the waves of positivity and sheer joy eddy in the normally wary, tense and at times hostile atmosphere of the Capital, realization strikes fully, of the price we have been paying as a nation, for our inadequacies—in law and order, in infrastructure, in the integrity of our officials and politicians, and most of all, in our acquiescence in the face of all these inadequacies. The shared achievement of winning the World Cup, even though the actual task was performed by the Boys in Blue, temporarily made the people shed their defensive armour of hostility and wariness and become, for the time being, joyful citizens of a nation that had lived up to its potential in some way.

In the shower of Facebook posts from Indians—both resident and non-resident—there is a fierce rush of nationalist pride, and one realizes that this is what it takes to bring us together: shared achievements born out of teamwork and excellence. As the nation raises a toast to the Boys in Blue, let us learn from their performance in the World Cup final and its outcome, the value of giving our best under seemingly impossible circumstances!

Delhi Beat: Layers and Textures

Published on Unboxed Writers on 2nd April 2011

'A textured experience’ is how a friend, returning to Delhi after nearly two decades spent in various parts of the world, describes the city. Although it has been bestowed with numerous epithets, both complimentary and opprobrious—a melting pot of cultures, a medley of the old and new, a confluence of influences, a city with many layers, a city without soul, the crime capital, the unsafest city for women, no single description can do justice to the phenomenon that is Delhi.

The city has always had a certain glamour, making it the eternal target of both invaders from without as well as aspiring immigrants from within the country. The Iron Age, the Mauryas, the Guptas, the Tomars, the Lodhis, the Delhi Sultanates, the Mughals, the British Raj, and now, independent India—Delhi has seen it all and imbibed every change.

The site of seven historical cities, Delhi (probably an abbreviation of Dehleez, i.e., the gateway to the Gangetic Plain) is believed by historians to show signs of human habitation dating back to the second millennium BC, and to have been continuously inhabited since the 6th century BC. Indeed, apart from its numerous historical monuments, the city still has functional temple edifices like the ancient Kalkaji temple in South Delhi (3rd Century BC), the Jhandewalan mandir and the Pracheen Hanuman mandir (complete with a Pracheen Desi Ghee Prasad shop) that testify to its antiquity. On the other hand, it is also the site of the Baha’i Lotus temple, the ISKCON temple at Saket, the Chhatarpur temples and the Akshardham temple, all of which are less than a quarter of a century old! Co-existing with these are five star hotels, malls, theatres, pubs, discotheques, and the dhabas, roadside tea-stalls, barrows selling eggs and tea, chaat-wallas, modest restaurants, and hotels where trafficking in everything from drugs to humans is an open secret.

Venturing into gastronomic jargon, ‘a many-layered biryani’ perhaps comes closest to the character of this, one of the oldest, and yet, one of the most contemporary, cities in the world. These multitude of layers and textures are not however the sum total of this unique city though they reference its history and the absorbent character that takes unto itself all influences—positive or negative. So the city is nothing if not a constantly mutating and evolving entity.

Till half a century ago, a city of mud-booted immigrants, many of whom arrived from the rural Punjab region in the years after the 1947 Partition, Delhi was a sleepy capital whose gentility belied a penchant for intrigue and hustle. The Delhi of today is a multicultural cosmopolis, whose rapid development and urbanization, coupled with relatively high average incomes, has transformed it into a major cultural, political, and commercial centre of India, and the planet’s second-largest urban agglomeration, with 22 million people and India’s highest concentration of millionaires.

Today, the most obvious label is what I refer to as the ‘Page 3 Delhi’— a city of the stereotypically ostentatious nouveau riche, with black money and pink Bentleys, where talk of fortunes (made, spent, and lost) is constant and unabashed, and where your place on the social ladder is decided by the size of the solitaire your husband buys you—a Delhi where wealthy residents, apart from their palatial mansions in ‘posh localities’, maintain lavish vacation homes or ‘farmhouses’ in the city’s rural outskirts for luxurious weekends and extravagant birthday and wedding bashes.

Another contrasting yet a parallel skein with this in-your-face affluence is the ‘khandaani’ Delhi of old money, pedigree and ‘class’—a Delhi where quiet, understated, expensive elegance is the order of the day; whose residents confine themselves to their cloistered haunts—Jor Bagh, Golf Links, Babar Lane, Chelmsford and Gymkhana clubs. A Delhi with generations of money whose culture is a hybrid of the influences of the court circles in the Mughal era and the British Raj; whose farmhouses are a far cry from vulgar ostentation and the last word in good taste; who disdain random splurging of money, value family heirlooms and confine themselves to designer originals in clothes.

There is also the Delhi of defence and civil service professionals who generally occupy the sprawling government bungalows in the NDMC area of central Delhi and coexist with the Delhi of high profile intellectuals—both academic and political (the dividing line often becomes blurred), who are patrons of the arts, who frequent the Lalit Kala Academy, Triveni Kala Sangam, Kamani Auditorium, India International Centre, the Habitat Centre, art galleries, crafts exhibitions and museums and who, by virtue of their profile, constitute a sub-group of the ‘classy’ Delhi.

On the other end of the spectrum is what can be called the city’s underbelly—the burgeoning slums with their total absence of sanitation, hygiene or any kind of civic facilities that, apart from housing the rank poor: the beggars, unskilled daily wagers and domestic labour, are also hotbeds of crime and disease. Betwixt these two extremes of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, exist the numerous other facets of Delhi.

There is the Delhi of earnest, khadi-clad intellectuals and social workers who work for causes, and in NGOs and homes for the underprivileged, pouring out their hearts and souls into thankless tasks that pay them a pittance, endeavouring to alleviate the ills of the city (and the country); who lead pickets and demonstrations at Jantar Mantar and make inflammatory speeches in an effort to rouse the world into action.

Another facet is the Delhi of the upper middle class and the ‘yuppies’ (young urban professionals, once disparagingly called ‘Punjabi urban professionals’ or ‘puppies’, but no longer confined to any one community, and now also encompassing upcoming business persons), on the make by any means that come their way. They collect professional degrees and diplomas and aspire to coffee-table book lifestyles, ever larger cars, bigger homes, costlier clothes and vacations, trendier accessories, expensive boarding schools or coaching classes for their kids, daily trips to malls and movie theatres, regular weekend parties at pubs and ‘swinging’ joints, and, as they grow older, frequent trips to fashionable health resorts.

And then there is the Delhi of the ‘middle class’, trying to incorporate the demands and influences of contemporary lifestyles into traditional values and moralities, struggling to accommodate the burgeoning needs of the young into precariously balanced budgets in the everlasting battle against inflation and ‘corrupting influences’.

There is also the Delhi of the ‘purana Dilliwalas’—residents of the walled city who may have now relocated to the outlying areas of the city to escape the congestion in Chandni Chowk, Darya Ganj, Fatehpuri. These are people who still revel in their traditional lifestyles and hold culinary sway over traditional cuisine. Amongst all these are many other Delhis, too intangible for concrete classification, but existing nevertheless.

It is no wonder then that visitors to Delhi often tend to feel alienated initially. However, the entirely flexible character of the city ensures that they soon shake down and find, or create, a comfort zone of their own. And as for Delhiites, past and present, the city claims them for its own, despite all that is changing, unfamiliar and at times intimidating—like an old shoe that, in spite of pinching at expected (and sometimes unexpected) spots, is nevertheless, inexpressibly comforting.