...it's only words

Since I belong to the mountains, I speak for them but this might just hold true for other places in the world too. The memories you come back with depend upon the season you go in. For me, the mist is the most overpowering impression of Sikkim in pre-monsoon June. It seeps through the fir trees, through dense orchid laden forests and between clefts in the mountain tops. It wafts in the breeze like a swaying curtain of grey, finds you wherever you are and puts its arms around you like an old friend.

It blurs the stern outlines of monasteries that stand in solitary grandeur on the top of hills, places beads of dampness on the rich maroon robes of little boy lamas, touches the cheeks of fat babies sleeping in the cozy knot of fabric slung around their mothers’ backs and fills the fur of lazy Bhotia dogs sprawled outside roadside beer and momo shacks, adding a musty smell if you go close enough and take a deep breath.

For a week plus we tread on the toes of Mount Kachenjunga leaving behind foot marks in the damp grass but we never get to see its handsome face, however high we turn our heads. The mist has found it before us and wrapped it in possessive haze. So Tenzing’s Kachenjunga is a no show unless you’d like to count the beautiful oil painting of those snow covered peaks that hangs in the EME Officers Mess at Kalimpong. Set up in an old English time bungalow with orange spider lilies blooming along the sidewalk and thick green ivy climbing up the old stone walls, the Mess is a heritage site in itself. But, I’ll save that for another blog. For me, the most fascinating thing about Sikkim are its people – the school guard whose smile reaches so deep into his crinkling eyes that it almost closes them shut; the feisty old lady who introduces herself as “buddhi” and blows bubble gum balloons as she sits hawking her wares in the Sunday haat in Lal Bazaar, Gangtok;  the taxi driver smelling suspiciously of channg at 10 in the morning, who laughs off our crib that he doesn’t have good Nepalese songs in his car, turns his head around (yes, while still driving) and silences us by singing the romantic Rato Rani phule jhai sanjha ma, timi phulyo kaleji majhaa maa (the flower Raat ki Rani blooms in the dusk, but you bloom in my heart).

As the SUV picks us up at Bagdogra airport and winds up the curves to Kerseong, bypassing fresh green Sal forests, tea plantations and women selling piles of hot roasted corn on the cob at the roadside; the air starts getting cooler. Soon the tracks of the toy train to Ghoom (an aptly named curve in the road a few kilometers before Darjeeling) start running alongside. Wayside shacks sell tea and chips that you can have sitting on the train tracks. Though the train has not been running for a year because of a landslide enroute, even when it does, it moves so slow that there is time to blow on your tea, dunk a milk biscuit in and get up at a leisurely pace when you see it heading in your direction.      

Stephen Hawking might not agree but fact is that time slows down as you reach closer to the Himalay. Wherever you look you find people looking back at you with a friendly twinkle in their eyes. Yes, they have the time. They sit outside their little houses in Bermudas and slippers, holding babies in their arms, alongside sleepy dogs and rich pink and red begonias growing from rusting cans on the window sills, at peace with the world.  We spot young boys play carom along the toy train tracks, board balanced on an upturned bucket. Little girls with bright yellow ribbons knotted into large flowers in their pigtails skip rope outside their houses. And proud mamma hens with Bianca Castafiore bosoms waddle across train tracks with a retinue of chirping chicks, completely ignoring the rooster’s disapproving crowing from a tin roof, like any seasoned wife. She might eventually end up inside a momo but then most of us will also finally find ourselves roasting in a burning fire or inside a deep pit. That’s no reason why life cannot be enjoyed while it is still smiling in our faces, right?

Darjeeling is thickly populated with tourists, their loud chatter pierces the eardrums and their cars belch smoke into the air. They create such a mess that I would like to dissociate completely from it all and if you are planning a visit in the tourist season, I’d like to hold you back by the arm and say: “Please don’t go!” An untidy mesh of wires droop across streets and traffic jams are a painful norm. Once upon a time, Darjeeling must have been a beautiful hill town. Now, she is a worn out town gasping for breath under an overload of insensitive visitors and garbage. Signs of the beauty it must have once possessed show only in the upper reaches beyond where the hotels and the market end. If you really want to see that, walk up the narrow twists and turns in the road high up to where the Cantonment begins and St Paul Boarding School (where Sushmita Sen sizzled in sexy chiffons for Shahrukh Khan’s Main Hun Naa) stretches itself into a lazy yawn on the hillside since it’s summer vacation time and the boys have all gone home. This is where you find lilies sprouting by the wayside, wild red roses ambling up wood houses and bright blue Hydrangea peeping from behind shiny dark green leaves. Up in the cantonment, a hillside of undulating green unfolds before you. Occasionally, you run into wrinkled old men with umbrellas hanging from curved handles tucked into the back of their collars, a serious walker who reads a newspaper while he walks, who has probably been doing it for so many years that he does not even bother to look up at the winding turns in the road, an Army officer’s labs in black, brown and white unimaginatively named Blackie, Brownie and, well, Kanchi, which means pretty girl in Nepali. And speaking of Kanchis, you also run into young girls with perfect curves and salty faces and drop dead gorgeous smiles that can stop you in the tracks if you happen to be male.   

Once the men have been pulled away from that, we go down to the town for a taste of thupka and momos, try some Dansberg beer brought from the factories of the film star Danny Denzongpa, sample the Death by Chocolate pastries and chicken rolls of Glenary and pick up a few souvenirs from the sharp Nepali women who have set shop by the wayside. But thereafter, we return to the peace and calm of the cantonment and find a taxi that will cross the border and take us to Sikkim where prayer flags flutter overhead and the rich colours of Tibet show on ornate bus stops and exotic gompas.

Gangtok is where I find shady walkways that look like they’ll take me all the way to heaven. Since that’s not where I want to go as of now, I turn back in an hour’s time and on the walk back meet friendly kids in smart school uniforms not realy in a hurry to get there, young beauties wrapped in traditional bakus with shiny black hair and complexions that can put pink roses to shame. Up in the Lingdum monastery, I run into Lamas with gentle smiles and lilting Buddhist chants that don’t mean a thing to me but still fill the senses with peace and a sense of oneness with the universe. Sitting patiently on souvenir shop shelves I find green Tara devis and white Buddhas carved out of Yak bone dust. In the zoo, I find  sprawled Red Pandas that look like they are still nursing a hangover from Saturday evening and, yes, in my room I find a nocturnal visitor who stands there staring back at me, middle of the night and then exits through the window as I watch - hypnotized by terror. But that’s a horror story for another day. This one is a look at ramro Sikkim wrapped in grey mist. And that’s how we’ll let it be.

Ramro: beautiful, Kancchi: pretty girl

Just for a moment, put aside that cup of instant coffee, or instant cereal or canned juice or whatever instant food you are trying to poison yourself with and try to recollect - how long has it been since you sunk your teeth into something more real than that. Like half a dozen tangy gol gappas, a plate of bhelpuri, a piping hot wada pav or maybe even a big, juicy, chunk of pineapple? No, not the kind that comes sliced in identical bits in transparent white boxes at your air conditioned department store, but the one that is sold on the roadside in most Indian cities by a man pushing a wooden cart. Is it too long ago or can you still remember him taking the hard skin off with a cleaver held in deft brown fingers; chopping the plump, yellow inside into uneven rectangles; sprinkling salt on top from a faded plastic bottle. And then, handing it to you on a shallow cone of dried leaves, stapled together by brown twigs, with a twist of fresh green lime, a dash of chat masala and a toothy smile. Also, a few cholera causing bacteria, did you say. Well, Indian stomachs are strong enough to digest those. Or at least they used to be.
 
I can speak for my generation. We grew up on crispy fried potatoes, diced papaya, slitted guava, longitudinally sliced cucumbers, even peeled white radish for the brave and the burpers. Dished out from a hand pushed cart or a wicker basket on the roadside, sprinkled with a mouthwatering mix of secret spices, they scalded the tongue, satiated hunger pangs, combated heat strokes and gave good friends yet another reason to hang out together. The fact that they made you poorer only by Rs 10 or less, added to their charm. To those of you who never did this and are crinkling their noses even as they read, I can only shake my head gravely and say, “Just too bad buddy. You’ll never know what you missed. A better life next time”.

Actually, to be honest, this was supposed to be an article about eating trends in young Indians. That was the rather clear brief I was given, along with a rather clear deadline. I completely missed both. Not only did the article get written late, it also shape shifted and turned into a gush piece on roadside snacks. And what is more, it got published. Which simply reinforces my belief that there is some magic in street food.

Anyone who has sampled it can tell you, just as I do, that street food in India has a taste and flavor of its own, very difficult to forget or even recreate, in the best of kitchens. In all the years I was working in Delhi with a newspaper office at ITO, I was loyal to a paranthawallah who, probably being a later riser, would open shop (in an about-to-fall-apart rickety old van) sometime before midnight near the Times of India building. Watching him work was a pleasure in itself. He would roll out balls of dough into large circles, slap one on a hot tava and then pour onto it a finely whipped froth of eggs, onion, coriander and green chillies. Letting it cook for a while till the egg started to set, he would lift another circle of rolled out dough and with a practiced hand, flip it like a lid on top of the bubbling omelette. When each side of the parantha started to acquire delicate dots of brown, he would shallow fry it in oil by holding a large spatula over it very firmly. Finally, it would come to my plate - golden brown and sizzling, with a cube of butter melting on top and a spoonful of bright orange pickled carrot on the side. So many years have passed since and I confess I have tried more than once to recreate that magic in my kitchen, failing miserably each time. The anda parantha of ITO is just another one of those indeletable memories that will haunt me through my lifetime.

Around the same time, there was a chat vendor at Sarojini Nagar, who served a lethal cocktail of boiled potatoes, fried to a caramel crisp from a tiny stall in the midst of the crowded market. He would take the simple ingredients – diced fried potatoes, salt, pepper, lime juice and a tangy green chutney ­-- in a metal tumbler, hold a plate over it and shake it for all he was worth. The spice coated cubes would then be delivered to the waiting customer on a disposable plastic plate with a toothpick to eat them with. Not only did the potatoes scald the taste buds and make steam curl out of the ears, they also sent you with your tongue hanging out to the juice bar alongside for a mango shake or a cold coffee. And despite the torture, or maybe because of it, they hypnotized you into coming back for more next week. Long time since I went there. With fried potatoes acquiring a reputation for being deadly killers, sodium a sure shot recipe for heart attack, and cheap oil just getting on with the mission of clogging arteries, it is not easy to do that stunt anymore. Maybe that man is still around, setting people’s tongues on fire, but I have since lost the feel of immortality that comes only with the bravado of youth.

Buried in the sands of time (food always makes me poetic) are other memories like these. Like those of a solitary dhaba up in the hills of Pauri Garhwal, where I come from. With a naked side of the craggy brown mountain serving as the back wall and uncomfortable wood benches for customers, it sits on a bend in the road between Dugadda and Lansdowne, where the toll booth used to be. All that it dishes out, in porcelain bowls with edges chipped off from careless washing, is steaming hot black gram curry, ladled out of a gigantic iron pot simmering on a pine wood fire. I have been going there for 30 plus years and a more mature crowd much longer.

The old man who made it earlier is long gone. But I suspect ownership remains with the family because the recipe appears to be the same. And so do its connoisseurs – bent old men with frayed black umbrellas, forest bound ghaseris (grass gathering women) with sickles tucked into their waistbands, young village boys with sharp noses going to the town to give an entrance exam. And, sometimes, people like me. All of us lifting spoonfuls of gram curry and depositing it in our mouths till the only sound you hear is of steel spoon meeting porcelain bowl bottom. And sometimes, a bus horn blaring somewhere outside, desperately signalling that it is time to go. With the aroma of roasted spices floating in the air and mingling with the fragrant smell of pine cones, it is a moment of complete gastronomical surrender. Even as the bus driver continues to honk, all of us ignore him and finish our meal with a ribbed glass of sweet milky tea – an inseparable part of the ritual. And only after we have emptied the last drop in our mouths, do we move on to attend to the more cumbersome business of life. Can it get better than that? I doubt very much!

This article has appeared in Sizzling Pots, a fine dining magazine published from Houston http://mag.sizzlingpots.com/articles/87-roadside-rendezvous.html