(For all the non Delhiites, who has no family in Delhi, craving for home made food, specially big pieces of fish and gravy and tasty mutton, home made style, this is for you)
Many many years ago, in Delhi...
I don’t get food in my PG, not even a single meal. I survived on dabbawalahs all these months and street food like momos, chaats, bread omelettes and expensive restaurants on weekends, but that food style lead me to hospital, I had dengue and typhoid simultaneously and was hospitalised for 11days and took long unpaid leaves before and after hospitalising. I had to take antibiotics every 4hours else I would shiver severely and I was almost sure I wouldn’t survive. And all I wanted from God at that time was to become normal again. That was a terror phase of my life. I had to return home and be another terror for my family.
Now I am back in Delhi and in the same hostel without food. So what do I do?
Of course, I don't take dabbas (tiffin meal) again. I somehow pleaded the landowner, by all possible ways (emotional blackmail, threat, stern, sad, polite, sweet) ways and finally he was convinced that I should be allowed to cook in his kitchen (a kitchen provided for the caretaker and his family) for at least a month or he would go to hell after death and burn in fire for not helping this poor little girl.
Ok, I cooked for a month and quite a lavish cooking it was……….I dedicatedly dedicated almost one and a half hour in the kitchen everyday and cooked for the day and I really made some yummy recipes. But after one month the villain in my happy movie entered, the uncivilized, uneducated, heartless, damn caretaker. He was in his ‘des’ (village) all these months. In the absence of the landowner, he was the self proclaimed owner of the place. The landowner lived away from this place, so he had hired this caretaker since like over 20years. The ‘paying guest’ building , which was originally a mini hospital, was three storied, and all the rooms in all the floors were rented as ‘pg’ including the ground floor which had two rooms for rent and one room where the caretaker and his family lived. And this caretaker behaved as if he owned the whole ground floor, right from the entry gate, small verandah, tv area, sofas, fridge (2 of them), the backyard, the old but ‘still working’ washing machine and the kitchen. So seeing me in his territory, in his kitchen, he was all fuming. I lived in a single seater in the ground floor. I could literally feel some hot air around me when he passed by ....!
So he stopped my cooking the day it turned one month. I had a heated argument with him. Allowing me to use the kitchen for max. 2 hours in a day, would have done him no harm. (I brought my own vegetables, my own masalas, salt, even my own utensils. And didnt take more than two hours to cook). But he was adamant.
So after a few hours of cursing him and crying over my destiny, I looked out for more options. Necessity is the mother of invention, I found out a place, a temple that provided food (breakfast / lunch/ dinner) for the people who stayed in the guest houses in the temple premises. The food is good, it’s like a hostel mess, a big dining hall with plastic tables and chairs, no ac, many doors and windows with abundant cross ventilation and overlooking well mowed, trimmed, green turfs. The kitchen was adjoining the hall and could be accesed and seen from the hall. So what, who, how cooking is done, was visible. And the kitchen was quite clean and the temple effect/feel had made it cleaner, I suppose. Anyways, my mind worked at its fastest pace to plan out how to make it a success. I turned to my room mate with the idea. My roomie was a clean and sweet girl, (clean - the way Meryl Streep described her husband in ‘the bridges of madison county’). She was the 'mummy papa’s dear, nice daughter type girl' in this 21st century. Pure vegetarian, helpful, wore salwar suit, with the duppatta serving its purpose always, no make up, not even kajal, no hairstyle, rough hair with a thick plait. She is the sweetest girl I had met in this century and meeting her made me believe that God was sometimes good to me. She never see, hear, and say bad things, words and always on ‘may I help you?’ mode. I found her so sweet. But, never imagined, she could also be a,…eh.. problem?? Yes, she was a vegetarian and the temple mess served non veg food also. So she assumed they made the food in the same utensils and she would die hungry than eating food made of the utensils where non veg food was also cooked. Now my next mission was how to convince her that this was a myth.
I told her, "lets go and ask them straight if they make everything in the same utensils and clear the problem."
She agreed. (She also didn’t like the dabba food )
We asked and she actually went inside the kitchen and investigated and came out, much to my relief, knowing that no, they prepared both veg and non veg in different utensils. So she agreed to go with me to dinner in the mandir. Well, you must be wondering why do I need a company to go there. Well, it being a guest house, the crowd wasnt that good and they serve dinner at 9pm, which is the tym no good for a girl to walk alone in the streets and then to a place where theres men and men all around (although it’s a temple it’s a temple in DELHI after all.)
The food was good.
The menu is in a meal, a thali, they serve:
Rice (there's second serving, if you are new else you have to keep on shouting and they mite not attend)
Dal (there's second serving, if you are new and pretty and smiled when he served at the beginning)
one sabji (a seasonal vegetable mixed sabji)
fish curry(one BIG fish piece that will bring a smile to your face, generally rohu but it keeps on changing and not thick gravy, its more homestyle)
or mutton on Sunday dinner (min 3 pieces of mutton, and not thick gravy, homestyle) you need to go early and be among the first few eaters else it gets finished.
Tuesdays vegetarian. And sometimes egg thali.
Otherwise this is the menu of lunch, dinner for the entire week. And per fish thali is 60 rupees and mutton thali is 90 rupees.
Since we became regular visitors, I made a deal with the cashier, who seems to be the manager. We used to have sabji and two or three rotis, as that was enough for dinner. So, we saved a few bucks and they were also pretty cool with the deal.
Sabji was charged 30 rupees and 3 rupees per chapati. We were happy with the 36rupees deal as the food was fresh cooked, hygienic and served hot.
So, basically for you people who are away from home and craving for home made simple food on a daily basis in delhi, this is a good destination I would say. There were loop holes ofcourse but you have to deal with it, nothing is perfect. Loop holes like you speak sweetly and nicely to the boys who serve you food at the beginning and they become the nightmare later, they would keep on staring at you from a distant while you are eating, you would bump into them in the market or other local shops since you stay in the same locality. But staying in delhi teaches you how to deal with all these, don’t worry. So I would suggest better go in a group of atleast two or speak in bengali to them, it actually helps!
N.B: And to know the further details you can contact me.
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It was something like this,
yep both, the meal and the smile! |
But the feeling when you miss those loving gesture of your loved ones, when you get a cold reaction from the new people, when you find yourself all alone, when tears roll down your eyes uncontrollably in the crowd, when you wish you could run back to the one who loves you.
