Khana, Dostana Aur Party-ana

India-wali Party

Listen, I very strongly feel you should join INIDA.

Arrey bhai my passport, Aadhar and every document shows I am from India and an Indian.

I am not talking about that India, I mean INDIA…Join us. You can get us the insurance votes across the country.

Nahi baba… the day I join your INDIA, I will have ED, IB, NSA and IT at my throat and the online army will decimate me, my family and my friends. Anyway, other than casting my vote, I have no intention of joining politics. Moreover, why should I join you?

You don’t know? I was a junior to you in school.

With that logic, I should have joined movies with SRK who was also a junior…..forget it, Ra.

You will soon be retiring. This will give you a good cause to work for…INDIA! I will chase you till you agree to join the noble cause.

You better chase a pretty damsel and forget about me. India is in my heart and shall always remain there. I am happier with my friends and food. There was an India before me and there will be an India after me. Whether the INDIA you now represent will win or not is best left to the intelligent Indians who will decide in ‘24. As far as my retirement plans are concerned, I am not planning anything. For now, I am connecting with my friends and enjoying the food from different parts of this glorious land called India. Bye Bye INDIA…Hello India as I hop on to a cab to drive to my friend RP’s place in the heart of the Lutyens’ city.

Dilli-wali Party

Delhi is my city of birth, the city of my school, my college and one that houses a myriad memories and my many friends. So today was the day when a bunch of school friends came together to enjoy what was called a Wenger’s Party. So, for those not from Delhi, Wenger’s is the city’s oldest and, for many, still the best confectioner.  Every year my daughter’s birthday cakes in Delhi would come from this iconic shop in Connaught Place. This was also the place from where my father would bring home puffs and patty a couple of times in a year and those were, indeed, big festive days in the house. Started in 1926 in Kashmeri Gate, Wenger’s moved to its current place in 1933. Owned originally by a Swiss couple named Wenger, it was the place where the British bureaucrats, foreign diplomats and Indian royalty went before independence. It changed hands to Indian owners in 1945 and has been serving and delighting Delhi-walas with the best cakes, pastries and snacks. But today was different. A few school buddies, with whom the bond was well over fifty long years, came together and got the chicken patties, shaami kebabs and pineapple pastries. It was just marvellous eating down the memory lane. The taste was as heavenly as it was then, just that the company of friends made it even tastier.

Patna ki Shaadi-wali Party

As I landed in Patna, which possibly has the smallest airport I have even been to, I saw the entire city decorated with pictures of Ra, So, Ni, Mo, La…. You name any and they were there welcoming you to the ancient historic city of Pataliputra. The opposition conclave was happening in two days’ time. My phone buzzed… it was him on the other line… I hope to see you in the meeting in the next two days.

No ways, buddy. I shall fly back to Mumbai the day you land. I am here to enjoy a wedding party and not to be a part of INDIA party…and I switched off my phone completely.

I was determined to enjoy the wedding of the daughter of a friend for over thirty-five years. This good friend came for my wedding in Kolkata in 1989 and then we went for his at Patna in 1990. When his elder daughter got married in 2018, my better half went to Bangalore. He came down from Kenya with his family for my daughter’s wedding at Mumbai in 2020 and now here I was at his younger one’s wedding at Pataliputra. I was joined by two other friends of the same vintage and one of whom was the official photographer at my wedding and the other arranged for a make shift honeymoon for us in Orissa.

On the day of the wedding, we drove off to see the holy Patna Sahib Gurudwara where the tenth guru of the Sikhs, Guru Gobind Singh ji was born in 1666. Takht Sri Patna Sahib is also known as Takhat Sri Harmandir ji Patna Sahib and the original gurudwara was built by Maharaja Ranjit Singh in the 19^th century. I have always loved the feel of the gurudwaras where peace and tranquillity prevail at all times everywhere from the entrance to the place where your shoes are taken charge of by an elderly man with his hands folded in respect, and then, from the sanctum sanctorum where the Granth Sahib is kept and the gurbani is recited to the distribution of the kada Prasad. To me this is the best prasad of all for the pure desi ghee will stick to your palms and the flavour will linger much after you have gulped the manna down.

Now, with the blessings of the Gurus, we asked our Uber driver to take us to the place where you could get the best litti-chokha in Patna. The fellow was so happy that we had literally given him the driving wheel to treat us to local food that he meandered through many small lanes and by-lanes and, after about thirty minutes of driving, stopped at a busy road-side and showed us where to walk across to eat. We asked him to join us as we plunged our fingers into a couple of freshly baked littis with   the tastiest chokha and all the four plates cost us less than a hundred bucks. A look at the food cart had many colourful pictures pasted and the man proudly claimed that his food had won many an award in the Asian Street Food Festival held in Manila.

If you are wondering what on earth this food that originated in Bhojpur and Eastern UP called litti-chokha is, then let me explain.  Litti is a whole wheat flour dough ball that is stuffed with an earthy, spiced mixture of sattu or roasted black chickpea or kala chana flour. Chokha, on the other hand, is a very basic mashed relish made of vegetables like brinjal (aubergine/eggplant), potato, tomato. It is what the vada-pav is for the Marathi manoos and the idli-vada is to the people down south. It is the food of the common people and I was surprised to learn that you could also get non-vegetarian litti-choka. For another time!

On seeing the baraatis dance without the usual jerks and fervour, I realised it was not because they were not happy at the occasion but it had more to do with the present government’s strictly implemented prohibition policy in the city. They took a relatively quick round of dancing and came back to the venue early, quite expected given the heat of the summers in the city and absence of any spirit-ual incentive for the revellers. The marriage was a grand affair and the food stalls were so many and so well spread that the food eaten at one end would get digested by the time you reached the dessert counter at the other end. And what did I eat of the big spread? Litti-chokha once again! The litti here was soaking in desi ghee and tasted even better than the Asian Champion’s stall at Rajendra Nagar in the morning. My only regret at Patna was that I missed tasting a few of the forty types of samosas which one of the vendors near the hotel was selling.

Sonu te Monu di Party

Once more on landing at Bengaluru on the 14^th of July, I was greeted with even bigger cut outs of all the leaders of the soon to be named union called INDIA. At this conclave of 29 leaders, they were going to formalise and announce their grand plans for the big fight of ’24. I had begged the not so young leader of the national party to ensure that cut outs of me did not figure anywhere even by mistake. It took me one whole day to convince him that my retirement and the coming into the political fray would be like the re-enactment of Tolkien’s The Return of the King and such magical and mystical things happened in the fairy tales and Hollywood screens.

I had some time in the evening and called out to my asli chuddi wala dost who has been my partner in crime, love, sport, travel…you name it and we were together almost all days for many years…over a decade and a half. We were simply inseparable! We had lost connect for many years lately but thanks to our blogs, he connected and started commenting on almost every blog we wrote. I knew this was his way of saying….chal dost milte hain…I knew he was working in the Garden City so, instead of messaging, I picked up the phone, scrolled for his number and without wasting time on pleasantries, invited him for dinner. He immediately accepted the invitation. Now my challenge was to find an iconic and special place and I picked The Only Place to eat with this special friend.

In 1965, Haroon Sulaiman Sait started as a B&B called Regent Guest House on Brigade Road. The place attracted a lot of foreigners. To serve them, Sulaiman changed the menu to steaks, pizzas and burgers. One Japanese liked the food so much that he made a sketch of lips smacking on a napkin and called it ‘the only place’ and so the eatery got its new name and logo and is now located at Museum Road. It is now the go to place for those who want to have authentic steaks and burgers. It is frequented by the who’s who of Bangalore and overseas guests.  My friend and I had a super steak and lamb lasagne and topped it with an apple pie. The food was just too good and the ambience so welcoming and serene that you could spend hours sitting there. The food was most reasonably priced and to us friends, who had grown up enjoying chhole-bhature outside Ambedkar Stadium in Delhi before the innumerable DCM and Durand Cup football matches that we saw together, this was truly a grand feast and a super reunion.

Yeh hai mera India, I love my India.

SS