No!” The man known to all only as “Panditji”, the owner of the stall, was angry with me when I tried to reach for the plate in his hand; my plate, which I’d paid for. “Open your mouth!” he instructed. With his grubby paws, this so-called Panditji fed me my first helping ever of sev puri — aka a fun-sized portion of bhel puri on top of a tiny papri, sort of. Minus the invasion of my personal space and the ludicrously polluted locales of the Juhu Chowpatty — famous for its sev puri, chaat, and pav bhaaji (and garbage) — the experience was exquisite. I was visiting what was still “Bombay”, but the memory has stuck.
Belonging to the North Indianoid race of people headquartered in New Delhi, I’d been blessed with an appreciation of chaat, one I naively believed to be unique to my people . It was only later, once I’d stepped out of my butter-chicken-rajma-chawal bubble, that I realised that chaat cuts across all kinds of boundaries.
Years later, living in Mumbai, I went to one of those anachronistic Indian fast-food restaurants that still exists, unsullied by any incursion of “fusion” beyond, say, a schezwan dosa — you know, those old-school places with little regard for modern hospitality laws, instead focussing purely on quality of food and volume of customers. We had golgappas. Well, I did. My friend, who has family in Kolkata, ate “phuchkas” apparently. The Mumbai locals around us (people, not trains) were busy eating “pani puri”.
Surprise: all of us were eating the exact same thing. Our eyes (and noses) were equally watery with all the spice; we each had a gulp of the golgappa water at the end, followed by a sookha — a dry phuchka/puri/golgappa — to conclude. The rituals had been the same too; give your specific instructions for each golgappa: more saunth, more water, more aloo-chana; look distressed while eating; dump the whole thing in your mouth in one go; wait your turn impatiently; make that comforting tssssss sound when it’s too spicy.
Lines of battle
Chaat, conceptually, puzzles me. I won’t say it ‘unites’ people across state lines or any such idyllic twaddle. But it tends to be met with general approval regardless of one’s political leanings. Most foods incite such heavy examination that it gets quite tedious after a point. Look at b**f, for starters, and what it’s done to our country. It was food, in fact, that kick-started India’s independence struggle, no?
Then, on a much lower-stakes level, there’s the notoriously dreary vegetarian vs. non-vegetarian debate, with the newly-joined vegans spicing things up with their bland tofu. And let’s not even get started on whether pineapple goes on top of a pizza or not. Dear god.
But then we come to chaat, which, outside of what to call it, seems to be free of any heavy-duty belief systems. To be clear, I am — for the sake of convenience — counting all its individual team members as falling under the larger ‘chaat’ umbrella, so it includes bhel puri, papri chaat, sev puri, golgappas, aloo-tikki, aloo-chaat, and that big fat round thing stuffed with all of the above, which takes about an hour and one minor coronary to finish. And everyone loves, or largely enjoys, most of the variants. Some don’t, and they mostly just shrug it off. There’s very little bleeding-heart virtue signalling around chaat.
Rags to riches
It’s of course thrilling to eat chaat from one of those roadside vendors with a “we use mineral water” board, or even the allegedly unhygienic dirty water kinds — all the more when you’re financially secure enough to feel all quaint and exotic about doing these so-called rustic things. A set-piece that appears often in my visions is of eating bhel puri in that one corner shop in South Extension (the left side, not the right) in Delhi, which kept growing in size with every visit because of how popular it was becoming.
But chaat, unlike a lot of street food — momos, for instance — isn’t fun to eat only on the streets. It’s the rags-to-riches tale; the kid come good in the face of adversity. It works even in the big establishment restaurants. The India Habitat Centre — home to the second snootiest set of people in Delhi (after the Delhi Gymkhana) — has a chaat counter in the buffet at its Indian restaurant, Delhi ‘O’ Delhi, every night.
And there’s the memories I have of Chor Bizarre, a fancy restaurant in Old Delhi that eventually grew more branches, which had this cult, ‘institution’ status in Delhi culinary circles. I don’t know about now, but they used to have a vintage car inside — that’s how old they are — inside which was a fascinating DIY chaat counter. You could make your own chaat, as per your exact taste preferences. In a car.
At weddings, too — fancy or not-fancy — you’ll usually have a chaat counter regardless of the size of life-savings being dumped into said celebration. It’s used as much as bait as for appeasement; it’s not dinner-time yet, and the guests are grumpy because of the hundred ceremonies going on. So let’s just open the chaat counter to shut them up.
Old husbands’ tale
And since we’re on the subject, chaat is also the source of the number one old husbands’ tale, a home remedy I’ve resisted so far. Apparently, according to nutjobs who peddle this theory, if you have a cold, a blocked nose, a fever, a cough, all you have to do is eat like a sh*t-ton of extra-spicy golgappas. “ Sab clear ho jayega — all that phlegm will come tumbling out,” they’ll tell you with a triumphant, sagely expression. Sounds totally believable.
What I’m getting at, basically, is how chaat seems to exist in its own little world. It’s free from a lot of the baggage that’s attached to so many foods around and there’s a vague kind of consensus around it. Plus it qualifies as neither sweet nor savoury — somewhere in between, really — so we don’t even need to open that particular can of worms. And it’s vegetarian (though the presence of onions and potatoes can cause some cultural discomfort here, which, let’s just not get into). Isn’t it time we start exporting this stuff instead of selling it dirt-cheap on street corners?
The author is a freelance culture writer from New Delhi who wishes he’d studied engineering instead.
SUNDAY RECIPE
Dahi Puri
Ingredients:
2-3 potatoes
1 small onion
1 small tomato
A handful moong sprouts (optional)
1 cup green chutney
1 cup sweet chutney
A small bunch of coriander leaves
1/2 cup curd (or as required)
Puris or golgappas or phuchkas (as many as you wish)
Fine sev
Red chilli powder (to garnish)
Chaat masala (to garnish)
Black salt (to garnish, optional)
Method:
1. Green chutney: Grind together 2 cups of coriander leaves, 1-2 green chillies, small piece of ginger, 1.5 tbsp lemon juice, 1 tsp jeera powder and salt to taste, with a little water. Adjust consistency with water as required.
2. Sweet chutney: In a small saucepan, boil together half cup seedless tamarind and half cup seedless dates with 2 cups of water. After about 8-10 mins, when they are cooked soft, add half cup powdered jaggery. Once jaggery dissolves and thickens, add half tsp each of red chilli powder, coriander powder, jeera powder, and dry ginger powder. Cook for 2 mins, add salt to taste, turn off stove and let the mixture cool. Once cooled, grind to a paste with some water if needed. Strain mixture and keep.
3. Boil potatoes, cool, peel and roughly crumble with your hands. Make sure the pieces are not too big.
4. Finely chop onions, tomatoes and coriander leaves.
5. Lightly salt the curd and whisk it smooth.
6. To assemble: Arrange puris in a plate, carefully crack the top with thumb so you can add the potatoes and chutneys.
7. Now add small quantity of boiled potato, moong sprouts (if using), and a little chopped onion and tomato.
8. Top with green chutney, sweet chutney and beaten curd as needed.
9. Sprinkle red chilli powder, chaat masala and black salt.
10. Throw on the sev generously and garnish with coriander leaves. Serve immediately.
