Delhi: playing with digestive fire

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Lazy Saturday morning. I got up late and let the maid into the apartment while Henri and Anita were still sleeping. I checked my e-mails and my NFL fantasy team and enjoyed just hanging out.

For breakfast, we had Nutella on toast with fruit juice on the terrace and Henri showed me how to make some chai (“Oh, you need to cook the water and the milk together!”). We then started an impromptu bird-watching session from his roof top apartment: we saw a bulbul, barbets and a warbler. We checked his guide of North Indian birds and found out that what I had seen yesterday at Jantar Mantar was a grey hornbill.

We then headed out to the local post office to send the postcards (I know, it’s been a while since I’ve written them). The post office was a bit hard to find and consisted of a large counter with three attendants, practically outdoors. We bought the stamps and used their messy glue bottle to smudge their backs and press them on the postcards. I can’t promise that the postcards will arrive safely or in good condition but I have video footage of the high-powered postmark to prove my good intentions.

We skipped lunch. Henri and I had booked a tour of Old Delhi specialized in discovering the secret tastes of local street food. We boarded a rickshaw who we ditched halfway through when he decided to wait in line for gas at the station. We were late already. We flagged down another rickshaw who took us straight into the traffic jams of Old Delhi. When we reached Jama Masjid, the tour had already begun and we sort of joined in midway through the first act. We had enough time in the mosque though to marvel at its size and architecture. The red sandstone was hot in the sun and we needed to follow the little paths assembled with rugs and various fabrics. A lot of curious teenagers would “join” the tour and just stand there listening to the guide, before one guy from the group kindly shoved them away. The mosque is also full of insistent child beggars competing with each other for the tourists’ attention.

We then made a beeline for the bustling streets of Old Delhi, passing by ear cleaners, fighting goats and auto parts sellers. Our guide took us to our first food stop where we had fruit sandwiches. Pineapple-paneer, pomegranate-paneer, chicku-paneer and then a vegetable one that had at least tomato and cucumber in it. Good start. We flushed it all down with a cup of cold coffee (made from crushed ice, with chocolate powder). The second stop was a stall on a street corner that had two or three skillets on the fire by the sidewalk. It served aloo tikki, aloo chat and bite-size sweet and savoury snacks that consisted of pieces of fruit covered with pomegranate seeds and a spicy masala. The taste was interesting but it wasn’t my favourite. People would pass along the plastic plates with little spoons to try each dish. It was a friendly atmosphere.

Then we visited a rooftop mosque that was sort of hidden from the general public up a very narrow staircase. It had a nice courtyard but we needed to go before the next prayer session. As we left, the Allah Akbars started. Good timing.

The third stop was another chat shop at a street corner in the bazaar. It served aloo chat with different gravies and gol gappa filled with sauces and what seemed to be chick peas. It was pretty good but some bites were way spicier than others. The place was busy with other customers and it was difficult to have a steady footing on the sidewalk. Henri and I were having fun taking pictures and capturing videos, and we almost lost our group. An incoming rickshaw also got stuck to a cycle rickshaw in a narrow street, which didn’t help us catch up with the others. They were all in a kulfi store. Kulfi is a frozen dessert close to ice cream that comes in different flavours. First, we had stuffed mango with kulfi. Then, we tried out the pan flavour, lychee (my personal favourite), custard apple, blueberry, rose and tamarind (ew!). Finally we had the traditional kulfi, made with pistachios and served in terracotta bowls.

We ended up in a haveli in a back alley that was painted in pastel colours. The roof top offered great views on kids playing with kites and on “pigeon rearers”. These are men who have domesticated flocks of pigeons on roof tops: they can make them fly, turn left, turn right and come back, all thanks to a whip, a net, specific whistles and a bit of food to keep them happy. Apparently it’s a very old tradition in Old Delhi. It was amazing to look at flocks of pigeons in the sunset sky just going in circles over the roofs. Very photogenic.

We then took a rickshaw to Purana Qila, the Old Fort of Delhi, where there was a special traditional dance event organized in the gardens, the Purana Qila Dance Festival. Today was the opening show, so dignitaries from various embassies were present in the audience. We needed to save 3 seats for friends of ours who were late. Pressure to save the seats became intolerable when people flooded the walkways and a man came to me to ask if his 78-year-old father could sit down. All right… He ended up leaving after three minutes. He couldn’t see the stage. In fact, nobody could see anything. The organizers had not limited entries so they let more people in than there were seats. In the end, people standing in the walkways obstructed the views for everybody, who ended up standing themselves. It was a free for all situation where everybody fought each other to get the best glimpses of the dancers. The dancing itself was very well performed and choreographed. The illuminated fort in the back was a great backdrop for the show but I fell asleep near the end of it. To the lay man, it was sort of repetitive.

We then met up with the friends we were saving seats for who were planning on eating at another friend’s place, then heading out for a pre-party at another friend’s apartment and then going to a nightclub. Dinner would consist of delivery pizza. I played the “boring out-of-towner” card and said I was neither interested in pizza, nor the nightclub. Henri himself doesn’t like going out to the club so I wasn’t alone. Anita was also excited to join us for a local meal in a small restaurant.

We dropped off the two girls and headed for the “Little Kerala” of Delhi. Anita was driving the whole way, being very conservative in terms of honking but completely reckless in terms of safety distance. As the front seat passenger, it was a wild ride. We headed for the Kerala Hotel, where Henri was a regular. A Freddie Mercury look-alike (from one certain angle) served us mutton roast, beef fry and chicken chettinad, with parothas and coca-cola. It was very spicy and it wasn’t very long until the three of us grunted and panted heavily from the burning. After the meal, I snuck a peak at the kitchen that was next to the washbasin and saw that it was crawling with cockroaches: on the table, on the shelves, in the pots, going up and down the tin cans and surveying the floor…

When we got back home, Henri and I spent about an hour just lounging on the terrace, looking at geckos fighting for their territory, chasing down moths and flies around the neon light and just looking cool and reptilian. Henri got close-up shots of killing scenes and I was able to record some nice catches too. In the end, we chased one down for fun but instead of running away, it jumped off the wall and landed with a thump on the ground. We were a bit startled by the big dive but it had survived and was just hiding behind the chair. We left it alone and called it a day.

Daily nugget: At the Kerala Hotel, the menu is in English except eh last section, which is in Malayalam, the language of Kerala. Henri, as a regular, told me that this was a trick to foil the local Hindus. That section had all the beef dishes, which would have probably upset Hindu customers. Nice trick.

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