Cuisine gets standardized; East or West, Punjabi cuisine rules

It was travel time again as I traversed the length of the country from the foothills of the Shivalik to the Indo-Gangetic plains of eastern India as I reached a small town of Bihar from Chandigarh.

Over a period of time, travel, changing cuisine, language along with culture and social milieu every 100 kms has fascinated me like nothing else. But not this time round. Partly because the journey was by train, partly because of the growing standardisation of cuisine across the country.

I felt as if it was a standardisation of cuisine right from Chandigarh to Patna with hardly any change noticeable anywhere. Take Shatabdi Express for example by which I started the journey from the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana. Regular travelers would vouch for the fact that the breakfast in the train is to be consumed only if you are extremely hungry. Leave it alone if you do not want factory made bread, butter, jams, pickle and cutlets made on an assembly line.

There could be better things for you only if you skip the breakfast in Shatabdi. I wanted to relish the pakoras of Panipat. But I couldn’t. The vendors selling pakoras in Panipat do not come near Shatabdi as the passengers in the elite train would not patronise it. In any case, there was hardly any time to look for one.

Then it was New Delhi in three-and-a-half hours flat. As I had to catch a connecting train to Patna, the only viable place to eat was the food joints opposite the Railway station on the Paharganj side. One can savour the cuisine of Delhi here but only if you venture in the lane behind the main road. Bedmi puri with spicy potato gravy is a treat any day. For dessert you have suji ka halwa in which ghee flows liberally. Do not come here if you fear for your heart. This is not for the “weak hearted” as the puri too is deep fried and that too twice. Then you can have a glass of creamy lassi and then move on to catch the train.

This was one meal in the entire journey of 1,500 kms which could be recalled with satisfaction. The pantry of the train served unimpressive bread pakoras, samosas, vegetable biryani, egg biryani, dip tea, tomato soup made from powder, etc. It is better to remain on fast for the entire course of the journey rather than eat from the train pantry. Of course, if you cannot fast and control the hunger pangs for that long then you can order from the limited menu the train pantry offers or get down on the platforms to look for something.

I chose the second option. But it was thoroughly disappointing. Right from Moradabad, Rampur, Bareilly to Lucknow, you only get chips, biscuits, soft drinks and bottled water. I hopped from one station to the other without much success. For food, you get the Janata khana. At Lucknow, they served chhole-chawal and nothing else. The hungry souls of the train practically looted the food as the vendors made quick money selling them. I could not even get the aroma of the famous kebabs of Lucknow. I did not risk the option of going to the market and have a fill of the kebabs. I could have got stranded in Lucknow as the train would have moved without me. I am no Lalu Prasad Yadav or now Mukul Roy.

The lesson was learnt quickly. If you want to travel by train, have home cooked food with you or simply remain on fast. The only other alternative was to look for fruits or munch the ridiculous chips. I still fail to understand why people eat chips and sip soft drinks. I gave up the effort long time back.

Then I was at Patna, the Capital of Bihar. I had a very satisfying lunch — rice, daal, aalu ki bhujiya, spicy black gram with gravy and raw onions with fresh lemon squeezed on it. A papad was thrown in and that made my day. This was a typical Bihar lunch and a nap was necessary before the wedding function in the evening for which I was in the city after a gap of several years.

Patna had changed. Flyovers were dotting the city. You could no longer take a leisurely walk. Black fumes-emitting monstrous vehicles were ferrying passengers instead of the rickshaws. The rickshaws in any case could not climb the flyovers and in several areas had ceased to operate. I remembered a couple of eating joints which I used to frequent long time back. Paucity of time forced me indoors and I did not venture out on the crowded streets.

I was soon at the wedding venue and the buffet was thrown open to the guests. Punjabi cuisine had invaded Bihar like nothing before. You had tandoori roti, missi roti and lachcha paratha. I did not even want to look at that. There was no sign of good old tawa ki roti. Then you had paneer masala, shahi paneer and other items with the word “paneer” either as a suffix or a prefix.

I went to the other side of the venue. Here, I found litti-chokha, the traditional cuisine of Bihar in which sattu (ground and spicy roasted gram) is stuffed inside wheat flour and made into small balls. But the litti was fried instead of being baked on cowdung cakes and served with desi ghee. But still something was better than nothing. The chokha (mashed potato and boiled brinjal combine) was relatively better and reminded me that I was in the capital of Bihar and not in the capital of Punjab and Haryana.

I also tried the gol gappa. It had tamarind water and the filling was white chana with potato. Much better than those sold in Chandigarh in mineral water. But that was it. There was nothing else which I cannot find in the cities of Haryana, Punjab or in New Delhi.

The realisation dawned on me that there has been a complete Punjabisation of cuisine all over from the place of its origin to the distant east. Tandoor has been a great leveller and perhaps the biggest contribution of Punjab to the rest of Indian matters of cuisine.

It was time to move on. Now it was journey by a taxi and not a train, which I took from Patna to Bettiah — a district town in north Bihar, some 200 kms away from the State capital, Patna. Nitish Kumar has managed to construct the roads and the journey was a breeze. I saw a dhaba near a place called Kesharia, close to a Buddhist stupa. Tourists come here to see the stupa and offer prayers to the makeshift Buddhist temple. The dhaba was called ‘Mukhiaji ka Line Hotel’ and looked perfect in the sylvan setting to have a cup of tea amid acres of green fields.

Here I saw ‘Mukhiyaji’ frying fish in a pan. I asked which fish it was. “Naini from the local river,” said the man cooking it. Instead of tea, I ordered a meal comprising fish curry, rice and aloo bhujiya all for Rs 50. This was the best meal of the trip.

The fish and the meal were heavenly. Nothing in this world, not even the broken chair, could take away the taste. Cooked in mustard and local spices, the fish was as fresh as it could be and my 1,500 km trip was made. There was no sign of a tandoor anywhere in the small dhaba made of thatched bamboo and local material. I changed my opinion. The flavour of local cuisine is still alive and kicking. (April 29, 2012)

http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/chandigarh/61261-cuisine-gets-standardized-east-or-west-punjabi-cuisine-rules.html