Calcutta Street-Food

It might sound like a cliché but I firmly believe that the world is divided into two kinds of people: those who live to eat and the other variety who have more important stuff to attend to, so eating in not a priority. I can't disdain to discuss this latter group in my blog! I, needlessly to clarify, belong to the former bunch even though in the last few years the dare-devilry associated with eating whenever I feel like, whatever I feel like has diminished a little, unfortunately. There are mundane technicalities like watching what you eat, not eating unhealthy food, blah blah blah. At some point, I guess, these details are important just to preserve the body that eats and craves for the food.

And the last few days it has been craving for street-food from Calcutta. By street-food, I don't mean food sold strictly on the street, but mostly the stuff not made at home, at least not regularly. And even if it is made at home, it doesn't really taste the same. There is a deliciously delightful list of food that I have been missing lately. Here it is:
kati roll/egg roll
shingara (samosa, though the shingara from the local mishti-r dokan--sweetmeat shop tastes very different from samosas elsewhere)
phuchka (conceptually similar to the golgappa and panipuri, but taste-wise it is in a league of its own!)
jhhaalmuri
bhelpuri
batatapuri
moghlai porota (typical to Calcutta, an egg or meat-stuffed paratha served with a distinctive alu sabzi-potato curry)
fish fry (bhetki fillet in a special batter)
chop: chicken chop, mutton chop, vegetable chop (I have been told that what I mean by chop is sold as cutlet in other parts of the city; it is basically a bread-crumbed fried snack containing either meat of vegetables)
telebhaja/alur chop/ pe(n)yaji (perfect accompaniments to muri or puffed rice and tea)
biriyani (a Calcutta special with alu, eggs and no curry or raita accompanying this specialty dish; my favorite is from Royal in Chitpur though I'm quite fond of the variety from Arsalaan in Park Circus)

This list is by no means a comprehensive catalog of the roadside culinary concoctions found in Calcutta but merely a glimpse of the stuff I have been missing heavily recently. I should also make a special mention of the Chinese food in Calcutta. It is unlike anything I have eaten anywhere in the country or even in Singapore or the US. I'm sure if it is a product of a large Chinese population in Calcutta or a combination of Bengali and Chinese culinary styles, but it sure tastes great and very different from Chinese food elsewhere.

And of course, I'm missing mishti, Kolkata's biggest export apart from Rabindrasangeet, I guess. I'm missing the syrupy rosher mishti and the dry shondesh and the mishti doi and jileepee. I look forward to eating them all when I'm home in a few months!

Talking about food or writing about it makes me happy (as does cooking and eating it, of course). One of the biggest advantage of living in the Unites States is being able to savor so many different kinds of food from all over the world. I just love the variety and the opportunity to continue to indulge in something that is for me the reason and the source of sustenance of life: FOOD!

Calcutta Farewell

It’s funny how in talk one thing leads to another and before you know it, you’re hit by a heavy dose of nostalgia and you can’t stop recounting some significant piece of your past. Let me explain. The other day R and I were planning this fanciful vacation to Jamaica. We do this often: plan getaways to exciting, exotic locations, the best deals, the cheap hideouts, only to realize pretty quickly that we neither have the time, or more importantly, the money to make such a journey and we relegate the plan to the future, make mental notes, indulge in some hope that someday we will make it there. Such a place happened to be Jamaica a few days back, and talking about Jamaica, I was reminded of Harry Belafonte’s Jamaica Farewell and it turned out that that song was a favorite number from both our childhoods. For me, my father used to sing that song often when he was in one of his moods when Pat Boone, Jim Reeves, Nat King Cole, Belafonte songs, among many others would be sung one after another on a load-shedding induced dark, quiet evening. For R, that song was a constant feature in his school’s music class and hence has fond memories for him. This got me all excited and I quickly googled the song and I found an old black and white video of it on YouTube. It gave me immense joy to listen to it. And as one is prone to do on YouTube, browsing the related videos, I ended up listening to several versions of the Jamaica Farewell and the Banana Boat song and relived a little piece of my childhood.

It happens to me a lot these days. I don’t know if it’s a symptom of my advancing years or the fact that I have too much time on my hands right now, I seem to be getting more and more nostalgic as years go by. Nostalgic about my childhood, my years in college, the years after that. The smells, the sounds of Calcutta, the city of growing up often feature on these nostalgia jaunts. Like the other day I was reading this article in the Telegraph about some overflowing garbage vat on S.N. Banerjee Road and there was a line mentioning that this vat is near Hind cinema, which is now closed. My first reaction on reading that was how come no one told me about this. What next, they close down Lighthouse cinema too? Oh wait, they already did that! There’s a stupid shopping complex it its place now. It’s not like I watched every movie that played at Hind when I was in Calcutta. To the contrary, it was quite a rundown place as I remembered it that often showed dirty morning show movies. But it was close to my school, a landmark in the place I went to nearly 10 years of my life. It’s this piece of my childhood that I have some claim over, so what if the only film I can recall watching there is Darr in the early 90s, when I was a closet Shah Rukh admirer!

And not just Hind cinema. The places I frequented growing up in Calcutta have changed. Some have been renovated till they’re unrecognizable (like Flurry’s) or they have just been taken over by a chain restaurant or a bigger name brand or have simply shut down. It’s not that I dislike the shopping malls. I love City Center and the cheaper Big Bazaar near home but why do they have to come up in place of my Hinds and Lighthouses? Why does Ganguram on Chowringhee have to shut down and BCL move to another location? Why does the Calcutta I know have to disappear completely and become this whole other city I can’t recognize?

Or is it just that I have been away too long?