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 Mouth-watering journeys
Nikhil Singhal

Having inherited the wanderlust virus from my father I have always been passionate about travelling. Just as I am passionate about sampling different cuisines.

Exploring new places gives me the same high as does digging into alien dishes. A die-hard gourmand I count myself blessed for having been fortunate to accompany my father to his various village postings. Having seasoned my taste buds to variegated aliment I now understand that food is like a mirror as it reflects the culture, geography, and ideology of those involved in its preparation and ingestion. Each food variety comes with a package combining aroma, taste, smell, and texture.

 Among the most telling gastronomic memories of my childhood in a village of Rajasthan is aloo ki sabzi tempered with garlic or ‘lasoon’ as it is called locally. I would sneak out of my house at lunchtime, to my mother’s eternal dismay, to sample the fare at a friend’s house in the vicinity. To this day I smack my lips at the memory of the steaming rotis coming off the mud ‘chula’ and the delectable potato dish steeped in the aroma of the desert.

Vegetable greens were almost a rarity in this arid land with its dried pea topography teeming with ‘Banjaras’ and ‘Rajpoots’. Getting to taste fried spring onions in these parts was a luxury, I still remember. The fare comprised mostly root vegetables and grains including bajra and wheat. And who can forget the shrubs laden with berries, or ‘ber’ as they were called in the local dialect? Our pockets would be bulging with the little round goodies on our way to school and back.

I was around 8-9 years old when we visited the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Not being the tourism hotspots that they are today, these islands were clean, calm, and relatively untouched with just a drizzle of hotels and restaurants. Our breakfast venue everyday was a small idli house just outside our hotel. The taste of the idlis is still fresh in my mind (and mouth) with their soft, luscious texture dipped in sambhar that would be scrumptiously hot. But what I remember having truly enjoyed was the experience of eating on washed banana leaves with my bare hands, there being no spoons in sight. It was messy but fun. Among the moments I look back with touching affection is that of my mothereating with her hands while feeding small morsels to my sister who was a toddler at the time. What rendered the entire experience even more appetizingly memorable, I now realize, is that the food was close to nature, in a manner of speaking. The spices and vegetables that went into the preparation of the sambhar were grown locally. The idlis were steamed not in any commercial idli maker but were wrapped snugly by leaves (usually from the jackfruit tree) and cooked over wood fire. The ethnic connection I experienced at the time would be drowned in today’s touristic tumult.

On attaining puberty I found myself in Ladakh, which too was just emerging as a tourist destination. As a boy of 12- 13 years I was able to comprehend my surroundings a little better. I remember my father’s being utterly mesmerised by Ladakh’s vast beauty and serene calm while my mother’s primary concern would be: ‘Will we get rotis here?’ Our lodge was called, rather imaginatively in my opinion, ‘Lung se Jung’. This literally translates to ‘a fight with your lungs’, the high altitude and thin atmosphere forcing one to breathe somewhat harder.

 A young local couple were the caretakers of the lodge. I soon struck up a friendship with their two children (aided, I’m guessing, with chocolates). For breakfast the family would have rice with tea, something unheard of in the rest of the country. And their tea called ‘gur-gur’ wasn’t your sweet brown concoction flavoured with cardamom and ginger but consisted of ‘yak’ milk, butter, and salt of all things! In the harsh climate the ‘gur-gur’ protects the throat from drying, I was told. Guests were offered ‘khubanis’ or dried apricots, homemade fruit cake embedded with candied fruits and tea, of course. Dried apricot and fruit cake form part of the staple diet in this region. They help one to survive the harsh winter rendering Ladakh inaccessible for nearly eight months.

If I loved Ladakh and Rajasthan I enjoyed, in equal measure, the backwaters of Kerala while sampling Malabari parathas and seafood. Other fond remembrances include Dubai’s shawarma and Moroccan tea and Nagaland’s chicken and pork and chicken dishes. All these were savoured not in posh restaurants but mostly at countryside eateries run by locals or in someone’s home. Need it be emphasized that the same food does not taste well... the same in restaurants and other impersonal outlets?

Email: p33094@irma.ac.in