Street Food in Old Delhi (Deccan Herald, 12 Oct 2014)

Source: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/435418/savouring-old-dilli.html

Savouring old Dilli

Juanita Kakoty, Oct 12, 2014, DHNS:

Walking down the crowded lanes of Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi,  Juanita Kakoty samples the sumptuous fare that tickles tongues and pleases palates.

The charms of Old Delhi lie not just in the dilapidated havelis that speak of the glorious days they once saw, or in the unending rows of shops showcasing exquisitely embroidered dresses and jewellery, but also in the aroma and sights of food in every nook and corner. 

The kebabs and biryanis of this walled city have stolen the hearts of many since times immemorial; but what has also been captivating the food connoisseur for a long time now is the wider range of street food in this part of Delhi.

A walk with Tanushree Bhowmik, a food blogger who conducts food tours around Old Delhi, one Saturday morning was unique, because it did not include establishments and steered away from the much-documented Mughlai cuisine of the region. She suggested visits to the smaller vendors whom she claims to have discovered through “trial and error”. 

Taste test

We arrived at the Chandni Chowk metro station by noon, where right outside was 45-year-old Rajesh selling chole kulche at Rs 20 per plate. The kulcha (made of flour and steamed) along with the chole (green peas sun-dried and boiled) was absolutely non-oily. It was the garnishing as per the customer’s tolerance that spiced this dish up. One can catch him from noon till 4 to 4.15 pm. 

A few steps away from Rajesh’s cart sat Shripad Bhardwaj on a stone, making tea by the roadside. He sells tea at Rs 10 per cup and we sipped some nice adrak (ginger) chai here, which seemed perfect after the chole kulche. We then took one of the lanes that came out to Natraj, a much celebrated chaat spot.

There, at a little stand on the pavement between Natraj and the Central Bank of India, Sonu Sharma was selling rabri faluda at Rs 50 per glass and kulfi faluda at Rs 40 per glass. We tasted some refreshing rabri faluda (faluda is a cold beverage; rabri is the cream derived from boiling milk and sugar for long hours) here while gazing at the majestic Sheesh Ganj Gurudwara up ahead. 

Right down that lane was Bishan Swaroop’s chaat stall where Tanushree asked for kulle ki chaat, although it was not listed in the menu. “It is better here than in Chawri Bazaar,” she told me. We stood there as Swaroopji cut a boiled potato into two halves, scooped out the middle of the halves and stuffed it with boiled sun-dried green peas. 

He then garnished it with spices (he asked us “medium masala” or “strong masala” and we opted for medium) and a few drops of lemon. This nice tangy chaat is great for health freaks as well as for those not scared of spices. At Rs 30 per plate, it actually could make for a great healthy meal.

Time for something sweet again after the chaat and nothing could have been better than the fresh rabri Govind Gupta was selling a few steps away from Swaroopji’s stall. The rabri comes from his home in Atras village near Mathura (Uttar Pradesh) by noon. 

Tanushree then took me through the much-feted Paranthewali Gali and we went down the lane where, right at the T-point, Virendra Nankhataiwale was selling hot nan khatai, fluffy buttery cookies made of flour, sooji, besan and ghee. He sells them at Rs 300 per kg and is there with his cart from 2 pm to 7.30 pm. I packed a good portion for home.

From there we took a right and came to a corner where 30-year-old Ayush Cholewale was selling chole kulche. “This chole is different from the chole we first had near the Metro station. It is cooked spicy and the USP here is the homemade green chilly pickle, whose recipe he will not share at any cost,” informed Tanushree. The pickle actually made all the difference to the dish! I had as many as my tongue allowed! To taste it, you’ll have to be there between 12 pm and 5 pm, and each plate is priced at Rs 20. 

A sweet treat

As we walked through Kinari Bazaar to Maliwara, we caught up with 58-year-old Girija Shankar who was pushing his cart full of kiwi fruits through the narrow lane. We lapped up some awesome kiwi chaat at a meagre Rs 10 per plate. 

Coming to Nai Sarak, we stopped at Kalka Sweet House, opposite Kothi Haji Ali Jan, for chole bhature that makes for good breakfast in many parts of North India. This place opens at 8 am and closes at 6 pm. The chole here was spicy but not hot; and 72-year-old M P Pandey told me, “We use 21 spices in our chole, which includes rose petals!” 

At the end of our two-hour long walk, I realised that street food could be hygienic too. “They have maintained standards for the two years that I’ve known them,” Tanushree told me, as we sipped the refreshing and quintessential Delhi drink banta (lemon soda masala) for Rs 15 at Ved Prakash Lemonwale near Town Hall.

Jimmy Chishi: Puppets with Naga motifs (Deccan Herald, 7 Sep 2014)

(http://www.deccanherald.com/content/429487/play-shadows.html) 

Play of shadows

Sep 7, 2014 DHNS

Fascinated by the art of shadow puppetry, Juanita Kakoty talks to artiste Jimmy Chishi, whose puppets have resurrected the folk lores from Nagaland.
I am not used to associating puppets with flat surfaces. So, when Jimmy Chishi showed me his shadow puppets, flat surfaces, I wondered if they could match up to those soft toy-like figures I’ve known as puppets. But what fascinated me were the motifs on these flat puppets and the beautiful craftsmanship. And then he showed me photographs from his exhibitions, and I was mesmerised. When light was thrown upon these translucent flat puppets, placed against a flat background, they became magical.

Holding a puppet inspired by the Naga folktale The Elephant’s Eye, Jimmy Chishi pointed out, “These visuals that you see here began with traditional motifs from Naga shawls, Tsungoteptsu (Ao Naga tribe) shawls to be precise. This is a shawl that has a black and white band; and what is unique about the shawl is that the band is painted with black ink as part of ritual-based painting, celebrating head-hunting. So, it’s a headhunter’s shawl. And the painting motifs are interesting. I started studying these, including other motifs like the tattoo marks of the different Naga tribes, the Phoms and the Konyaks especially. But, when I use them in my puppets, I bring my own interpretation to them.” 

Using Naga motifs
Jimmy is essentially a painter and sculptor. He developed an interest in puppetry when he was pursuing a course in Jamia Milia Islamia in New Delhi. What intrigued him was how puppets could be used as a form of communication. “The whole thing about making sculptures that move was happening for a while in India. And I felt, for exploring the Naga folk stories, puppetry could perhaps be one of the most effective forms.”

I learnt from Chishi that there has been no tradition of puppetry in Nagaland. “But there has been a tradition of mask-making, carved by warriors. And the only reference for them is the old photographs by Hameindorf, anthropologists, or those by colonial administrators. The photographs tell you that these masks were being used for some kind of performance. That is one factor that I thought could be brought in from a contemporary point of view. The visual could be used to explore folk stories and folklores in the present context. I thought youngsters might find this visual exploring of folk stories interesting and re-visit their folktales and folk traditions.”

My latest short story 'The Mona Days' published by Writers Asylum (4 Sep 2014)

My latest short story 'The Mona Days' has been published by Writers Asylum. An excerpt:

"Rakesh just couldn’t stop admiring Mona. The way she flicked her locks away from her pretty face with a slight jerk of the head; the way she stylishly held her cigarette between her slender fingers and let out the smoke from the corner of her mouth, head slightly bent to the side; the way her eyes slanted a little; how what she wore was always well-coordinated; how she looked stunning no matter what time of the day or night it was; and how she endearingly addressed everyone as ‘darling’. “Darling, please light my smoke.” “Darling, I have a bad headache. Could you kindly drive me to my friend’s place at Noida. You know how far away Noida is from JNU, and with this headache, I really do not have the strength to take an auto or a bus. Would you please, darling?” Rakesh knew of no one who had ever refused her. With such soft words coming out of such a lovely mouth, who could really?"

Read the rest of it at http://www.writersasylum.in/2014/09/fiction/the-mona-days/
  

On Pritam Ghoshal, sarod exponent (Deccan Herald, 24 Aug 2014)

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/427158/scintillating-sounds.html

Scintillating sounds

Juanita Kakoty, Aug 24, 2014, DHNS:

Thirty-six-year-old Sarod maestro Pritam Ghoshal’s musical journey shaped up the moment he had a tryst with Ustad Amjad Ali Khan. A glimpse of the master was enough to toss his nonchalance for music aside. 

He tells me, “I grew up in a small town in West Bengal and was interested not in music but sports. But as a child, I heard a lot of music since I come from a family of musicians. One morning, in 1992, my father got a sarod and told me that I’ve found a teacher for you and you have to play this. I went for the classes because my father was an authority figure. This is when I was about 14 years old; so, in a way, I started quite late. I trained with my first guru Shri Pranab Naha for three years. But I never 
practised at home; and I can officially disclose it now that I even kicked my sarod to get rid of it!”

Life & learning

The twist of fate happened when Pritam saw his future guru Ustad Amjad Ali Khan for the first time. “In 1995, there was an advertisement in Anandabazar Patrika that Ustadji was going to conduct a workshop. 

My father got interested and I applied. That was actually the beginning of my professional career. We were made to go through three rounds of tests in front of Ustadji’s senior disciples. Then he personally came; and I saw him. I was struck by his personality. I said to myself, you better practise hard now because this is the glamour that you can achieve!”

It was a momentous phase in Pritam’s life because, at the workshop, amongst the hundred young musicians, he was one of the five selected for the gandhabandhan ceremony, a ritual whereby a guru takes a disciple under his wings. “The ceremony happened to be on Rakhi Purnima on August 10, 1995. I was in Kolkata then and whenever Ustadji was not around, I practised with his senior disciple Debojyoti Bose. In 1999, I completed my graduation and Ustadji asked me to shift base to Delhi.”

Talking of Ustadji, Pritam says, “As a guru, he has never differentiated between his disciples and his sons Amaan Ali Bangash and Ayaan Ali Bangash. He is tied to his students in the guru-shishya parampara. He not only guides them, but also reprimands them when a note is played wrong. We go to his house and practise for three to four hours. At times, I would be practising downstairs and he would be listening from upstairs; and when I would tire and stop, his voice would come booming from upstairs asking me to play something again. He would call up his disciples and ask them how many hours of riyaaz they have put in. Only then would he ask us to go over in person.” 

And in a lighter vein he adds, “Sometimes when I had not practiced much, and I would still want to see him, I would lie and say that I’ve done riyaaz. But, of course, when he heard me, he would know immediately that I had lied and make me practise for extra hours.” 

Style of ‘gayiki’

Pritam informs, “If I am to associate myself with my Ustadji’s style, then we are from the Senia Gwalior Gharana, also known as the Senia Bangash Gharana. Bangash is Ustadji’s family name. The rabab — the parent of sarod — was first played by Mohammed Hashmi Khan Bangash, one of Ustadji’s ancestors. He was a horse trader in Kabul. His grandson Ghulam Ali Khan Bangash came to India, settled down here and modified the rabab into sarod.”

“There is an instrumental side to playing an instrument and there is a vocal or gayiki style,” he continues. “The Senia Gharana follows the vocal or gayiki style on the sarod. To mark a contrast, the instrumental style has been followed by Baba Allauddin Khan Sa’ab and his disciples like Ali Akbar Khan Sa’ab, Annapurna Devi, Pandit Ravi Shankar.”  

Developing as a musician

When I ask Pritam if he is working on his own style, he comes up with an important insight. “There are compositions in the raga, which we call the bandish. You can play the bandish, technically speaking, exactly the way Ustadji has; but you cannot exactly produce the feeling or environment he can. This is because your rendition is bound to have a personal touch. Ustadji has always said, the more you listen to, the more you will retain the music inside you. So when I listen to music, I don’t just listen to Ustadji. I also listen to Ali Akbar Khan Sa’ab, Bahadur Khan Sa’ab, and my contemporaries. So my ears are exposed to different styles; exposed to how one note can be expressed in various ways. This comes from listening to others and reflects in my renditions.” 

My latest short story published by Writers Asylum (Aug 2014)

My latest short story 'Pobon and the Hazarika Household' has been published by Writers Asylum. 

Synopsis of the story: It is about Pobon, a domestic help at a household in Guwahati, and how lives connect at that household.

An excerpt:

He had worked in the Hazarika household for fifteen years. The mornings began early with him opening the huge lock on the gate, sweeping the entire periphery of the house, watering the plants, dusting, sweeping and mopping the double-storied house, washing the car, taking his bath and then attending to tasks like chopping the vegetables, cleaning the fish, washing the utensils and clothes, etc. In times when finding a reliable domestic help in Guwahati was becoming a pain, Pobon was like a blessing to the Hazarika household. Reba Hazarika’s brother, a manager at the Sessa Tea Estate in Dibrugarh, was the Samaritan who sent Pobon, the tea garden “boy” who was already thirty five years of age when he came. 

Mrigen Hazarika and Reba Hazarika took an instant liking to this honest man, who worked without complain, was always cheerful and thought of himself as a member of the family. When Prerona, the eldest Hazarika daughter, came on holidays with her American husband, Pobon would spruce up the garden and gather fruits and vegetables in advance, not letting anyone eat them. “These are for Prerona Baideo and her husband,” he would say, “And you will get to eat these only when they arrive.” When Momi, the second Hazarika daughter, came home on weekends, Pobon would have prepared jars of delicacies like narikal ladoo, til pitha and narikal pitha for her to be taken to her house at the Gauhati University campus. Both she and her husband taught Botany at the university. Gaurav, the youngest of Mrigen and Reba Hazarika’s three children, would get up in the mornings calling out for Pobon and stealthily pass on a ten rupee note to him, so as not to catch the attention of his parents, to fetch him cigarettes from the shop at the mouth of the road. The cigarettes, he would then, smoke in the bathroom attached to his room and flush out the butt in the commode. And on days when Gaurav came back home with the smell of alcohol in his breath, Pobon would quietly let him in and tell his parents that the lad had eaten and gone off to sleep.

Every Sunday morning, Pobon would carry two bags and leave for the Beltola Sunday market with Mrigen Hazarika. They would return with the week’s vegetables. Reba Hazarika only had to go to the prayer room after her bath. Pobon would have kept a bucket of water ready for Reba Hazarika to clean the tiny prayer room with; and he would also pick flowers from the garden and keep them ready for Reba Hazarika to offer them to the Gods and Goddesses. Such were the rituals in the Hazarika’s lives and thus was how Pobon an integral part of every ritual. After a year or two of Pobon’s arrival, when familiarity shed all formalities, Pobon had to bear the harsh words of the Hazarika men and women too. With the years, just as the feeling that Pobon would now not go anywhere else settled in, he was increasingly nagged and shouted at for this and that. Never by Prerona though; which is why she and her American husband remained Pobon’s favorite till the end. Fifteen years passed by and Pobon became indispensable to the household, even after the harsh words and a little clumsiness on his part at times. And then one day, just like that, he disappeared.

Read the rest of the story at http://www.writersasylum.in/2014/08/fiction/pobon-and-the-hazarika-household/

on 'katibs' and calligraphy (Deccan Herald, 15 June 2014)

Lettering beauty

(http://www.deccanherald.com/content/413599/lettering-beauty.html)

Juanita Kakoty, June 15, 2014, DHNS:

There once lived a group of artistes called ‘katibs’ whose calligraphy was so fine that queues formed to have their writing on invitation cards and notes. They even wrote for newspapers and religious texts. Juanita Kakoty traces their interesting story.

As I glance at books that spell excellence in calligraphy, Khalid Alavi, a well-known name in Urdu literature, educates me about a long forgotten, highly skilled class of artistes: the katibs. Flipping through a rare edition of Kulliyat-e-Iqbal in his possession, beautifully handwritten by Naeem Farooqui, Alavi Sahab tells me, “In Delhi, the calligraphers or katibs par excellence were found at all the printing presses and newspaper offices. They wrote books and newspapers, and their work was in great demand! All these calligraphers have now disappeared.”

Calligraphy or the adornment of lettering reached its peak in India in the beginning of 20th century. “There was a point in time,” Alavi Sahab informs, “When calligraphy was the only way in which the Koran was written.” 

Urdu calligraphy began in India in 1836, when Urdu became the national language, and the first newspaper in Urdu came out. Before this, calligraphy was in Persian. 

Flourishing art

The craft flourished in the 60s and 70s with innovation in print technology doing justice to what was being drafted by the hand. Katibs, in fact, did good business till the 1980s, as major newspaper houses and printing presses continued to print text that was handwritten. 

Not too way back, in the early 1900s, the bi-weekly newspaper Madina, published from Bijnor, used to go to distant countries like Saudi Arabia. It was as well-known for its calligraphy as for the great personalities who wrote for it. The BBC used to give its reference. 

Reminiscing about old times, Alavi Sahab says, “When I started out as a writer, I used to get the text handwritten by a katib and then send it for print. What worth it held! The katibs made each book unique, unlike books projecting almost the same kind of styles by computers today. Two very well-known katibs of our times were Anis Siddiqui from Pakistan and Khalique Tonki from Tonk, in Rajasthan. Khalique Tonki used to sit at the Ghalib Academy at Nizamuddin, in Delhi.” He tells me that the big cultural centres for Urdu calligraphy were Lahore, Delhi, Lucknow and Hyderabad. 

He also conveys that the Mughal emperors had a penchant for calligraphy. “The last popular calligrapher among the Mughals was Bahadur Shah Zafar. Aurangzeb was a renowned calligrapher too and so was Razia Sultan’s brother and Sultan of Delhi, Nasiruddin Mahmood.”

‘Katibs’ of Old Delhi

Urdu Bazaar in Old Delhi, bursting with people and activity, was once famous for its katibs who wrote wedding invitations and posters. “There used to be a hundred katibs here once, but now there are only four or five,” says the aged Nizamuddin who owns a shop in the area. He shows me a stretch of shops starting right from the Taj Hotel in front of Jama Masjid to the mouth of the lane that brings one to Urdu Bazaar. “This whole stretch used to be full of katibs who had clients at their doorsteps urging them to write a few things to be framed. During elections, they used to write the posters.” He tells me what I have heard before — “And they displayed a lot of nakhra because their work was so appreciated.” 

The state of things is so dismal now that not only have the katibs disappeared, but also the shops once famous for calligraphy. Nizamuddin points out Nazir Ahmed’s once-famous shop that now sells cassettes. In that busy lane, during peak work hours, I could find just one katib. As I asked around, people in the shops directed me to Nizamuddin’s, where they said I could find one. There, sitting in the corner was Ghalib, waiting for somebody to turn up for his first piece of work that day. “Business is bad. I am doing this because it is the only thing I know to do,” he tells me. “My sons actually run the household. None of them is in the calligraphy business.”

Ghalib pays no rent to Nizamuddin for sitting in a corner of his shop. And the latter is only too eager to provide space to what he perceives as “the last of the katibs of Urdu Bazaar”.     

Vanishing with time 

Today, as interest in calligraphy has dwindled, so has its demand. And with computers doing what they did, the katibs have long perished. The Urdu Department in Delhi University has a publication division and it had a katib, Jafar Zaidi, who was from Lucknow. After his retirement, his place was taken by a gentleman who used to be a katib but now did his work on the computer. The Urdu Academy in Delhi has a school that teaches calligraphy. There are a few students learning this dying art for the pure love of it.

Unfortunately, there are no more katibs at Ghalib Academy, which had once been the bastion of the great Khalique Tonki. 

And in Urdu Bazaar, Ghalib, along with the rest of the dying tribe, have been reduced to a pitiable existence.

My short story 'Dancing the Bihu' selected for 2014 New Asian Writing Short Story Anthology

My short story 'Dancing the Bihu' has been selected for the 2014 New Asian Writing Short Story Anthology. 
Summary of the story: This is the tale of a boy whose life is beyond the boundaries of masculinity and femininity. A gifted Bihu dancer, he dares to participate as a female dancer in a Bihu dance competition of his town. The way his dance is received by the audience is all about questioning what is natural and normal in a world that seeks to set order amidst chaos.

Read the story at http://www.new-asian-writing.com/dancing-the-bihu/