As I head out for a brisk walk in the early hours of morning, clocking those steps in as the birds chirp and head to myriad directions for the day and the newspaper and milk vendors cycle from tower to tower to deliver the news and dairy, I can’t miss the aroma of hot oil that blankets the air as fresh hot pooris are fried at the halwai shop and the serpentine queue for that hot breakfast. The cacophony of the breakfast audioscape has people yelling loudly at the cashier to give them ‘tokens’ for their breakfast, and ask for their servings.
While most get the food packed and head home in summers, those brave enough to bear the humidity prefer to sit right outside the shop and gorge on aloo-poori or chole-poori. Occasionally, you’ll hear a person say “garam jalebi bhi dena” — ensuring that it is a well- rounded meal. I try to resist buying some of those hot bedmi pooris every time I take my dog out for a morning walk, and well, let’s just say that it is hard to escape the temptation.
Admittedly, I have caved in — more times than I’d admit. This sensory experience is definitely one to savour. Think about Shiv Mishthan Bhandar in Old Delhi, which is almost a century old and is touted to be one of the best breakfast places of the city. They serve bedmi poori, nagori halwa, chole-bhature, samosa, kachori, gulab jamun and their famous jalebis. Another favourite amongst Purani Dilli-walas is Shyam Sweets, known for its delicious phoolgobhi samosas.
These servings in Delhi are ubiquitous. “Delhi being the capital of the nation is a melting pot of communities and cultures, and here one will find that their location decides their breakfast options. If you are in CR Park, you’d see people indulging in radhaballavi and kochuri with aloo torkari; in Old Delhi you’d find Nihari, paya and bedmi-aloo; Central Delhi serves up idli-vada sambhar at Kutty’s near Jantar-Mantar, and so on,” shares Anubhav Sapra, founder of Delhi Food Walks.
More such gems across Delhi include Lotan ke chole-kulche in Daryaganj, and the nihari near Jama Masjid. In the labyrinthine lanes of Old Delhi, sits Mahaveer, the grandson of the very infamous Lotan. He sits with an arsenal of masalas around him, and a big copper cauldron of bubbling hot chole, mixing them in as per a customer’s requested customisation of spice levels. Served with a couple of fluffy hot kulchas, people swear by this spicy relic! His family has been in this business since the 1920s.
While the experience remained similar, the menu back in Mumbai was different. There, I indulged in the soft and fluffy idlis, and crispy vadas, from the cart of Rajesh Anna who sits next to Amarsons in Linking Road in the suburbs of Bandra. One would find many such carts and ‘cycle-annas’ serving the city’s students and office-goers with fresh, hot breakfast of upma, kanda poha, idli-vada and sabudana vada from the wee hours of the morning till about 10am. They are what I call the lifeline of the early morning risers—of the city that never sleeps!
What’s amusing to note is that the experience remains constant everywhere—and is in fact more homologous as cities and shops get older. In Hoshiarpur, Punjab, we walked down the narrow lanes near Sheesh Mahal—a 1911 building by Lala Hans Raj Jain. The congested lanes where one could see the heat rising from the ground was covered in an ambrosial smell of freshly baked bread and hot tea being made in the tea shops that dot the lanes.
I spotted a hole in the wall bakery in that lane. The wooden shelves were overflowing with peepe-waale biscuits, fans, and sweet buns. Inside, I could spot a man next to a wall which housed a square-shaped old-school bhatti. It was flaming hot and red, and inside it were trays of fresh bread kulchas that were being cooked. Sandeep, as he introduced himself, has been making these breads for three decades, and today supplies them to the city’s matar-kulcha and chole-kulcha carts.
Similarly, in Jodhpur last winter, I noticed halwai shops opening their shutters as we walked towards Mehrangarh Fort, and by the time we returned, were selling mirchi vadas sandwiched between breads to their regular customers. In Agra, we spotted such queues for bedai-aloo and jalebi. Bedai is similar to the bedmi poori served in Delhi, but crisper. The jalebis are juicy and fried in desi ghee, and are amongst some of the best that I have tasted.
The unifying experience of breakfast comes in all shapes and sizes, and can be found in every nook and cranny of any city. It is also my favourite way of discovering a city—through an early morning walk. The latter is a great cultural marker, showcasing how a city wakes up, and what they eat.
