eat till you die

tomorrow is a sunday, nothing to be happy about. it's gonna be a working sunday. few of us i.e. the chosen few had asked to report at the advertising headquarters at the eleventh hour of the day and save the world from the wrath of our dear client (no names will be dropped over here). well life always give us two choices and today I
1) sulk sulk and sulk more about tomorrow being working.
2) enjoy the remaining part of whatever is left of the weekend, my saturday is not over yet.

so before i die in the battlefield of advertising i choose to have the day my way. do all those little things which i had always dreamt off. i pick up my list of "1000 things to do before i die" and somewhere on the 857th place i find scribbled with a faded pencil lead "cycling in chandni chowk".

Yes, here is what is going to be my last attempt to live a fuller life before ending it.

while making my wishlist i'm sure i intended to ride all the way to chandni chowk but in the given situation will have to opt for packing my cycle in the back of my car and driving all the way to daryaganj where i'll find a decent parking lot. so here i am on the way to daryaganj that will serve as the base camp. next to me is my navigator "D" though he has no clue of where we are heading for. both our bikes are safely kept in the back of my car. D has a bunch of grapes and a half eaten apple with him. i have limited supply of water. so we do a barter grapes for water. we manage enter delhi borders without being spotted by the vigilance. in another hour or so we reach daryaganj drive past a building with a signage of "delhi stock exchange", the condition makes it clear that it got bombed in the last war. we take a quick left turn after we crossed the said building and into the basement of probably the oldest multi level parking lot in town. maybe Humayun or Akbar had built it.

as we manage to find ourself a parking slot and take our bikes out of the car there are some people watching us and probably they are from another planet as they sleep in the darkness three storeys under the earth. D is amused. he has no clue about the catastrophe which gonna hit the world tomorrow. brochures, dangler, flyers everything gonna be designed for our clients new product launch. products which gonna change the world forever and ever. D is still not over his last nights hangover (he stinks of booze).

ok lets not get personal. we start riding our bikes finally. out of the parking lot and into the crowd, fast moving cars and slow moving minds. we cross the street take a turn go here and there then realise we are moving in the wrong direction. not much to worry cross the road and start riding towards turkman gate. the moment we cross turkman gate the world changes.

we are inside the Walled City of Shahjahanabad. it's not just any gate we cross we have crossed one of the eight gates of the city built shahjahan. we are not too sure about which way to go and often we take help from the locals. cycling is the second best mode of transport in purani dilli, walking being the best mode. walking is not only the best but the fastest way to travel here. the place has a perpetual traffic jam it seems. actually thats a way of life over here, the pace is such and people have happily adjusted to it. there are no stress lines on there foreheads as they stand and wait for the rickshaw to pass or maybe cow to finish eating from the garbage dump and give them way.

slowly yet steadily we pedal our way towards jama masjid. there is a constant flow of images and sounds around us nothing is static. the pace maybe slow but full of character.
it's not slow and boring.
it's slow and exciting.

it's like a movie set, changing at a rapid pace. D is intrigued i guess. i'm sure it reminds him of those "god old days" maybe some college memories. and soon we get absorbed in the crowd of never ending dilliwalas.
we are already hungry, not hungry because we are hungry, but hungry out of anticipation. yep, we want to have something to kick start our journey. and no sooner that we realise we are broke. not broke in the classic sense since we have enough credit limit and debit limit on our cards but the chaiwala and mathhiwala needs cash.

hehehe... we need to take a detour and find an atm at the earliest before our hunger pangs kill us. atleast we shouldn't die empty stomach. anyways we have around 10 buck between the two of us enough to fend for seven garmagaram nan khatais from the thelewala. atleast there we begin our journey. as we move we go past karim's and cross jama masjid in search of money the fragrance of freshly barbequed kebabs tickle our senses. it's like being in the ocean and dying of thirst.

ride past jama masjid and into dariba. a street full of goldsmiths. probably the 3rd, 4th or 5th generation sitting on the same spot and trading. did mumtaz mahal buy her earrings from the same lane. the narrow street opens up into a wider one, probably the widest in the puraani dilli. the street which at the time of shahjahan was the centre of trade and luxury. a canal used to run in the middle of the street with trees on both side. merchants from all over the world would trade here. somewhere i read cheetahs and tigers where tied to thick iron chains along the road side and sold like dalmatians and pugs. and this is the place where i found the first atm of the day. out of order is written in bold lettering outside the bank. across the road is yet another one. in next 20 seconds i'll read a similar sign over there. the third one is closed. had to walk for a couple of hundred yards to find an SBI ATM which was functional and had a long queue. long but not long enough. finally i'm rich. and now onwards we can call the shots. our next stop was annapurna mishthan bhandar the most famous bengali confectioner in town. must have been there for around 170 years or so. we grab a samosa each, these ssamosas are very different from the regular north indian samosas. these are crunchier and less spicier. and the filling of potatoes is also much more crisper than it's north indian cousin. it's a disgrace to annapurna if you walk out without tasting one of the sweets out there. we decide on having chamchams to sweeten our tongue. in one bite i prefer finishing the chamcham without wasting a drop of the juicy sugar syrup embedded in the soft and spongy chamcham.

we take a combined decision not to have anymore sweets as we need to have enough space in our tummy when we reach jama masjid area.

D must have heard about mirza ghalib somewhere and wants to pay tribute by visiting ballimaran. straight we go along the fine canal and the shaded trees of chandni chowk. surely the name chandni chowk suggest how romantic the place had been in it's glorious days.
on our way we stop at sunehri masjid go up it's terrace to take a view of shahjahanabad the way nadir shah would have done in the summer of 1739 when he ordered the massacare of delhi. not the best of the things to have happened to city, in a span of a couple of days he took away most of the riches of the city and left it half dead with around 10,000 corpses behind.
we are a bit too late reach Ghalib ki haveli, the museum closes at 5 o'clock and it's already past 6 PM. not too worry we have seen the lane which had been so glamourised in gulzar's depiction of the famous poet's life in form of a tele serial.

from ballimaran we bike towards jama masjid to complete the circuit and have our long awaited meal. D wanna do some shopping midway, won't get into details let him write a blog on consumerism if he wishes. i take advantage of the time in hand and order a glass of tea mind it a "glass" of tea not a "cup" of tea thats the local indian way. the tea was served malai maarke i.e. with a layer of cream on top. it was fun though wasn't the best of the tea, but surely a memorable one.

no more time to waste we are hungry. really hungry. don't think i'm kidding i really really mean it. a gentleman gives a us precise directions to reach jama masjid. exactly how to spot the lanes between to namkeenwala shop etc. no gps navigator could have been so presice. thanks to uncleji we reach jama masjid in no time. though enough of slow moving traffic on the way. but no delay because of confusions. wish we could have spent some time admiring the masjid. but our hunger pangs draw us toward one of the many restaurants near the masjid. here we are too hungry to check the name of the place. just the smell of food guides our way to the small restaurant. the keeper promises to keep a watch on our bikes parked outside. they are already a hit in puraani dilli. i'm sure there will be pictures of our bikes in tomorrows Times of Shahjahanadad.

soon the nihari is served in while dishes. syrupy liquid gravy with chunks of meat with rotis to be dipped in the syrup. what better we could have asked for before the world comes to an end. we also ordered for a roganjosh just to compare the tastes and beleive me don't even waste your time to do so. the nihari is awesome and beyond compare. soon we realised the restaurant doesn't have spoons, so either use the roti to pick the gravy or help yourself with your dirty fingers. now i realise how important is it to wash your hands before you sit to eat. mine had grime and grease from my derailed cycle chain. anyways i finally dipped my dirty fingers to the gravy. by now we are sure we can't have have anymore of anything. to many rotis. to many serving of mutton in different forms. sweets. malai maarke chai. naan khatai. lets not treat our tummy as our neighbours dump yard. need to bike for another twenty odd minutes and then drive all the way to gurgaon. though we are extremely tempted to have some sheek kababs. still we decide to stop it here and now. can't be unfit to be agile need to report in headquarters in the morning. we bade adieu to our host. pay them and move on. back on our bikes and off to turkman gate.

oops. need to rewind. that was not the end of our dinner. i wanted to flaunt to D how well i know about the place. and showed off by telling him about the famous (atleast famous in my mind) shahi tukda wala. i myself fell in the trap couldn't resist myself from having a plate full of shahi tukda layers of cream-bread-nuts-syrup and who knows what else. it was hard to push it down the throat as i had already stocked myself upto the brim. a drop more and it will spill out i thought, yet artfully i finished the shahi tukda.

and pedalled back to the dungeon in daryaganj to board our car and go gurgaon.

epilogue: past is past and present is future. long gone are the shady trees on the banks of faiz canal. had been facing the war of consumerism making some fancy danglers to sell some not to fancy televisions and microwaves. the bullets are whizzing past in form of mails from the client.

yet i am alive will eat like that maybe once again when the fear of death scares me again some other day in some other agency.