Snacks and the city

Bombayrsquos winter is like the guy you keep running into who looks intently into your eyes and says you really must get together He sends frequent SMSs reiterating this desire and implying the intention but never actually makes the date Every now and then the newspapers excitedly utter mdash ldquomercury to dip in the coming daysrdquo But despite a nip here and a dip there and semiPage 3 types flashing their ridiculous boots we have to admit Bombay and winter are more about the intention than the connection For a committed encounter you really have to head up north where the winter allows you to be slower and fuller Temptations roll out of the fog picked out by the slow moving finger of the winter sun which is lazy about waking up nowadays Illustration Amit Bandre You cannot walk down a Delhi street now and not be drawn to the deep warm colours of winter foods softly smudged by coal smoke There are carts heaped with peanuts roasted in the shell corn freshly popping in an iron kadhai and oranges more pillowy than PCrsquos lips There are stands piled with gauzy gajak and rewri nutty with sesame bright ochre gur ki ladiyan and garlands of dense maroonu00a0dried figs Although itrsquos rare now you can still sometimes spy matkis of kanji mdash a drink made by fermenting purple carrots with mustard that will stain your hands sing in your nose and clear your sinuses Winter craves guilty pleasures Like aloo chaat mdash cubed potatoes fried to goldenbrown crispness slathered in a sourspicy masala moong dal pakodis covered with lavish white shavings of radish with bits of green chilli mint and coriander a patta of which will take you happy to the end of the road or channas dark brown with garam masala served up from a gleaming brass vessel eaten with pickled chillis and carrots In this relationship you abandon all restraint so you naturally go to Old Delhi home of all things kachori My cousin and I once spent a morning eating there We started with samosas stuffed with whole green peas then voluptuous jalebis then a famous lassi then parathas stuffed with nimbu ka achar and finally kababs By then we were feeling kind of sick but hadnrsquot even covered three lanes We had no one but ourselves to blame for the horrible Delhi Belly that followed but as my cousin asked between loo visits mdash ldquowhy is it I would do it againrdquo Thatrsquos love baby My favourite Delhi street snack is shakarkandi mdash sweet potatoes roasted on coal sliced into little diagonal pieces smothered with chaat masala and lots of lemon I often yearn for it in Bombay so I thought I was dreaming awake when I saw a sweet potato thela in the middle of Bandra the other day I was nonplussed rather than excited to see it It belongs to a place where itrsquos okay to while time away where pavements are for dawdling letting one layer of flavour slowly follow another in your mouth What was it doing here in racy Bombay Bombay snacks arenrsquot about this sensual unfurling this circadian cycle in a snack Snacks in our city are quick and onthego like vada pav They are all the sins and temptations spicy sour greasy simultaneously hectically available rolled up matteroffactly in a frankie tossed up casually in a bhel defying time and mortality in their yearround unchangingness I never stopped to eat that sweet potato I was late for something and didnrsquot really have time for a season to change Paromita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at wwwparodevicom The views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paperu00a0