Travelers' Tales India

by James O'Reilly

  Squatting by a brazier of glowing coals, the maestro reaches for his favorite pot, a much-dented, fire-blackened thing made out of the cheapest metals possible. Deftly he knocks out the remains of the last batch of chai, wipes out the pot with a dirty rag, and sets it on the brazier. He adds several cups of water (better not to ask its source) and two ladles of whole milk.

  As the mixture begins to heat, the chai-wallah reaches for a large red tin of Brook Bond Red Label, the best CTC tea money can buy. (CTC tea is the name given to what’s left of the tea after the finest leaves have been sold for export. The letters stand for the Crush-Tear-Cool process that these remains are subjected to.) Into the pot go several generous pinches.

  Now a critical step. Out comes another tin, this one full of coarse crystals of partially refined sugar. In goes a spoonful. And another. And another. And another. You lose count. The mind boggles.

  With effortless grace, the maestro reaches for a bidi, a cigarette hand-rolled in a leaf of tobacco or the cheaper saal. Now it is time to wait and have a smoke. There’s no hurrying this last, all-important stage: the cooking.

  Minutes pass. At last the bidi has burned down, and the chai is ready to be served. A serious young boy in stained pajamas steps forward: the sorcerer’s apprentice. He deferentially hands his master a mismatched cup and saucer. With practiced showmanship, the wallah flourishes a strainer and pours the tea.

  Following the example of your fellow patrons, you pour the piping hot chai into the saucer and take a sip. A feeling of sublime well-being spreads slowly through body and soul.

  Strange to say, chai is not for everybody. There are those, in fact, who think that it is the absolute nadir of tea preparation on our small planet--particularly poignant, no doubt, in a land so blessed with fine tea. For me and those I hold dear, however, chai is the very best essence of travel in India.

  In the old days, before bottled water became ubiquitous in India, chai was one of the few “safe” things to drink, and it still is today. (In theory, the boiling kills off all the bad stuff, and you just try to ignore the cup’s dubious hygiene.) What surprises many Westerners is how refreshing a hot cup of chai can be, even on the most sweltering of Indian days.

  In the middle of the afternoon, when you’ve been out roaming the dusty streets for hours in search of the perfect Kashmiri shawl or the quintessential sandalwood box, a cup of chai can revive body and spirit in an almost mystical way. Sit on a simple wooden bench beneath the shade of a giant banyan tree. Taking a soothing sip, relax, and watch the world go by. A pair of bullocks, their horns painted blue and green, pull a cart heavily laden with scraps of cardboard. An ash-covered sadhu strides along, a trident grasped firmly in one hand. A scooter flies past, its four passengers hanging on nonchalantly. Spotting a captive audience, a boy demands to shine your shoes. He’s joined by a young woman pointing to the infant slung across her arm and crying, “Baby, Sahib!”

  The best chai stands, of course, are something more than a place to sit and relax. Like any good coffeehouse in the Western world, a chai stand is a social center. Newspapers are read, politics debated. Friendly patrons, observing that you are a foreigner, may draw you into conversation, inquiring into the country of your origin, the nature of your journey, the frequency of your sex life. Give them an enigmatic smile and continue sipping.

  If you’re hungry, even the most modest of chai stands offer some bits of food. Tall glass jars full of biscuits and crackers stand on the counter. A nearby plastic bowl holds a few bananas, a papaya, some oranges. Freed from the nagging of the surgeon general, you might be attracted by the large selection of cigarettes and bidis, sold individually or by the pack.

  Some chai stands are more like full-blown restaurants, offering many kinds of Indian snacks: samosas, pakoras, aloo tikki, chole batura. And who can ignore the sweets? Landus, jalebis, halwa, ras gullah, gulab jamun…all sweet enough to make your teeth ache and your blood sugar levels drop to around your ankles.

  Many varieties of cardamom, with its exotic green-and-purple-petaled flowers and its aromatic seedpod, flourish wild on the coastal hills of western India. But the original cardamom was first cultivated in south India for aromatic, culinary, and medicinal purposes.

  The pharmacological value of the cardamom is to be found in the seed, which is of particular assistance against urine retention and stomach disorders...In India it is common practice to offer aromatic cardamoms at the end of a meal, as digestives and for freshening the breath. But they are also used in cooking, not just for flavoring savory dishes like curries, but also in Indian sweets, which often combine cardamoms with rose water and thickened milk.

  —Naveen Patnaik, The Garden of Life: An Introduction to the Healing Plants of India

  My favorites are the milk sweets, and one of my all-time favorite places to eat them is in Mussoorie, the apex of Raj hill stations. Situated at the Library Bazaar end of Mall Road, Maha Laxshmi’s offers to the casual passerby an alluring selection of sweets and snacks. From dawn until well into the evening, a steady stream of patrons fills the place. Others simply walk up to one of the streetside counters for take-away. During the Dewali festival of lights, the lines stretch down the block.

  My favorite time to drink chai there is in the late afternoon after a long walk in the countryside. Finding an empty bench at one of the inside tables, I flag down one of the child waiters and order some burfi (unappetizingly pronounced “barfi”) and a cup of chai. In no time, the boy returns with the tea and two shiny little rectangles on a metal plate. Often covered with a thin foil of edible silver, burfi is made with ground cardamom, almond, or pistachio, milk, and sugar syrup. It is the perfect accompaniment to a good cup of chai.

  And speaking of cardamom, some of India’s more upscale chai stands like to infuse their brew with it or other indigenous spices. Ginger, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and black pepper are all common choices. The cardamom, some say, is best when chewed fresh by the chai wallah, then spit into the pot. I’ve never witnessed this myself, but wisdom might dictate keeping a close eye on the maestro while he is brewing your tea.

  Cardamom seeds

  One of the best ways to enjoy a cup of chai is in the privacy of one’s room. Even India’s budget hotels usually come equipped with a buzzer above or beside the bed. Like a maharajah of old, you can lie back and ring for a servant. In a few minutes “the boy” will knock loudly on your door. This fellow might be a man of eighty years old or a youth of only ten, but if he’s fetching chai, he’s still “the boy.” In minutes he will return with a piping hot glass, lingering on his way out long enough to let you understand that some modest gratuity is desired. Treat him well, and he will work wonders for you at all hours of the day and night.

  One final tip. If you have an aversion to milk and sugar, you can always risk the chai-wallah’s wrath, not to mention the derision of your fellow patrons, and try ordering your chai without milk and/or sugar. “Chini bina chai” should produce the sugarless variety. “Dudh bina chai” will have the offending dairy left out. If you want decaf tea, lowfat milk, or Sweet-and-Low instead of sugar, you will be better off staying at home.

  Jerrold Steward worked in the computer field for fifteen years before turning to writing murder mysteries and traveling in Asia. He is also a painter and photographer (of little renown, by his own estimate) and lives in Berkeley, California.

  In India, conversation often seemed to go round in circles. In Chittaurgarh (City of Valour, said my map) the man at the guest house knocked on my door and said, “Sir. Good evening but your country of origin is what please?”

  “You’ve already written it down five times on five different bits of paper,” I said.

  “What is the fine name of your father?”

  “You’ve written that five times as well.”

  “In the morning,” he said, “you are wishing for a breakfast mealing?”

  “Yes, that would be very nice. You have porridge?” I inquired hopefully.

 
“Porridge—yes.”

  “How much your porridge?” I asked, surprised.

  “Porridge three rupee only.”

  “Okay. One bowl porridge in the morning please.”

  “Porridge? No, no porridge.”

  “But you just said porridge—yes.”

  “No. Omelette, chapati.”

  “Do you have yoghurt—dahi?”

  “Dahi. Yes.”

  “Okay, I’ll have dahi then.”

  “You want omelette?”

  “No, just dahi.”

  “No problem omelette.”

  “No, just dahi.”

  “Just dahi?”

  “Yes, just dahi.”

  In the morning I was presented with a bowl of porridge.

  —Josie Dew, The Wind in My Wheels: Travel Tales from the Saddle

  A Sufi Spring

  WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

  New Delhi reveals its layers through a scholar’s eyes—and the want ads.

  THE WINTER RAINS ARRIVED PROMPTLY AT THE END OF JANUARY. During the last week of the month Olivia and I had gone to stay outside Delhi, in a fort just over the Rajasthani border. The day before our return, as we looked out over the battlements, we saw a succession of thick black clouds driving slowly over the sand flats and camel grass. By the end of the afternoon the clouds had thickened into solid curtain walls of charcoal cumulus. They blotted out the sun and cast a dark shadow over the land.

  The next day we returned to Delhi to find that the storm had broken. The clouds were scudding low over the rooftops; it was pouring with rain and the streets were flooded. In the Old City, Muslim women were dragging their chadors like wet black crows. Gusts of rain lashed down the narrow alleys; rickshaws sluiced through the water, more like boats than bicycles. It was no day to be out, but I had an appointment to keep. I had arranged to see Dr. Yunus Jaffery, a historian and an archetypal Old Delhi-wallah. His ancestors had been Persian tutors at the Red Fort; today Dr. Jaffery pursued exactly the same career in Zakir Hussain College on the margins of Old Delhi. His rooms were in the original college, the Ghazi-ud-Din Medresse, a seventeenth-century Mughal building just outside the Ajmeri Gate.

  Balvinder Singh [the driver] dropped me outside during a brief pause in the rain. A low Mughal gateway led on into a wet and glistening flagstone courtyard; it was deserted but for a solitary pupil running late towards his class. The flagstones were slippery and so hollowed-out by three centuries of passing feet that along some of the walkways the puddles had coalesced into shallow canals. The courtyard was bounded by a range of cloisters two stories high. Classrooms filled the ground-floor rooms. On the first floor, leading off a covered balcony, were the chambers of the fellows and scholars. The arcades were broken on three sides by vaulted gateways, and on the fourth, the principal axis, by a red sandstone mosque. Before the mosque, filling both sides of the cloister garth, was a garden of healing herbs and shrubs.

  I climbed a narrow staircase leading to the first floor balcony. Outside the scholars’ rooms sat a line of bearded old men busily correcting specimens of Arabic calligraphy. Dr. Jaffery’s room was the last on the corridor.

  The door opened to reveal a gaunt, clean-shaven man. He wore white Mughal pyjamas whose trouser-bottoms, wide and slightly flared, were cut in the style once favoured by eighteenth-century Delhi gallants. On his head he sported a thin white mosque-cap. Heavy black glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, but the effect was not severe. Something in Dr. Jaffery’s big bare feet and the awkward way he held himself gave the impression of a slightly shambolic, absent-minded individual: “Asalam alekum,” he said. “Welcome.” Then looking behind me, he added: “Ah! The rains…Spring has arrived.”

  Dr. Jaffery’s domed room was small and square and dark. Lightning from the storm had cut off the electricity and the cell was illuminated by a bronze dish filled with flickering candles. The shadows from the candlelight darted back and forth across the shallow whitewashed dome. Persian books were stacked in disordered piles; in the corner glistened a big brass samovar incised with Islamic decoration. The scene of the Sufi scholar in his room was straight out of a detail from the Anvar-i Suhayli—or indeed any of the illuminated Mughal manuscript books—and I said this to Dr. Jaffery.“My nieces also tell me I live in the Mughal age,” he replied. “But they—I think—mean it as a criticism. You would like tea?”

  Dr. Jaffery blew on the coals at the bottom of his samovar, then placed two cupfuls of buffalo milk in the top of the urn. Soon the milk was bubbling above the flame. While he fiddled with his samovar, Dr. Jaffery told me about his work.

  For the previous three years he had been busy transcribing the forgotten and unpublished portions of the Shah Jehan Nama, the court chronicle of Shah Jehan. He had converted the often illegible manuscript into clear Persian typescript; this had then been translated into English by a team of Persian scholars in America. The manuscript, originally compiled by Shah Jehan’s fawning court historian Inayat Khan, told the story of the apex of Mughal power, the golden age when most of India, all of Pakistan and great chunks of Afghanistan were ruled from the Red Fort in Delhi. It was an age of unparalleled prosperity: the empire was at peace and trade was flourishing. The reconquest of the Mughals’ original homeland—trans-Oxianan Central Asia—seemed imminent. In the ateliers of the palace the artists Govardhan, Bichitr, and Abul Hasan were illuminating the finest of the great Mughal manuscript books; in Agra, the gleaming white dome of the Taj Mahal was being raised on its plinth above the River Jumna.

  The book which contained the fruits of Dr. Jaffery’s labours was about to be published. Now Dr. Jaffery was beginning to transcribe a forgotten text about Shah Jehan’s childhood. The manuscript had just been discovered in the uncatalogued recesses of the British Museum; it was exciting work, said the doctor, but difficult: the manuscript was badly damaged and as he had not the money to go to London he was having to work from a smudged xerox copy. The new transcription absorbed his waking hours; but, despite the difficulties, he said he was making slow progress.

  “As the great Sa’di once put it: ‘The Arab horse speeds fast, but although the camel plods slowly, it goes both by day and night.’”

  As we chatted about Shah Jehan, Dr. Jaffery brought out a plate of rich Iranian sweets from an arched recess; he handed them to me and asked: “Would you not like to learn classical Persian?”

  “I would love to,“ I answered. “But at the moment I’m having enough difficulty trying to master Hindustani.”

  “You are sure?” asked Dr. Jaffery, breaking one of the sweets in two. “Learning Persian would give you access to some great treasures. I would not charge you for lessons. I am half a dervish: money means nothing to me. All I ask is that you work hard.”

  Hindustani refers to the combination of Hindi and Urdu, which are almost the same language when spoken, but they have separate scripts and some differences in vocabulary. Urdu is associated with Muslims, Hindi with Hindus, and about half the population of India understands the two languages.

  —JO’R and LH

  Dr. Jaffery said that very few people in New Delhi now wanted to study classical Persian, the language which, like French in Imperial Russia, had for centuries been the first tongue of every educated Delhi-wallah. “No one has any interest in the classics today,” he said.“If they read at all, they read trash from America. They have no idea what they are missing. The jackal thinks he has feasted on the buffalo when in fact he has just eaten the eyes, entrails, and testicles rejected by the lion.”

  I said, “That must upset you.”

  “It makes no difference,” replied Dr. Jaffery. “This generation does not have the soul to appreciate the wisdom of Ferdowsi or Jalaludin Rumi. As Sa’di said: ‘If a diamond falls in the dirt it is still a diamond, yet even if dust ascends all the way to heaven it remains without value.’”

  I loved the way Dr. Jaffery spoke in parables; for all his eccentricities, like some ancient sage his conversation was dotted with pearls of r
eal wisdom. After the banalities of life with Balvinder Singh and Mrs. Puri [the author’s landlady], Dr. Jaffery’s words were profound and reassuring. As he told little aphorisms from Rumi or the anecdotes of Ferdowsi’s Shah Nama—the Mughal Emperors’ favourite storybook—his gentle voice soothed away the irritations of modern Delhi. But overlaying the gentle wisdom there always lay a thin patina of bitterness.

  “Today Old Delhi is nothing but a dustbin,” he said, sipping at his tea. “Those who can, have houses outside the walled city. Only the poor man who has no shelter comes to live here. Today there are no longer any educated men in the old city. I am a stranger in my own home.” He shook his head. “All the learning, all the manners have gone. Everything is so crude now. I have told you I am half a dervish. My own ways are not polished. But compared to most people in this city…”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Here everyone has forgotten the old courtesies. For example…in the old days a man of my standing would never have gone to the shops; everything would be sent to his house: grain, chillies, cotton, cloth. Once every six months the shopkeeper would come and pay his regards. He would not dare ask for money; instead it would be up to the gentleman to raise the matter and to give payment when he deemed suitable. If ever he did go to the bazaar he would expect the shopkeepers to stand up when he entered….

  “All these things have gone now. People see the educated man living in poverty and realize that learning is useless; they decide it is better to remain ignorant. To the sick man sweet water tastes bitter in the mouth.”

  “But don’t your pupils get good jobs? And doesn’t their success encourage others?”

  “No. They are all Muslims. There is no future for them in modern India. Most become gundas or smugglers.”

  “Is learning Persian a good training for smuggling?”