The Joys of Freshly Toasted Bread!

I had to put this picture up! Just to keep myself from going into the kitchen again and toasting a few more slices! I am a total sucker for Bread and Butter! And freshly toasted bread.... ooooh baby! I'd die for it!

Its been my childhood love I'd confess! History dates this unusual obsession with the fluffly flour preparation to 1998 A.D. We used to have a red-colored "National" toaster. I remember mummy preparing toasted bread and serving it to us with our evening milk. I would just love the butter melting on the hot bread. We would then lick it off from the face of the bread. Ahha!

The toaster gave up after some years and we shifted to toasting breads on the "tawa" (the pan on which you make chapattis/rotis) ! The tawa-toasted ones have a very sizzler-ey touch to them. You spread butter on a bread piece and put its buttered face on the hot tawa. It pops and sizzles, gets the ethereal yellow-brown colour and the butter gets soaked right in. Delicious, I tell you! By the time I grew up, I had perfected my own technique, since I always felt that the traditional tawa toasting consumed a lot more butter and the 'zaika' wasn't really there. But Tawa toasted breads have been an integral part of my evening milk snack since ages yore.

2010 A.D. My appetite for the tawa toasted ones had jaded. Plus 2010 saw the "Return of the Toaster". Two incidents worth remembering..
1. Sam's place after a Dil Chahta Hai watching night saw us preparing our morning snack on his toaster which just wouldn't pop up the bread and which had the uncanny knack of giving the bread eaters electric shocks when you tried to be smart with it..

2. After our last exam we headed to Zee's place before he could leave for Amreeka. And we were hungry. Atleast I was. On our way in the metro, when I was warning Zee on the phone that he better have something for us to eat, otherwise he should get ready for a fridge raid, a pretty girl sitting beside me even offered me a full burger. And she wouldn't budge to my saying 'No'. So I ate it. How many times do you see that happening ?
We finally reached Zee's place and made hay till the loaf of Harvest Gold lasted. We even rationed off the little butter cubicle that was left.

This transformed me into a 3 year old tantrum-throwing kid. The tantrums did pay off though! And we finally bought a toaster during Diwali. And Ive been happily snacking myself on the produce.

P.S. I am feeling hungry now. Bread- Butter calling.
P.P.S. People who know me well, know that the way into my heart is through Toasted Bread! ;-)
P.P.P.S And for the final time.. NO.. I don't own a "Hello Kitty " Toaster!

Making the Railway Junta read!

A.S Wheeler and Co. The name synonymous with books at railway stations. Conspicuously seen as a wheeled cart or as a shop with stacks of books, “Wheeler” has been literally making the railway junta read. Tacitly, of course!

The Wheeler kiosk at Howrah Station

I noticed this small revolution on wheels on my first journey by train some 6 years back, at the Jalandhar station. How ironic it is that one does not notice most things at one’s home station. Clearly, the reason why I never saw it at the New Delhi, Old Delhi or Hazrat Nizammudin Stations. Not to overwhelm you guys, but there are a dozen more stations in Delhi, just that I've never boarded a train from them.

I get off the train at the Jalandhar station and Wheeler is the first thing I notice at the station apart from the mindbogglingly clean state the station is in. No, seriously! I cannot say that about other stations, but you've got to see the Jalandhar and Amritsar stations. They are no model stations. The toilets there are bad as well. But there isn't a speck of dust to be found on the platform. You are scared of setting your foot on the platform for the fear of setting off a certain turbaned gentleman. But 'sardarji', that is the only way I get to alight and deboard the train.

Now If I am at the station, and I have to wait for a train, I am like a restless 5 year old. You literally have to catch hold of my hand and make me sit down. And Jalandhar was no different. I was there roaming and 'dirtying' (according to the huge 'sardarji') the platform. So after parrying off the gallons of free-flowing abuses in 'theth' punjabi ( 'th' in 'theth' pronounced as 'th' in 'thanda' pani) even my dad would have difficulty understanding, I settled behind the Wheeler kiosk with a version of Ramayana I had never seen before.

Unable to hold my attention, I put the book right back. I settled with a famous Hindi comic which I was seeing after ages. What I was more amazed with that day was the the collection of books that the kiosk was carrying. There were 1st hands, 2nd hands, 3rd hands, 4th hands of authors ranging from Enid Blyton to Jefferey Archer to Indian authors. There were magazines in regional languages, newspapers, religious books, there was just everything there. And there were people there too. Reading, browsing and purchasing. Wheeler had made this possible. In a country where the accessibility of clean water is a question we have to answer everyday, Wheeler had made sure that there were no brows raised when it came to easy and cheap access to reading material. They were at least making the junta at railway stations read. Not a small number any day, taking into account the number of people who use the rail network.

We might be crying our throats hoarse on TV channels about making a change, and here there were Wheeler and Higginbothams ( What Wheeler is in the North, East & West; Higginbothams is in the South) already doing that. With most of us unaware. Even of their name! And they've been doing it since ages. From the time of our grandparents and even before. The world wide web might reach any corner of the world, but Wheeler and Higginbothams will always be there, making an impact felt in a way our "Web 2.0-addicted-brains" will never understand!

P.S Although I've gone on to rant about my first tryst with Wheeler, and the fact that I've seen it at almost 10 other stations I've been to, the idea to pen this down struck my thick-skinned cranium only when I saw the Higginbothams kiosk at Chennai Central. Cheers to that!

Naeem Bhai ki Biryani!

Amongst all the faculties and centres of Jamia Millia Islamia, the Faculty of Engineering and Technology will unequivocally serve you the best biryani! That is where all the students turn up when they feel like having Chicken Biryani! Yes..! At the engineering faculty canteen run by Naeem Bhai. He and his crew dole out plate after plate of this mouth smacking delicacy every afternoon during lunch time ( till whatever time the stocks last.. Experience says that they usually don't!)

The last time we had biryani before we graduated.

So its been what.. like 4 years.. that Ive been hooked onto this rice preparation. Its a sinfully rich preparation I tell you, with all the masala and the flavours that it embodies..

I remember the first time that I had biryani at the canteen. I was pretty ignorant of its existence in the 1st few weeks of my college. Only somewhere in October did I come to realise that there was this one corner of the canteen where there was always a mad gathering. Not like my catneen was huge or anything.. but this corner was always noticeable with its mannerisms.
And this used to be the one catering the Chicken Biryani.

A stout guy, we lovingly addressed as 'Montu Bhai' was there with a saucer in his hand to dish out the rice preparation from a huge 'pateela' ( hindi for container used to boil milk in) and hand it out. And the junta was jumping over one another to get him to hand out a plate to them before the stock got over.
So I thought.. "I need to try this out." I purchased a token and got into the crowd just to get my hand onto a plate of biryani. It was the October of 2006 then and it is going to be the October of 2010 now and Ive never ever gotten over its taste. It was 15 Rs. then and it is 25 Rs. now. But it has always been one of the best things Ive had at my canteen. The helping was so decent that one plate was all it took to satiate your taste buds. And it was hot as hell! You could opt for a less spicy version as well, but you had to tell 'Montu Bhai' before he started moving his hands inside the pateela. Because once he began, there was absolutely no stopping him. His speed used to amaze me. 10 plates dished out in 30 odd seconds. This guy was fast.

Being a Muslim university, it was normal for almost all faculty canteens to be serving biryani. But it was the Engineering faculty canteen and Naeem Bhai's biryani that was famous. We had people coming in from far and near. And if you were late to arrive , you always knew it was over. 300 odd plates dished out in less than an hour.

Infact, I got my gang hooked onto Biryani and "Meetha samosa".
Anytime I was out of class, my friends knew where to find me. I was in the canteen hogging biryani or meetha samosa. Ohh I so loved it. It was just one of the many things that I loved about Jamia.
Naeem Bhai is still there running the canteen and so is Montu bhai dishing out the ' chicken biryani' to the junta at the Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Jamia Millia Islamia. Go try it out!

P.S. Maybe you'll still find me there, in formals though, taking a well deserved lunch break from office, reminiscing all the good times over a plate of biryani.