Hunt for Breakfast: Chetla to Deshopriyo Park

Week four saw us looking for a bhajji wala near the Chetla Gurudwara last Sunday morning. Technically though, this was the fifth week, but the week before we went for a repeat visit to Flurys so leaving that out.

So we went looking for a shop that sells awesome bhajji in the mornings. Unfortunately after hunting for about an hour or so we found that the shop was closed. We were really hungry by that time so decided to eat at a small breakfast stall near a place called Bachan dhaba! Radhaballavi and potato curry - that's another version of a stuffed puri. Nothing great about the taste or the ambiance. I was pretty upset.

That one over there...THE Monalisa Lodge

To cheer me up, my fellow breakfast hunters, took me to this place opposite the now-famous-thanks-to-Kahani Monalisa lodge on the Deshopriyo park more. This tea joint was thronging with customers for puris, jalebis, samosas and tea. We had one of the best jalebis in recent times. Samosa was ok followed by a good cuppa tea summed up the morning.

Do drop in at Maharaj snacks for a plate of tasty jalebi when you are in town.

Hunt for Breakfast: Shakespeare Sarani

The third Sunday morning saw us hunting for breakfast near Shakespeare Sarani, Kolkata, India. It is a busy area full of one ways and no entries. We parked on the main road in front of a big sweet shop and Gallery 88. That is the place where M.F. Hussein had an exhibition of his 88 series paintings on the occasion of his 88th birthday!

The trio and toddler went ahead looking for a stall selling "club kachoris".  These are puris of a smaller size and crispier with a masala dal filling. There was quite a queue in front of the small double-decked "Arun Tea stall", we had to wait a good ten minutes before getting a plate of food. There were four people preparing the hot kachoris on the first deck- the preparation itself quite a sight and a display of their talent. One person in charge of the dough, another filling up dough balls with the masala dal filling third was rolling the kachoris and tossing them from his seat to the big fryer in front of the stall - sheer perfection, I could make a movie "bend it like the kachori walah". The fourth one was frying those little delicacies in batches of about 25 to 30 kachoris.

There were two people on the second deck handling cash and tea while two other men were running the service.

Presenting - Club Kachori..psst...we almost forgot to take a pic :P

Enough of description now lets come to the main point, the club kachoris. In short it was fabulous accompanied by a very tasty curry  of potato, paneer and chole as well as a pickled chili. Three and quarter of us had five plates of these kachoris and are now a die hard fan of the club!

The two and a quarter men of the hunting team with all focus on the shop!

We then crossed the road and found "Anna Ras" selling Gujarati delicacies - dhokla, thepla, fafda and many other things. It was interesting to see the owners entire family work the shop along with their employees in yellow tees and kurtis! We shared a plate of dhokla chat which was pretty good followed by tasty vada pao and sticky and sweet jalebis. I never had fafda before so got a parcel of that to munch on the way back.

By then our tummies were pretty full so had a bhar of tea each and put a full stop to our hearty Sunday breakfast.

Hunt for Breakfast: Flurys!

I couldn't postpone writing this one any longer. Well, tomorrow morning its gonna be a different place that we hunt, and the last hunt should get reported before that. Isn't it?

So last Sunday morning, the trio and the toddler went to the famous Flurys on Park Street, Kolkata, India. We were lucky to get seated promptly as we entered, because soon there was a big queue outside. The inside had small square tables strewn about, abuzz with chatter of the early birds. There were few big but empty tables with just a solitary guard on one chair, you guessed it right, reserving tables till the rest of group decided to show up. I found this odd at first but as the queue grew outside I realized the importance of the seat guards.

The breakfast menu was very interesting and pretty confusing one to choose too for the first timers like us. So we decided to go with the first things on the menu - English breakfast - with hash browns, sausages, eggs and bacon, grilled tomato, *sugarcane* juice and coffee, the Joggers breakfast - (we cancelled it later since there was no juice and had green tea - yuk! - instead we got two English breakfast) and Eggs Benedict - eggs and muffins with Hollandaise sauce.

Little one was busy trying out various packets of sugar on the table but soon was distracted by the counters showing off the exquisite varieties of cakes and pastries. He dragged me to check out all the "hap-ep-pen to you" as he calls pastries affectionately.

Hubby dear was a darling and offered to feed a choco-cake to the little one when the breakfast arrived. It was just yumm yumm and yumm. Unfortunately by the time he got to eat, the breakfast was absolutely cold which he didnt enjoy as much. On that count, we have a solid reason to go back and try their breakfast once more!

The bill was super bulky for breakfast, however, no one is complaining as the food did justice all the way. Looking forward to the next trip to Flurys to catch up more on the place, this time I was too engrossed to look up from my plate.

Hunt for Breakfast: Chinese Style

We had learned from a TV food show and later from friends in the city about the great Chinese breakfast bazaar near the Poddar Court area. The only catch, they are available only on Sundays and that too very early in the morning between 6 and 7 o'clock. That translates as leaving our home in the suburbs by 5:30 am to be able to successfully have breakfast. So after a long wait - of over two years - and finally shrugging off our quilts we started off last Sunday to have a taste of the breakfast firsthand.

The TV show gave us a vision of a misty early morning place where people were busy having Chinese soups and momo's and many other delicacies for breakfast. There were many food stalls on both sides of the street. People were sitting on small stools in front and enjoying their food. One little trivia I picked up from the TV show that it was rude and offensive to blow on a hot bowl of soup to cool it down! With all these images running in our minds we parked near Poddar Court.

Our friend cum guide was there about seven or eight years ago. He was surprised to not find anyone on the street that he remembered as the place of the bazaar. We asked around a bit and were soon in front of the food stalls. But what we met was a disappointing show. There were just a handful of food stalls and interestingly there was one with the humble  puri sabji or so we thought. But later we realized that a puri stall was on the other side of the road and this particular one was puri like but with a prawn in the center!

prawn puris...eh?

The ambiance was a major dampener, right next to the momo stall there was a wholesale fish vendor with her load of prawns and bhetki fish. On her side was again a frail Chinese man selling something in packets, I didn't feel like finding out what that was. It was an all out market area with its share of dirt and grime, not a place I would happily go and eat at. But there was quite a crowd for that food notwithstanding the place and its hygiene level.

rice pudding...from a distance!

We started off the food run with a plate of rice pudding, served with a sweet sauce. Hot and crisp on the outside and wobbly soft on the inside, this pudding promised good food. However the next plate of chicken momo thawed the momentum gained with the pudding. We had tasted much better momos at "authentic Indian Chinese places" - or maybe I missed the Indian touch to the Chinese cuisine that we are now so used to.

momos

That's the bun with chicken

Next up was a weird kind of chicken bun. A white steamed bread with a filling of chicken, eggs and onions. This felt totally weird on my taste buds. Just then around the corner I spotted the soup stand - near a wholesale flower shop! But me and hubby were too full already with so much rice items so early in the day. Our friend though got hold of a pork roll and with that we called off the expedition and headed back home.

Chicken buns being steamed

Hoping next Sunday we encounter better breakfast. Signing off with a few more images of the morning breakfast bazaar, pics courtesy hubby and our friend.

As Durgatinashini visits the earthlings, year 2014

Been a few days since the euphoria around the biggest Bong fest came to an end for this year. I know being in Kolkata, there should have been a post on Durga Puja sooner, well here it is, a little late.

In the three years that we are in Kolkata, this is the first time we actually went out to see and enjoy the occasion. In this city, every nook and corner, every road, each by lane probably has a sarbojonin pujo shomiti ready with their agenda and theme of pujo' (henceforth I will continue using pujo instead of puja...gives it that flavour u know!). Sarbojonin pujo, for the uninitiated, is a 'democratic' pujo, of the people by the people. Everyone in the vicinity puts in a donation amount (by will or by force, democracy, remember?) known as chanda and that fund is used to perform the rituals and other important activities. A shomiti is a committee, so it's a "Democratic Pujo Committee", that heads all the activities related to that particular pujo.

I have a lurking belief that these 'other important activities' have come to the forefront and pujo just an excuse. But then these 'other important activities' are mostly fun - cultural programs by the locals including music, dance and plays, sometimes popular artists are invited to perform. Various competitions are held among the local residents, in tune with the occasion, like conch sounding, alpona or rangoli, dhunuchi dance (long stemmed earthenware with embers of coconut husk sprinkled with incense creating a smokey atmosphere), cooking, some places have food stalls put up by the locals, .

We, along with a few friends, started our journey around 12:30 am, just after midnight. My baby deep in sleep, with his new dress on and his "shobuj joto" - green shoes in my bag. Just in case he decided to wake up and wanted to walk - good that we packed his shoes, because that soon happened!

At the first pandal we walked right inside a sea. The entrance was through a corridor lined with waves, various schools of fish and sea weeds on both sides. As we entered we were greeted by the sound of the waves - clever play on the second sense to take the viewer to the desired location! There were visible waves too created using plastic tea cup stacks. These transparent objects in bunches were very creatively used to depict the curly, foamy waves. The beach was complete with litter strewn on one side and a sand sculpture of the goddess' face on the other.

The next place we went had a preachy theme - conserve earth, reduce, reuse, recycle. They too had a lot of plastic figurines made of cellophane and other plastic materials. It was around 2 am then and suddenly hubs spotted tiny eyes looking curiously at things around. He was up and soon realized he was still out which made him immensely happy. But he refused to walk so had to carry him around for the rest of the places.

Then we saw one pujo pandal themed as a tribute to the yesteryear  actress, Suchitra Sen. The walls adorned posters of her famous movies, dialogues and her pictures. Another pandal was a creative description of death, with red and white all over the place along with disfigured dolls of the gods hanging all around, the pandal was kind of creepy. Yet another had a Chinese inspired decor, even the idol had a lot more hands than the regular ten - probably even she couldn't rely on the Chinese hands/goods and wanted some backup!

When we reached the Chinese pandal it would have been around 3 am and we had to push through a crowd to see the pujo and were not allowed to stand there and see the idol properly. People ARE a crazy lot here!

Around 4 am my little one decided to call it a day and was sound asleep. We tugged on for a couple of more hours before heading back home.

Pandal hopping was an exciting experience and to see the dawn break while stuck at a traffic jam, priceless!

Pics courtesy a dear friend.

Tryst with a Temple

We have been planning to visit the Birla Temple, Ballygunge, Kolkata, ever since we landed in the city. However, the visit happened just a couple of weeks back, on a rainy Saturday evening. Probably that was not the most suitable day to visit the place after all.

We parked the car in the lane next to it, there are no provision for car park - the place also has the well known Birla Auditorium which plays host to many a renown artists round the year. Anyway, nit-picking aside, we parked it a little down the road, away from the temple. As it was drizzling lightly and my baby was sleeping, we left him with his grand parents in the car. Hubbs and I went ahead for a little 'together' time in the temple!

As we reached the temple gates we met the 'al(l)mighty' - more powerful than the idols standing inside. Any guesses? Ah! Right you are , they are the Security Guards. "Bag dekhan - show your bags", "juto opasher ghore rakhun - keep shoes in that room over there", "camera nite parben na, bhetore locker o nei, ekjon ekjon kore opore jaan - you cannot carry the camera with you, there are no lockers to keep it, so go one by one." Well those were the orders we received and that ended any time together. 

I decided to go ahead. Rains had made the entry point totally messy and dirty. There was a rag of a thin coir carpet over one side of the white marble stairs. The pristine white marbles were not all that water friendly and coir was definitely a better option to walk on.

Once I reached the courtyard, the expanded podium gave a feeling of being free. Alas! There was a security lady there checking the bags once again for any food or water or what not. I reached her while a heated exchange over a bottle of water was going on with an elderly lady.

I walked up a couple of more steps and reached a corridor sort of place. It had pictures of various episodes of Krishna's life etched around the walls. There were two busts on either side, a lady and a gentleman, guess they are the Birla's in whose memory the temple was erected. There were few families sitting in the corridor in front of the busts. Some children running about playing catch. The security had a problem with that too, I remembered reading the list of Not to do's at the gate which said keep your children to yourself. 

The main deity, Radha Krishna duo, also made of marble and draped in expensive clothes and jewelry looked beautiful. An angry looking priest was sitting in front. I looked at the deity and then at the priest, wondered what had happened between the three. The devotees were to keep a distance from the front of the entrance to that room in which the deity were there, so something must have happened between the three of them only!

I went round the place, the intricate works on marble looked beautiful but were pretty dirty. Not sure how on a rainy day there could be so much dirt - did they not clean it everyday? Well, devotees were not allowed to touch any thing any how. So blame it on the wind.

There were two other rooms in the main temple - one belonged to Shiva and the other to Durga. I visited them too. The priests there looked rather bored. I walked out to the courtyard again. On one corner there was a room for Hanuman and another room housing the various 'avatar's of Krishna. 

People were scattered in that courtyard, chatting among themselves. I could see groups of foreigners in the crowd too. The view from the top was just the city traffic in the front and buildings on the sides. That was all there to see, so I went down and out of the place. 

Hubbs had been clicking away the roadside, temple as seen from the road and the vehicles on the road. But the most exciting picture was that of the moon that evening, never thought our Cannon would focus that far.

(So you know how I feel about that place, if anyone visiting Kolkata wants to visit that place, please don't ask me for company!)