Munchies and more

(More from the Delhi files...)

'Tis the party season in Delhi. Beautifully warm, sunny days yield to chilly evenings, and outdoor dos are the norm, for the most part. Sigris and heaters light up the nights as hosts conduct their shivering guests on to the terrace, where they all huddle together with hands outstretched over the glowing coals. An occasional burst of teasing breezes induce delicate shudders as chilly fingers of air creep up trouser legs, sari petticoats and sleeves with a touch of arbitrary, casual sadism. And the soul gets gently chilled in tandem with the body, as the necessity for food for thought fades even as the need to feed the stomach burgeons.

The stomach is indeed fed, with bits and bites. In Mumbai, party crunchies would depend on the sort of occasion it is. Very often, I have feasted variedly on potato chips, banana chips, tapioca chips, carrot chips, karela chips, yam chips, prawn chips, corn chips, tortilla chips and a chip on a shoulder or two. Chivda of various flavours jostles with papads and pretzels, while prettily configured veggies clamour for attention from dips laden with dahi, paneer, fresh herbs and hoarded spices. Trays wander past, laden with canapés (pronounced in myriad ways)-everything from neat rounds of bread to saltines topped with cheeses, goopily-mayonnaised salads and curried vegetables. An occasional roll in appropriately cocktail bite-size may make its presence known, in the company of small chunks of fruit.

And the guests partake, some making dinner out of minor offerings. Punctuating gulps of assorted beverages and bursts of conversation is the crunch, chew and munch of passing edibles served up, masticated and swallowed. Polite requests for recipes intersperse doses of gossip about friends and enemies alike, with sidelong comments on fashion, foibles and frivolities that are the norm in parties. Everyone knows someone and pick-up lines are as frequent as ecstatic greetings of buddies not seen for at least two hours, air kisses exchanged, the air redolent of the onion on the chole, the garlic in the dip and the mustard with the proscuitto.

In Delhi, however, there is a distinct culinary difference. I have never met so many self-conscious eaters of a fare that tends to be standard across the capital's evenings out. As I have stood on cold terraces or windswept lawns, my hands creeping steadily closer to the warmth of sparking embers, I have dodged melancholy men in grubby uniforms insistently offering me a series of morsels of strange colour and odour. This is where I met the kebab, now ubiquitous in my social experience. It came sliced into mouth-filling pieces, small coin-shaped rounds or wrapped in cold, hard rotis, with a red sauce - was it ketchup, barbeque, salsa or something else that I didn't want to identify? - to slop it with. It lay inertly in paraffin-warmed metal containers, held on a tray in the company of crepey paper napkins with which to wipe off the oil and masala. It varied in colour from deep burnt-amber to pale grey-green, and incorporated dizzying quantities of spices, some incendiary, some dulling, some just plain inappropriate. And its composite contents spread across the animal kingdom, from fish to fowl to other fauna of unquestioned provenance.

As a change came the vegetarian avatars of this cocktail food - paneer squares, capsicum strips, potato croquettes and, in one horrific accident, broccoli in a batter coating. It all floated past on the same sort of containers as the carnivorous equivalents, to a considerably less enthusiastic acceptance. Accompanists included fragile toothpicks, implements to pierce and lift the edible morsels to the mouth; the problem was then what to do with the little skewers thereafter - I did notice modes of disposal such as furtively sticking them under chair cushions, dropping them discreetly into potted plants and, in one particular instance (which caused me to go into firmly quelled paroxysms of delighted giggles), the jacket pocket of a passing gentleman (for the record and the edification of suspicious friends, that was not my doing).

And then, one bright winter late-night, I met the spring roll, cocktail style. It was at a party to celebrate the launch of a glossy book. The tome was vivid, the rolls pale brown; the volume unfurled its bright pages at the flick of a thumb, the food curled cringing on a warmer tray; the book needed a whole lap to hold it in, the munchie mandated two fingers, delicately positioned. Both were devoured, eagerly, avidly, greedily. Food for the soul and more for the tummy, all right!