Food fadding

I was idly watching television last night after a day that stretched endlessly through miles of heat, traffic, pollution and blazing sunshine. My legs twitched, my head ached and my tummy did somersaults – like the kitten was doing around my feet, chasing her tail. And I switched channels, wavering between a wonderfully weepy soap and a more comprehensible travel-food show by maverick chef Anthony Bourdain. I am not sure which made me laugh more, but sitting on the carpet gazing at the tube managed to make me feel better about life in general and the day in particular.

Bourdain has a wonderful mania about him. He wanders the world at will – or as per the will of the sponsor who funds his shows, one presumes – and eats and cooks up the strangest of foods. His two books that I have read and now own (Kitchen Confidential and A Cook’s Tour) described a person who has been through, almost literally, the underbelly of the food world, and the lowest possible in any life, with drugs, sex, rock and roll and seedy backstreet dives where cooking is a shortcut to disease and come out triumphant, ready to show off not just culinary expertise, but chutzpah and a supreme confidence that anything can be faced and won over without too much trouble or effort.

Yesterday I was watching the man eat street food, first in Kolkata and then in Mumbai. Even just seeing in on the small screen, knowing that it was not, in some existential way, real in my own life, the episode was alive, vivid, full of flavour and colour and the sheer joy of a new adventure. While my rather turbulent tummy did more flips and flops than the kitten, who was now rooting about near my knees with a single-minded determination that had me giggling and wincing as her claws dug into a tender part of my thigh, I saw him eat jhal-muri, bheja fry, kebabs of various kinds and, eventually, the great Bombay burger – vada pav.

Much to my regret and oftentimes shame, I have rarely, if ever, eaten street food. I was fed paani puri twice, once in Kailash Parbat at the end of Colaba Causeway in Mumbai and once at Haldiram’s in Lajpat Nagar in Delhi, but both were made with mineral water and neither had the authenticity of the real thing eaten at a street corner or on Chowpatty Beach or, as my friend swore, the stuff of Bengali Market (also Delhi) fame. I have maybe once or twice eaten bhelpuri on the beach, followed up with wonderfully cold and delicious malai kulfi, a burning bottom and many regrets. I did, once, eat something called ragda pattice outside the college I briefly attended (or was supposed to) in Mumbai, but cannot remember much more than the fact that it as incredibly spicy and not worth the pain.

But they tell me that street food is to die for. I will examine that issue tomorrow, I promise. For now, I will stick with what comes out of my own kitchen and watch the kitten do roll-overs on the carpet with steely persistence.