Pal Dhritiman and I have known each other for 14 years now, and despite the fact that we have occasional differences – he spells ‘shonen’ as ‘shounen’ and ‘biryani’ ‘biriyani’ – he remains among the handful of people I can call up in the middle of the night, say “come over, remember to bring a gun, and keep your phone on silent”, and have him cheerily agree. (The food bill the next day would probably hurt, but trust me, the other guy had it worse.) Consequently, I had asked him to make a guest post on this rather infrequently-updated – ahem, fine, fine, nearly-dead blog. Things as diverse as ‘real life’ and ‘laziness’ got in the way, but he sent me an email recently that made me smile, and with his permission, I am putting it up on my blog.

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I was reading Arul Mani’s note on Magazine lust when the following passage reminded me of something from the past:

Satyajit’s other great love object, the children’s magazine Target, causes us to remember and share dangerous information from our non-metropolitan pasts. Reading Target somehow led him to develop a deep passion for kulchas and a generalised envy of Delhiites who could eat whenever they wanted at Nirula’s.

A few days ago, I had the pleasure of having a meal of stuffed kulchas with chicken saagwala. Since earliest childhood I have had a healthy appreciation for all Indian breads, but, as I sat there, eating the meal, my thoughts turned to my great love for the kulcha. It is a cause for regret that kulchas aren’t available in every shop offering North Indian food.

As it happened, that meal also reminded me of the first time that I ever ate a kulcha.

When I was a child, we, my family and our friends and relatives, rarely ever ate out. The town was small, the options few, and home cooking and rice resigned supreme. Even the wedding menus felt like they hadn’t been tinkered with in a century. My early love of Indian breads was cultivated on a diet of the basic roti – the phulka, the chapatti. My mother was an industrious producer of rotis – she had to be, given our appetite for the roti, my brother and I.

However, by the time I approached voting age, I had eaten out often enough to learn about tandoori roti and naans. [And chhola-bhatoras, which along with the masala dosa, remain the greasy eating out staple all over.] In addition, I had learnt the theoretical concept of roomali rotis, having once overheard some family friend talk about the lunch on a Rajdhani Express trip — the idea that lunch would be served as a part of a train journey was another theoretical concept for me at that time — which had included roomali rotis. But, despite my years of Target reading, possible because I can be a lazy reader, I arrived at Warangal innocent of any knowledge of kulchas.

Sometime soon after the first mid-term exams of the first year – going by my feeling of uneasy freedom and general unfamiliarity with the environment – I once walked into Kalinga Dhaba. I presume that I was with some friends, but I don’t quite remember. All I do remember is that I saw – or now think I saw – you and P at a table. As I walked up to talk to you two, your food arrived, and I saw these promising uber-rotis in the bread basket. When I asked what they were and after you told me that they were kulchas, probably seeing my puzzled face, you invited me to have a taste.

Though I largely remained a good loyal biryani man thorough my Warangal years – a decision party driven by the calculus of Rupee-to-calorie optimization, that bite of kulcha made an impression on me. It is one of the few Indian foods that I have a clear memory – possibly a false memory – of the the first time I ever tasted it.

So, when I was having my kulcha and chicken meal, I thought about mailing you, but I plain forgot, till I read Arul’s piece.

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Dhritiman infrequently blogs over at Proxanto. He misspells “shonen” more frequently on Twitter.