Angst In My Pangst

There was a time when South Indian food was a novelty in my life. The first time I heard the word “dosa” would be in my Class III Social Studies book, in the chapter on Tamil Nadu. “Idli and Dosa are the staple food items of the state.”, I was told, and probably wondered about these strange people who did not eat rice for lunch and dinner.

Street-vendors on bicyles would pass by the Rehabari neighbourhood once in a while, selling hot idlis, but Ma never bought them – and did not let us, me and my sister, I mean, eat them even when our neighbours bought them. It seems she knew someone who once found a beedi inside a pack of idlis. ( Trust me, my mother was a fountain of urban legends at the time. She even knew someone whose uncle started barking like a dog and snarling at family members after being bitten by a dog.)

The first time I actually had a dosa was when Woodlands opened. It was the first South Indian restaurant in Guwahati, a posh place where, as my friends told me, if you went in and sat for a couple of minutes and left without ordering anything, you would still have to pay five rupees – you would be charged for the air-conditioning. It was in a building that was right on top of my uncle’s department store, my favourite hang-out after school.

Going to Woodlands would be an essential day of the month for my sister and me – it would be an exciting family affair, for that matter. My father would tell us about a day before that we would be going out to Woodlands soon. Homework would be completed in record time, and the house would be remarkably free of sibling squabbles for the next twenty four hours. Occasionally our cousins would also come along, making it a Family family affair, and we would take a couple of rickshaws ( not autos, remember. Autos in Guwahati are run by the Devil’s apprentices.) all the way to Ulubari Sari-ali, where Woodlands was. All us kids would run up the stairs while our parents would drop in and say a quick hello to my uncle downstairs. It would take two of us to push the door open and the waiter would take us to the table that would be reserved – it was a popular place, and while the eat-out culture had not really reached epidemic proportions of the nineties and the double-ohs, Woodlands was one of the few affordable family restaurants of the day, and would usually be full.

While others might take time to decide what they would have, I was one of the few who did not have to look at the menu. At all. It was the Plain Dosa I wanted, because it came shaped like a cone, a tiny hill surrounded by bowls of sambar and chutney. It cost 10 rupees, and was fun not only to eat, but also to be admired, like some strange spaceship doomed to be eaten by a ravenous nine-year old. Besides, it was just perfect for me, being neither too big for me to polish off, nor so small that I was left hankering for more at the end.

But, oh heavenly delight, the most interesting of them all was the sambar and the chutney that came with it. My mother later told me she used to be really happy when I gobbled all of the sambar – that was the only time I did not complain about green vegetables with my food. But gobbled-up is the wrong word, really. The sambar would be piping hot, and with quite a bit of vegetable pieces floating around in it, beans and tomatoes that somehow tasted different when mixed with this strange, slightly-sour brew. And how does one partake of this hot sambar? Easy, you take a spoonful of it, dip it in the cold chutney and then sip it. What a combination that would be, that hot-cold spoonful of sambar-chutney! And alternately, you could take some chutney, dip it in the sambar and repeat. By the time the dosa ended, there would be two near-empty bowls of a sambar-chutney mash-up which I would proceed to finish. And sometimes ask for extras.

I think the realization of growing-up came to me when I found out that I could finish a plain dosa at Woodlands and was still hungry. And I graduated to masala dosas. Yay!

The most masala dosas I had in a given point was in Bombay. While my father and sister were going nuts trying to find a place that sells decent rice-dal-curry, Ma and I were tripping on masala dosas. They tasted different, of course. Masala dosa tastes different everywhere in India, so does the sambar and the chutney.

In my higher secondary years, I discovered this place called Feeds, that sold excellent masala dosas. All of a sudden, my lunch money, which used to be saved for comics was diverted to masala dosas. The guys who introduced me to Feeds got sick of dosas soon, not me! Sadly enough, that place closed down just before our Final examinations. There is an internet centre there now.

I nearly lost my taste for dosas when I was in college. The mess food was terrible ( isn’t it always? ) and we would launch collective groans whenever it was dosa for breakfast. They used to be burnt, and instead of sambar and chutney, they would give us some potato curry. Going to college cultural fests used to be a relief, because those messes, in particular the IIT Madras hostels, would serve some excellent masala dosas. The most humongous dosa I have had would be the 70 mm dosa at Hotel Ashoka in Warangal, truly a never-ending, monstrous appetite-killer. Probably that was the only dosa that I have had to struggle to finish.

There’s a place called 99 Dosas in Sowmajiguda, quite nearby. They offer 99 (duh!) varieties of dosas. Lots of weird combinations ( pineapple and cheese, paneer mushroom, broccoli ), but good fun. I used to love the chicken and mutton dosas at Empire, which was just a hundred metres away from my Bangalore office. And there is Chutney’s, which used to be a favourite haunt for me and psasidhar when he was here. Strangely enough, I don’t enjoy the steamed dosa as much as I love the masala dosa there.

The worst dosa I’ve had would be one I had enroute to Chandigarh recentluy. The bus from Delhi stopped at an eat-stop, it was raining and the place had a choice of a buffet or a dosa. I decided I would be adventurous for once – and of course, I was curious to taste the Punjabi variation. Five minutes later, the words “curiousity” and “cat” were juggling around in my head, even as I gulped down three packs of Appy to rid my mouth of the taste.

Why am I talking about dosas? I just realised I hadn’t eaten one in a very long time. In fact, I cannot remember the last time I had one! Unthinkable!!

That’s going to be remedied in a couple of hours, though.