The Delhi Chapter : Page 54

The entrance façade of our office ghetto was littered with an assortment of street-side food sellers.

Momos, Dosas, Chaats, Paranthas, Sandwiches, Maggi, you name it.

And the grub that you got for the kind of price there.

Yum, is not the word.

[ It often made for low-cost lunch for us interns.

Or a quick-break in the evening, to half-fill the stomach. ]

I went up to this oldish man, whose hair (more salt than pepper) looped out of a somewhat egg-shaped head.

It looked like grey wires were plastered to his glossy skull (smelling suspiciously of Coconut oil).

This man made tea (of the piping-hot variety) with the most orgasmic aroma of Cardamom.

[ Which tasted even more delicious on a Delhi, November evening. ]

Also, he cooked up a storm with something as artless as Maggi.

[ A dish even my brother could prepare. ]

But the incredibleness in the hands of that man, was just something else.

I can’t explain.

Maggi with burnt garlic and roasted tomatoes and eggs and baby-corn and baby-mushrooms and carrots and chillies and capsicums and a zillion and one other things (leaving out the lettuce).

Making it the best Maggi any hands I knew had ever made before.

****

There already was a necklace of people surrounding his evidently popular stall.

And once I drank up my cup of tea.
And polished my plate full of heaven (worth Rs. 20).

[ Sitting on a quiet rock by the kerb. ]
I slowly started ambling towards my first weekend in Delhi.

****

A chilled sheet of charcoal.

A walk with a clot of fog.

A quivering jacket pocket.

A wind starting up.

Strokes of a Saffron sunset.

A shimmy of sizzling leaves.

A perfect November evening, was finally served up...