The Basic Instinct

Settling down in a new city brings with it a culture shock. And it is said that a culture shock spans four phases:  Honeymoon, Negotiation, Adjustment and Mastery. Honeymoon is when everything seems fresh and safe. The lightness of incognito and the charm of traveler’s romanticism make the first few days enjoyable. But soon enough, the honeymoon is over and one starts negotiating. Cultural chauvinism starts defending itself in cross language homophones and  cleanliness of restaurants. On an euphimistic note, a longing for country, for home, creeps within us. Comfort of a room, thousand kilometers away from home, brings with it a fear. Deep, rooted in rootlessness, a fear of freedom. Milan Kundera puts it nicely in one of his novels. “Nostalgia, apart from its spatial element also encloses something like the pain of ignorance, of not knowing.”  In social psychology, this stage is believed to be followed by adjustment and mastery with the circumstances. In Hyderabad, adjustment and mastery is getting used to the frequent showers, anarchic traffic, spicy food and water and power cuts during almost unbearable summers.

It was a sudden change in food-habit that came as the first bump to me. Honestly, I had never SEEN a vegetarian except my grandmother (who became a vegetarian after her husband died) before. At restaurants, I always wondered, “Who orders veg items from the menu?” We never looked at them. The ‘non’ in non-veg food was ridiculous to me . How can something (veg food), which didn’t exist for me, take away the truth value of what I eat? The campus (where I came to study in Hyderabad) authorities considered it unnecessary to provide fish or chicken ( they used to call it ‘non-veg’ — neither a word more nor a word less, just ‘non-veg’ ) to us as regular meals. Their argument, rather than being on grounds of morality, was a practical one. They  realized ‘non-veg’ made  the veggies uncomfortable. So, to balance things up, they made  ‘non-veg’ available in a ‘non-veg’ canteen. The price was kept reasonable but the food wasn’t. I remembered choking myself the first time I ordered chili-chicken and roti. All curries tasted the same, with or without butter, with or without vegetables, with or without spices. It was clear that they didn’t cook properly because they couldn’t. The plates weren’t properly washed. The staffs weren’t friendly either.  Students complained. But nothing changed. I believe ‘tasty non-veg food’ is an oxymoron for the authority. ‘Non-veg’ food could not be tasty or spicy or soggy or rotten. It could only be ‘non-veg’. In fact,  ‘non-vegetarians, uncomfortable with food’ was another contradiction.

It was during this  conflict between the past and the present, that Dosa became my connecting link. I have always been a Dosa lover. During my bachelor studies in Kolkata, it used to be a regular lunch, and occasional dinner. That one was oily, compared to its counterpart here in Andhra, but much less spicy than any other street-food which we could afford those days.  At Jadavpur 8B bus stand, below the coffee house, there is a small Dosa stall which serves a green chutney along with its Dosa. Most East Indians consider the white chutney redundant. Probably, there, the notion of  “Chutney” is slightly different. “Chutney” is generally served as a dessert at the end. It is not something  that supports your main course. It can’t be white and should taste sour. I have seen people  calling the sambhar as chutney probably because of its color and taste. Although Idly beats dosa as a typical South Indian breakfast, Dosa is way ahead in terms of variety. An ideal breakfast is when dosa is followed by a cup of Irani Tea or South-Indian filter coffee

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Every time I get a cup of horrible tea, strongly smelling of Elaichi or Ginger or Strawberry or whatever to start my day with, I miss home. And if the tea is balanced and perfect, it reminds me of my mother and her big fuming steel tea-cup, early morning, the only time she used to relax and live for herself before setting out to live for us, the rest of the day.  A nostalgia that smells like home and a tea that smells like tea. I hate experiments with tea. Ideal tea for me should have the flavor of tea leaves, thickness of milk and sweetness of sugar, all distinct, consistent and coherent. This is THE basic requirement. Lousy experiments, with disproportionate amounts of milk, sugar and artificial flavors pisses me off completely. In Irani Tea, buffalo milk is used. The tea becomes thick, cools down fast. If properly prepared, it has a class of its own. It is not of the  refreshing  type but leaves behind a tale of Islamic antiquity. Nimrah Cafe and Bakery, just below Charminar, is the place  to taste  irani tea. The bright white cups, freshly baked Osmania biscuits and a view of the city’s icon Charminar creates the right kind of ambiance found nowhere else.

About 10 minutes walk from the Nimrah Cafe is Hotel Shadab, arguably one of the oldest and finest places for Hyderabadi biryani. Hyderabad is a paradise for chicken lovers. In fact, unless they have a better reason, chicken is what they will remember Hyderabad for. This city smells of Biryani, Tandoori Chicken and Shawarma. Also known as Dum-Biryani,  it doesn’t have a strong aroma like Lucknow Biryani, probably because of the absence of the components like rose-water and kewra and presence of yogurt. Hence, it can be consumed a lot more. The rice and meat are cooked simultaneously, unlike the Lucknow recipe. It is served with raita and mirchi-ka-salan ( a mixture of green chillies, peanuts, till seeds, dry coconut, cumin seeds, ginger and garlic paste, turmeric powder, bay leaf and thick tamarind juice ). Four restaurants , Shadab, Shah-Ghouse, Bawarchi and Paradise hegemonize the realm of Dum Biryani in Hyderabad. While Shadab is famous for its mutton biryani (optimally soft pieces of meat and a uniform blend of rice and masala), Shah-Ghouse boasts of its Special Chicken Biryani (extremely well cooked with less rice and more chicken). Each one of them except Paradise have maintained the old-time ambiance with their wooden furniture, dim light, waiters clad in traditional attire and huge turbans. On the other hand Paradise follows a twenty-first century philosophy and presents itself in a more contemporary style. A huge multistorey restaurant at the heart of the city, it has developed a brand value and is the most famous of the lot. During ramzan, they open Haleem Counters. I have visited each of these places multiple times, in mornings, afternoons and evenings and never found a seat without waiting for at-least half and hour. The minimum quantity of Biryani served is substantial and it is wise to consult the waiter before ordering.  Vidyadhar, a friend who has spent four years of his engineering in this city once told me, “We didn’t use to eat anything since morning and  went to play football in the afternoon. Then we used to go to Shah-Ghouse and order a Handi each”. It is indeed difficult to stay a loner in Hyderabad unless you can finish a Handi alone.

Gachibowli, where I stay, is a newer township than  Nampally or Secunderabad. It’s neither as chaotic as the old city nor as elegant as Banjara Hills. It’s a part of Hyderabad where one finds symptoms of unfinished development — barren lands and swamps between hundreds of mammoth MNC buildings, shopping malls and residential complexes, many more under construction. There are plenty of places to eat and drink, both for people who live in those buildings and those who build them. Kondapur, Hitech City and Indira Nagar are three such places which offer almost everything that Indians eat or have learnt to eat. There are Bawarchis, Punjabi Dhabas, Kolkata Houses and Kerala Kitchens, midnight maggi and wada pav’s. There are of course many small food courts which serve traditional Andhra cuisine. The proletarians serve and eat here and they have kept both the standards of cost and hygiene very low. And then there are Belgian breweries, authentic Italian and Chinese restaurants, stacked on top of Pizza Huts and KFC’s. Some of them offer affordable decent lunch and dinner buffets for underpaid IT professionals and Indian research students, like me.  Well, I spend more than half of what I earn on these restaurants, cigarettes and rum. These numbers don’t make me a bad-ass foodie or a smoker or a drunkard. It validates my economic status as an underpaid, middle-class, Indian research student, a class-enemy in its purest form.

In these two and a half years, surely I have eaten a lot. And I have made some great friends who have done the same. I feel extremely pampered while savoring their home-made brownies, banana chips, Bathua Pooris and laddus.  I have been taught to eat Dal-Bati, relish the taste of Khakhra and Thepla with garlic chutney, spot the difference between Chennai Idli from the rest of India and how to use chop-sticks. When the Subway guy asks me “Which bread ?” or “Which sauce ?”, I don’t panic anymore. The fear of rootlessness is gone. Nostalgia has simmered down. Does that make me a vagabond looking for new obsessions or a free person in search of identity? I don’t know. Social psychologists might say that I have mastered the culture shock. Probably, I have. I don’t miss home anymore.