On Chaat
Volume 4 | Issue 12 [April 2025]

On Chaat
—Neelum Saran Gour

Volume 4 | Issue 12 [April 2025]

Photos – Jitendra Singh Yadav

Combing the internet to read about chaat is like labouring to trace one’s childhood with a Google map. But the internet may not be mocked for it provided me with three important details that my local chaatwalas and their clientele have no clue about. First that chaat originated in North India in the seventeenth century during the reign of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan when the waters of the river Yamuna turned too alkaline for consumption and the hakims of Delhi recommended fried, spicy, and sour snacks combined with curd for the health of the populace. A contrary account claims that not Delhi but what is now Uttar Pradesh was the original place of its appearance. As the site of Aryan expansion and the predominance of a milk-based pastoral culture, U.P. might have accounted for some curd-based items of chaat much earlier in history and the fact that the dahi bara, going under the Sanskrit name of kshirvata, finds mention in texts of the 12^th century and is said to have come down from 500 B.C. is an exciting discovery.

For me chaat involves a harvest of family lore and perennial paragraphs of lived time. The sheer sensuousness of it – after all the word ‘chaat’ is derived from the Hindi verb ‘chaatna’ – to lick – sets up a saucy prickle in the palate which is an overpowering sensory memory.  The full range of overpowering flavours is encoded in my tongue. Finely mashed potato moulded into plump disks and fried on a greased skillet over a slow fire, crisped to produce a pleasant grate as one’s teeth sink into it. Slathered with lashings of thick curd and a treacly tamarind and ginger chutney of an unguent honey consistency, its sour piquancy tempered by a sweet counterpoint to tease the taste buds. The fluffy, grainy dumplings of urad dal dahi baras that alight gently on the tongue and disintegrate in a lush slurp of creamy curd seasoned with roasted cumin and a dash of chilli, and the ultimate surprise of fine-chopped ginger, raisins and coriander stuffed into their interiors. Papri chaat with its crackling, resistant crust for teeth to crunch over. Matar or dried peas boiled almost to a pulp, garnished with onions and coriander, and lapped in chutney. Stuffed tomatoes and bitter gourd oozing spicy filling, pummelled into a mash on the smoking griddle. The expected pop and swill of phulkis – also called gol-gappas – and the drenching of the mouth in the sour, runny overflow of jal-zeera. In the old days there was also aaloo-dhania – roundels or cubes of boiled potato tossed in a tart and pasty coriander- mint- and- mango sauce. Everything in my Allahabad chaat was calibrated to provoke the palate with unexpected surprises. It is not to be wondered that from its sites of origin chaat spread to places wherever Indians went, to the South Asian countries, even to the Caribbean.

My husband’s grandmother, she who never touched garlic or onions, had a passion for chaat. And that of the Loknath variety. Loknath lane, for over a century, has been the epicenter of chaat-rabri- lassi and hari-samosas that Allahabadi connoisseurs swear by.  She would summon her private rickshaw and ride all the way to the interior of the old city to savour the delights of chaat. The story in the family goes that when she lay dying – she being a serious diabetic – and the doctors had pronounced her condition as being absolutely beyond medical succour, she was asked what she would like to eat and she feebly called for the forbidden Loknath chaat!

The palate is highly subjective and has its own free associations. Chaat for me is a summer thing, an evening thing although for many people it is an any-season- any-time relish. Traditionally our chaat vendors emerged with their wares only in the evenings. When asked why, one of them replied that mornings went in extensive preparation. As something that originated in pre-refrigeration days, that makes perfect sense. In my personal memory map chaat is inseparably conjoined with summer evenings and the courtyard of my childhood bungalow and also with the little bazaar of Colonelgunj in the 1960s.

There used to be a neat outdoor-indoor balance about our Allahabad summers. Evenings and nights were spent in the open, in gardens, terraces and courtyards. Late mornings and afternoons were spent indoors with the sun blazing away like a furnace in the sky and the hot skin-charring ‘loo’ hissing against walls and roof tiles, heaving its weight against our rattling doors, dragging, and hauling at the whipped branches of parched trees till they quivered all over. But at sundown as the furnace faded, the drenching plash of water sprinkled profusely in hot gardens and courtyards let loose another scale of fragrances as the porous earth grew spongy with moisture and exhaled its soggy breath. When the grass was wet against the soles of the feet it was time for our cane chairs and cots and table fans to be brought out. Time for cut mangoes and melons and falsa juice and bel sharbat. Time for our ice-cream parties in the lawns. And time for chaat!

There were two different orders of chaat indulgence for me. One was to sally forth, escorted by a parent, uncle or orderly, to the busy little Colonelganj bazaar, its narrow lanes buzzing with bicycles and rickshaws and the occasional scooter or the rare motor car. The unpaved puttries were fresh soaked in evening sprinkles from the water-bearing municipal lorries that did efficient duty every evening so that the dust settled and a coolness pervaded the air. The first bulbs came on in the shops and on the electric poles as one went past the intersection that led to the nearby mosque. One took the left turn near our little Shiva temple and the one dedicated to  Krishna a few paces down, past the public corner well on its elevated platform, past the ice dealers, the milk and dairy place, the earthenware and palm-leaf fan and platter stalls, the hardware shop, the saree and garments shop, the stationery and grocery shop, turned right and then left again, and emerged in a wider area where the lane broadened to an enclosed square and there, beneath the shade of a massive pipal tree stood our chaatwala’s cart exuding its hot, spicy aromas! Close by were the vegetable stalls, with their glossy, wet greens and behind, on its round pediment stood our bright vermilion Hanuman, surrounded by lit earthen oil lamps. So chaat for me isn’t an independent gastronomical experience but a trans-sensory memory involving the touch of summer on my skin, the incense of cool water on hot earth, the muezzin’s call from the minaret of the not-so-distant mosque, the bells ringing in the temples I passed, the lit diyas at Hanuman’s shrine, the lights glimmering in the shops.

I remember that what goes under the name of ‘aaloo tikia’ was then called ‘chops’.  Dahi baras were a speciality glorified with the name of a certain Khokha Rai whose characteristic cart with its huge cone set centrally on it, had become the rage. We ate off leaf-bowls and with leaf scoops or with our fingers – before the first wooden ice-cream scoops appeared.

That was my bazaar chaat chapter. Sometimes, more excitingly, a chaat party took place in our home itself. The chaatwala, that prince of spice and savoury, came, pushing his laden cart, and set up stall in our vast bungalow yard. Our guests sat around on chairs or string cots or on the steps of the verandah, and ate what they pleased. Except for those who clustered around the cart and awaited their turn to receive the crisp, round, paper-thin globes of phulkis filled with tangy, mango-flavoured jal-zeera, craning forwards and popping the delicate goody into mouths stretched open to maximum capacity, snapping their jaws shut as the multiple flavours of the burst phulki invaded their taste buds. One particular memory is special to me. A manual mini-projector had been bought by my parents. A white sheet hung from the wire clothesline in the courtyard and a little film screened for the marvelling guests as they sat enjoying their chaat. The handle of the projector turned, the spool of film unwound and faint black-and-white dancing figures appeared on the screen- to the wonder and delight of the visitors. I, who loved the Sunday morning children’s matinee shows screened at Lakshmi Talkies, was beside myself with glee, to think that the cinema had actually come to my home like the mountain coming to Mahomet as the saying goes. Chaat and childhood for me form one incredible composite memory.

Fast-forward to another time and the University chaatwalas – that popular nexus at the Women’s College. Perched on a low wall, we sat eating chaat, discoursing Simone de Beauvoir and Pablo Neruda, Hermann Hesse, or Albert Camus. Exchanging books and vinyl records out of our jhhola bags. Berating the boys who stalked us or waxing ecstatic over the teachers who were our stars in the lecture rooms. Comparing the fall of our bell-bottom pants. Often sharing poems we had written. Or received from admirers. Giggling hysterically if and when we discovered the same poem had been offered to several of us! Imagining our venturesome boyfriends sitting around making copies of the same poem!

As the reel of life unspools further, chaat reappears in many little islands of recall. Our friendly neighbourhood chaatwala, who had stationed himself close to our gate, became a great favourite with my parents and with my small children. He’d happily respond to orders to send leaf bowlfuls of chaat to our gate, set on a large brass platter. On foggy winter evenings in the month of Magh, when the Magh or Kumbh Melas were on, he used to have a special class of customer. Pilgrims from Bengal come for a dip in the Sangam and staying in batches at the old Bengali dharmsala close by. Back from their morning dip and rituals, in the bitterly cold evenings, they headed for the chaatwala’s cart. Clad in thick jerseys or jackets, transparently thin dhotis over long- johns and sporting their trademark monkey caps, they gathered excitedly round the chaatwala’s cart, tucking in with gusto. For, as one of them candidly confessed, other than taking the holy dip at the confluence of the Ganga and the Yamuna, performing their sacred rituals and purchasing woollen clothes, their next priority in the to-do list was to enjoy chaat every evening. That’s true of many of my friends who have migrated to Mumbai or Chennai or New York or Sydney as the case may be. When they return to Allahabad on nostalgic visits, they place their monumental chaat pilgrimages at par with the Sangam in their itinerary. For Allahabad’s signature brand of chaat, distinct for its subtle balance of sweet and sour chutneys and its full-bodied, unscrambled texture, is for many an inalienable flavor of home. There doesn’t seem to be anything to substantiate the conventional belief that chaat is a women’s favourite, its pleasant tart, tangy provocation being specially tempting to the pregnant and the hormonally blossoming. But if one is to consider the long queues in front of our Shiva Chaat or Panditji’s Chaat one can reasonably deduce that chaat is a gender-neutral favourite.

Our friendly neighbourhood chaatwala has advanced, abandoned his cart and bought a regular shop nearby. His plates of chaat which used to cost Rs.4 are now priced at Rs.40. My son, who at the age of four used to slurp up chaat with so much relish, is now forty. A man of his times, he is wary of his little four-year-old tucking into ‘junk food’ and doubtful ‘street food’. Back in the 1960s our guests enthusiastically attacked the chaat served at summer evening parties. Not so now. Unless it is entirely homemade, bazaar chaat meets with some suspicion from certain squeamish guests who’d rather give it a miss. Perhaps not without some justification. Street food from the actual street demands an iron stomach, even if at wedding receptions chaat tables still attract massive takers.

The chaat stall as a popular adda seems to be a way of the past. Still, enclosed in my now insulated home, doors and windows shut against pollution and noisy traffic sounds, my gate securely locked against strangers, I still indulge my palate to summon up those sharp-sweet tingling flavours. Our chaatwala now takes orders on WhatsApp. The chaat, in foil plates now, arrives at my doorstep, still perched on the same brass thali. Sent across by a man known for decades and no stranger.