The HimalayasA good way to sum up New Delhi in 2009 is a snapshot of a traffic jam: the air is acrid and foggy from the pollution, there is an endless sonic deluge of one million horns blaring at once, no traffic lights, people fill the road selling books or toys or simply begging, and there are bumper to bumper vehicles as far as the eye can see - and most important to note, the definition of “vehicle” includes everything from large busses and cars, to rickshaws, bicycles and mopeds, to oxcarts and elephants, and all of these are simply overflowing with people. Contemporary India is an amazing example of just barely controlled chaos. These different ways of life - industrial and modern to agricultural and feudal - operate like alternate dimensions, inhabiting the same spaces at the same times yet existing in completely different ways.
One of the side trips I took was to Manali, a old town high up in the mountains, next to Rohtang Pass, one of highest mountain passes in the world. However, what was once home to a vibrant and unique local culture and landscape has been taken over by tourism; Here was the 31st dimension of the country, Epcot India.
Places created solely out of the tourist industry are fascinatingly without identity. I actually love train stations and airports for precisely this reason, yet a major part of that adoration is that they are places specifically crafted for the transient. They are designed to make it as difficult as possible to find any semblance of home there, and often any familiarity to be found is simply there to reinforce the feeling of "I have just arrived and am about to be going; I am in an airport". The Epcot effect is a bit different though; Manali felt utterly without identity because of the incessant display of Western recognized symbols of Indian-ness in place of a unique native culture. In fact, aside from hiking excursions - and yes, the mountains were stunning - the only things to do in Manali are to buy poorly made textiles and Hindu icons, and to talk to other tourists. The locals have figured out that selling yak rides and shoddily made Tibetan prayer wheels will make them a decent living; so be it, perhaps in our global age all bets are really off.
The Himalayas, very understandably, have a history of strong ex-pat communities, and Manali and the surrounding Kullu Valley are strong examples. There seem to be a lot of Korean and German owned businesses in Manali, and actually the one good restaurant I found to get a beer is Korean-owned. They carry an Australian craft beer brewer that's opened a brewery in India (American beer entrepreneurs take note, this is a brilliant idea, since imports are so expensive, the getting is very good for the beer business here - according to one article in the Hindustan Times, there are at least 7 foreign breweries looking to set up shop in Himachal Pradesh alone). There's a cafe and pastry shop chain simply called "German Bakery" which for whatever reasons really held my attention - it certainly appeared as a sign of the phenomenon of globalism (that and the whole using a laptop in the Himalayas thing...). Still, this is clearly a tourist economy, banking on the ability to create passible copies of American and European creature comforts, and capitalizing on the romanticism of India in Western eyes.
Still, just outside this circus, the everyday still maintains some character, and it is the smaller marks of culture that tend to stick with me while traveling. The most fascinating differences are found in the mundane. The lunch I had at Naggar castle was a Kullu valley specialty called sidu that was actually just giant pierogi, each one took up half a dinner plate, and very curiously the potatoes and onions inside were spiced with cumin seed, coriander, black pepper, and paprika (the recipe and images linked call for a poppy seed filling, even more curious, and more eastern European). I ate this following our visit to a small museum devoted to the artwork of a Russian family who had settled in the area in the 1800s and who were responsible for significant land preservation work, among of course being philosophers and artists and a laundry list of other things. I can't help but wonder now if there may have been some other kind of Eastern European presence in the area, and if sidu isn't really a product of influence from the (extremely delicious) pierogi, or vice versa!
Food travels with people across borders along with any/all other signatures of a culture. The preparation and eating of food and drink are major acts that pace one's day, that play a part in much social interaction, and which often contain major signfiers of class, of family history, and of course cultural and global economic history (i.e. the tomato was brought to Europe from America). The intimacy of observing and learning from one's cuisine is the experience that may really teach you what "home" means to the people in the place where you are merely a visitor. How people prepare their food and whether it requires a day of laboring in the kitchen or if meals are designed to be purely functional or an instant fix, if utensils are used and which, if vegetarianism or meat eating is stressed, etc. I overheard the enlightening observation that Indian food is so laborious in its preparation that it must either be the product of people who do not have non-domestic work to do (i.e. peasants) or who have servants to do it for them. That logic certainly explains the contemporary American love of "fast food", in the corporate and broad senses, there is a marked appeal for things that are quick and easy and don't require laboring in the kitchen all day.
Indian cuisine is very spicy, oily, and incredibly time consuming if you want to do it just right. In fact it seems like the longer one takes to make something - if it sits in water overnight, then ferments, then dries, then is ground down, then is cooked again with this and that and some other things added and then cooked again for 12 hours (by the way, that's the gist of the halvah I had) - then all the better. Laboring as much as possible seems to be key, even if it's the servants who did the laboring. Work as an expression of care is a formula very much in place here, the extreme pampering of guests is another example to note. It was difficult for me to get used to servants, but that's just another sign of the complexities of Indian society that I'm sure I can only barely wrap my head around now.
One aspect of traveling that I as an American find so fascinating is the deep cultural history that may be told through other cuisines. The US certainly has it's great regional fare, and the ways in which many typical American foods are adaptations of Old World hand-me-downs is fascinating in itself (take a look through foodtimeline.org for more). There is little that more personal than the food one eats, and the recipes handed down through generations can define one's sense of familial connection. There is a perfect beauty in these most basic acts of sharing.
Like most people going to India for the first time, I did get sick. The worst part about it wasn't the stomach trouble, but not being able to taste every single thing and to get some cooking lessons was very upsetting. I was able to squeeze in a bread making session though, and I'm thrilled I did - I now have a new favorite Indian bread, Lacha Paratha, also known as 100 Layered Paratha.
Lacha Paratha is most common in Punjab and in Pakistan, and there seem to be a few variations on the specific technique that makes the bread so special. Paratha is a general term for a fairly standard north Indian flat bread (important to note: North India has wheat as their staple grain, whereas rice is predominant in the south). The dough is made only from whole wheat flour, oil and water, and is prepared by and rolling it out very thin and then frying, making a perfect flat, dense tool for scooping up all the delicious gloppy curries you can eat.
Lacha Paratha is a little more complicated, but well worth the effort. After rolling out the dough, the thin sheet is folded back and over like a fan, then folded in half, wrapped and rolled into a ball, then rolled out flat again. The result is a bread that flakes apart in a spiral, with delicious ghee hiding in every cranny, and making every bite a little different.
I found a couple great videos showing the making of Lacha Paratha using two different folding techniques here and here.
Below is a great recipe with very simple directions, taken from snackorama.blogspot.com. Note that the recipe calls for folding the dough “like saree pleats” - that's my favorite part.
Lacha Paratha:
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tbsp oil
warm water as needed
Rub oil into the flour and then add warm water as needed and make a stiff dough. Let it rest for an hour.
Make lemon sized balls out of the dough. Take a ball and roll into oval shape. Coat the top side oil and sprinkle flour generously. Now fold it from one side to other side like a saree pleats. Now roll it like a coil and continue to do the same with other balls too.
Now heat a tawa/pan on medium-high heat. Roll each coil shaped ball into a flat chapathi. Fry it on both sides applying little oil. Remove from the pan and put it on a paper towel or kitchen towel and press it from sides such that the flakes will separate.
And, if you're feeling lazy, and if you have a good Indian grocer nearby, maybe you can find these.
Namaste.
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