Of French Fries, and Kebabs…

 

Food was to be the biggest bane of our 4-month stay in Europe. And that was obvious - with low budgets, mostly vegetarian folks, evidently life was to be tough. But then, as they say, tough times build characters. And with them, stories for a lifetime.

I still remember our first meal at school – the cafeteria at ESCP was bustling, but the food there was as insipid as the café was large. I wandered a fair bit and at the end settled for noodles, while my friends got hold of a sadder meal of bread and fruits. When we sat around at the table, a million thoughts must have been passing through our helpless minds.

Raw, uncooked food back at out mess must have tasted better than this heap of bourgeois-baked balderdash. I was reminded of the Twilight movie line where a vampire says, a meal without blood is equivalent to humans feeding on candies and toffees. Or in Paris, Indians feeding on bland noodles and desiccated bread.

But we tried to be innovative – we found salt and pepper in plenty and used that to season our meal. Incidentally, it was French monarch, Louis XIV who preferred these two spices and removed everything else from his frugal dining table. The world followed in his footsteps and even today, we just have black and white on every dining table. If only he had like for cinnamon and cardamom and turmeric as well, this story would have been very different.

Much to our delight, Louis’ descendants even had dispensers full of ketchup, mayonnaise and mustard. Mapboy liked mayo in particular, and slathered his bread with the white sauce heavily, devouring bread, salad et al, a smile on his face as if he had found his Promised Land. But sharp that he was, he quickly spotted a discerning look in my eyes and asked immediately what was mayo actually made of. I was wondering if to spill the beans or not, when Daddu glugging his boisson (bwa-so, French for drink)had to enlighten the world. He happily answered that Mapboy’s manna was all raw egg yolks and oil. Eggs! And that was it – all the King’s men, and all the King’s horses, could not make Mapboy eat mayonnaise again. He stopped venturing to the sinful sauce section of the dining hall, resorting only to salt and pepper. But as they taught us in Marketing, unless the core product is good, no amount of marketing can yield long lasting results. Likewise, no matter what condiments were provided in the cafeteria, the main core product – blanched noodles and sourdough bread - was incapable of satisfying hunger. For us nawabs of Awadh, used to Shahi panner and Galouti kebabs, food was soon becoming a challenge. Until after a few days, we discovered a hidden section of the cafeteria – providing hot crispy French fries and the ambrosia of my Parisian life – doner kebabs. These kebabs were nowhere close to the kebabs of the subcontinent, but still had grilled flavour that went a long way to sustain me. And so it was, that everyday we would wake up late (to avoid the ordeal of breakfast) and head straight to school to start our day with a heavy brunch of French fries for the veggie lads, and additional doner kebab for moi. There was a Maghrebi African in charge of the station whom Mapboy happily called Kalua right from day 1. Talk about racism in the heart of Paris.

And yet Kalua was our saviour – everyday, he would serve us piping hot fries and kebabs. And no, we never tired of it, and munched on them every single day with mustard, mayo, ketchup. On one occasion, I suspected if the oil used to fry was animal  oil, but after the mayonnaise incident, I never had the heart of asking Kalua the truth – what if it was tallow (is it why it tasted so scrumptious?), the conscientious me could never keep the truth from my friends, after which not only would Kalua be crucified, there would be nothing left to eat for brunch. And so it was that in a classic example of multiculturalism, African kalua saved subcontinental nomads with Belgian and middle eastern food. (French fries were apparently made in Belgium when during winters, Belgians failed to find fish with rivers being frozen, thereby using potatoes to replace fish that was fried for consumption).

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It was during these days that we reinforced an enlightenment that we perhaps already had – that mess (canteen) food back at campus was truly magnificent. Normally the stories you would hear of mess food in most technical colleges wouldn’t inspire even the least fussy eater, but Lucknow was good. Gobsmacking, on Parisian hindsight! How many days had I woke up on a cold wintry day and not craved a plate of steaming peanut scattered poha, along with excessive helpings of sambar and vada, followed by rich masala chai (common breakfast on Wednesdays in campus)! By the time the idlis would get digested and the brain sapped of all energy from the DCP (Desperate class participations) and the Modigliani-Miller theorems, lunch would be ready just in time after the classes – at least 3 dishes besides rich dal, generous portions of salad, curd, curd rice, fried eggs….heaven indeed was a place on earth. And this was before the evening snacks of unlimited fritters and chai, followed by dinner that included meat for the carnivorous souls – tandoori chicken, crispy fried fish, mutton curry - Lucknow maintained its status as the land of Nawabs even centuries after their departure.

And then suddenly, all of these were replaced by Kalua’s kebabs, sonday biscuits and dinner that we miserable souls had to prepare ourselves after day-long inculcation of international finance and indiscernible French! Yet, this was Paris, the city of lights, and as if to show her gratitude for our infinite forbearance, everyday at 8, when we would be busy preparing dinner without complaint, the Eiffel tower would wake up to life - through a narrow slit of a window at the far end of the kitchen corridor - and glitter resplendently with her million lights, sparkling, shining, scintillating, and showering us with hope; voices of the faraway future as if coming back through tendrils in time and reminding us, we would revisit that spot many a time in the days ahead with a smile, the Tower reminding to stay there, do your bit, chug along, this is, after all the best vacation you will have in your life!

Indeed, we stayed there for four months, chugged along, chopped our onions, diced our potatoes and julienned our bell-peppers, perhaps our trials and tribulations made more bearable by the fact that we had limited time - Visibility of the destination, making the journey a bit more enjoyable. And yet, once in a while, food from the homeland would light both tastebuds and souls. I still remember, at the base of Mount Titlis, near the Swiss capital, after countless hours of snow-fighting, the group got overwhelmed on finding a small stall selling samosas. Parsimony was hurled back to the Alps, while the junta happily threw away their euros for the crispy samosas giving back a morsel of the homeland, not realising what watered more – the eyes or the tastebuds.

In yet another incident I recollect Mapboy and I were drenched from head to toe while walking around Etretat – a beautiful white- limestone sculpted town in the north of France, famous for the Normandy WW2 landings. Shivering in the November rains, least bothered about Guns and Roses, we rued our luck when we missed a bus (our sanctuary of heat and warmth after the bedraggling rains) only to step into a nearby eatery for shelter and realise that luck appears in strange places in unexpected forms. That day, it came in the garb of succulent tandoori chicken wrapped in soft pita bread – a rarity in my limited travels in France; for my vegetarian friend, it was seared aubergine in chilli flakes. We devoured the rolls one after another, and Normandy or not, we would have decorated that chef that day with Legions of Honour all for the ghar ka khana that we had missed for long.

But these incidents were the rarity rather than the norm. Burdened by language barriers, Europe back then at least - without Google and smartphones - was a hard place to satisfy a non-conventional diet with a small budget. It was hard to explain at Marseilles, in broken French, that my friends did not need meat in their rolls, and no, fish was not vegetarian, no, not even eggs. It was harder to explain in Prague that we were looking for food to eat, not booze to drink. I felt repulsed in Lisbon when for a fish sandwich, all I got was a stinky raw sardine slapped in a bun. On the other side, international standardisation in the menus of McD and Burger King was a lifesaver; so were the most basic of pizzas found in every street and corner of Italy (until Daddu would remind of biryani found similarly in every nook and corner of Lucknow…). There was relief as well – Munich, a very busy junction that we would encounter in many a trip, was bustling with shops where people understood and spoke English. A sandwich shop was an all-time favourite. And falafels – legume fritters – were a universal rescuer for my vegetarian friends on many an occasion. Whatever the adventures – or misadventures - we knew at the end of the weekend, we would be back in Paris where Kalua’s kebabs and fries would still welcome us with mustard and mayonnaise.

The true epilogue to this chapter though was written, quite silently, not in Europe, but back in Lucknow. After a four month long, wearied-out adventure, when we were back in the comforts of our campus, we felt overjoyed with the little joys of life, in the campus food, its spices, the late-night snacks available until 3 in the morning, of salami sandwiches and hot maggi, and the infinite supply of piping hot tea, laden with cardamom and ginger. That winter, you could see us five blokes, sitting in the warmth of the winter sun of Lucknow and enjoying every meal and morsel. No words spoken, the ardour and the peacefulness visible in those weary eyes saying, In paucity alone, one truly finds his riches…

It’s been years but even today, when I pick up a dish of middle-eastern kebabs and fries, I cannot help but give a smile, often wondering what would we have done without the Maghrebi’s portions back in the cafeteria…I look outside and can imagine the Tower, shining, sparkling and smiling even today, despite all the years that have passed... 

18^th August 2023