Yes! Eating Hakim Biryani!!

Delhi is full of thousands of parallel societies sharing a space that may as well span multiple, incompatible, dimensions. And if something like Karim's represents a point of confluence between Mughal Old Delhi and the greater India, well, I for one will pass.

But if you are lucky enough to find a local gem, to peek into another dimension of the city what do you do with this new found discovery? Say for example you find Hakim Biryani, a busy caterer to the Old Delhi wallas. Hakim is everything traditional Delhi is and everything the New Delhi is not. Family gatherings with one simple dish and large events sourced from the local specialist, each to his own dish. A truck would be helpless in these streets, a car could hardly fit through. So if you want to eat Hakim Biryani you must put aside your plans to eat out, cancel the caterer, give the cook a night off, and convince ten friends to join you for no other reason than to savour good food and good company.

We have a friend who just happens to love hosting and has a great apartment for the purpose. So one week in June we lined up a few good eaters and set out to arrange a biryani evening.

Orders for Hakim Biryani are paid in cash and upfront so we took an auto to Chawri Bazar through a few main streets into an alley. I noticed cages of chickens lined up for slaughter and wondered if they might be our dinner that week. Although Hakim's serves a full range of poultry and meat, we had already decided that chicken would be the safest bet, being the only dish we planned to serve. We knew we were there from the smell, deep spice and ghee, and by the pots. Hakim Biryani straddles two sides of the street, one side for prepping the food and managing business and the other for cooking. On the cooking side were four dechkis sitting over wooden fires (dechkis are biryani cookers – textured metal pots built wide at the bottom and funneled at the top). All around the rest of the shop were additional large pots and dechkis in various stages of preparation or cooling. Large pans of raw chicken were also being rinsed onto the floor of the shop. Seeing this was the one moment I thought, “Is this really a good idea?” But what the hell right? It's all cooked anyhow.

The manager sat down with us on a bench at the front of the shop and opened his spiral notebook. Many customers purchase their own rice and meat and hand it all over to Hakim Biryani for the heavy lifting. As a novice you can also ask someone from the shop to walk you through the process and with his help purchase ingredients from shops nearby. But of course you can also simply say, “Give me the best!” and decide right there on the overall price. We opted for the laziest route. While the money was handed over (1100 rupees for 5kg of the best quality rice and 3 kg of chicken) I absent mindedly watched bicycles and pedestrians fight their way down the street. I was jarred to consciousness by the manager's final question,

“What time will you pick it up?”

Wait, so not only did we have to haul our asses all the way out here in the middle of a hot day, we had to do it a second time and somehow carry 12 kgs+ when we left. I inquired about delivery to which he shook his head thoughtfully and asked where we needed it,

“South Delhi.”

At this he actually laughed out loud, “We do not go outside Old Delhi.”

Without even starting a negotiation on price, the option of delivery was shot down. So ok, we knew we would somehow manage to get back here and pick the thing up. But that presented another problem. If the food wasn't going to be delivered we would need to bring our own pot, after all the dechkis are difficult to carry and would obviously have to be returned. Walking out through waves of heat we fought over the options: Buy a plastic bucket, buy a metal bucket, bring a bunch of pots and hope they hold it all. Would we be able to find an auto in the Old City carry such a load?

Thankfully it all worked out. I unearthed an empty metal grain bin with handles, which when we returned was the perfect size. The dechki was just coming off the fire when we arrived, perfect timing on their part, and was poured directly into the grain bin, assuaging any of my fears for salmonella. And of course since this is Delhi if you have to get from one place to another you will do it, somehow and eventually. We were lucky to get off without any catastrophe or spilled rice to cry over, back just in time to make a couple large bowels of raita and aubergine.

And it was worth it! Yes there is the chip on the shoulder we got to enjoy, impressing our friends with our savvy street smarts. I suspect a few people showed up just to see if we could actually deliver fresh Biryani. But it was also some of the best biryani many at the party had ever tried. The chicken was tender and moist, the smell from the spices filled the apartment and lingered as we ate. I don't know if it was the food, or the drinks, or the occasion, but the dinner turned into post dinner turned into early morning with many of us just sitting around sleeping or chatting and listening to the darkness outside. Maybe we are fools, maybe our 1100 rps went to the worst rice and meat and our senses were just heightened to the spices by the excitement of the discovery. But if that is the case, and I'm pretty positive it's not, if that is the case I'll be the first on line to get fooled again.

Finding Hakim Biryani

One of my first few days in Delhi when I still did not have my bearings and could not tell Defence Colony from Lodhi Colony, I and a friend Vivek attended an INTACH walk. I was using these walks as tools to orient myself. We went around Nizamuddin seeing many things, amongst them Ghalib's tomb, Nizamuddin dargah, Amir Khusrow's tomb. After we finished I remembered that another friend had recently told me about an eatery that served delicious Biryani. I have a huge weakness for meat based rice dishes.

"”It's near Kashmiri Gate" the friend had said, "maybe about a kilometer from the gate.”"

“"Where near Kashmiri Gate?”" I asked.

“"Take the right after Kashmiri Gate into the small lane, its around there,”" was his answer.

So, after so much roaming, I and Vivek decided we could do with a generous helping of the biryani. Our tongues lolling out in anticipation, we reached Kashmiri Gate and turned right. After an earlier visit to Kashmiri Gate, I had emphatically declared to all those who cared to listen that none of the Shahjehanabad wall existed anymore, only the gates were left, those too in shambles. Immediately, I realized I had been very wrong. In the lane, stretching out right in front of us was a long section of the wall. It was fractured in places, there were holes too, but it was there. The arches in the base had been reinforced (presumably by ASI) to strengthen the structure which had been mined for stone by locals (what goes up must come down). There were also holes large enough to make a bedspace. Torn rugs of blankets proved that even in those cold months of winter the small dens were in use. Mughal structures still influencing modern Delhi.

Section of the Shahjehanabad Wall

Hole in the Wall

After about half a kilometre, we began asking for Hakim Biryani. The reaction could not have been stranger had we asked for the moon of Mars. We persisted but eventually changed strategy to ask for Rodgran Gali, which I had looked up as the address somewhere on someone's blog. That drew blanks too. The good - or the bad thing - was that the lane we were on did not branch anywhere, so we did not have to make any real choice. One helpful rickshaw walla offered us to take us to Karim's. It took quite a while to convince him that while both Karim's and Hakim sounded similar and both served food, they really were different. "Or are they?", I thought to myself.

The lane eventually merged into what looked like a major road. There, we hunted out an auto and asked him about Hakim Biryani (because autos tend to have a longer range). When that did not get any response, we asked again for "Rodgran Gali".

"That?!" he quipped.

"Why are you surprised?" I asked.

"That is near Lal Kuan, what are you doing here?" he asked.

I was stumped, I thought maybe there could be 2 of them. So, I asked, "I am sure the one I am looking for is here."

"I have been around for quite sometime. Trust me, there is nothing by that name here."

"How far is Lal Kuan?"

"About 5 kms."

Now I was not really sure. My friend had told me it was about 1 km from Kashmiri Gate and we had already walked 2. So, I called him. When I cross questioned him about the route and told him about the situation we were in, he sheepishly said,

"We were drunk on beer and we were in a car."

"Oh, awesome!!" I barked and disconnected the call.

No wonder he had felt it was right around the corner and only about a km away. So, we were stuck nowhere near Hakim Biryani. Brave souls that we are, we decided to walk on. Asking around for Lal Kuan (because that was somewhere everyone seemed to know), we wandered around the streets. Walking across an overbridge, we saw a sadhu covered in a dirty brown shawl with a tattered orange turban sitting senseless on the pavement. His head hung down and from metres away, you could smell pot. Although I am not usually a smoker I jealously considered that no amount of noise, chaos or shaking would wake him. He had attained his nirvana.

Jai jai Shiv Shankar!!

As we walked into yet another bylane, across the busy street towered a red building. Intrigued, we got closer. We had reached Fatehpuri and this was the St. Stephen's Church in Fatehpuri. Built in Gothic style in 1862, the church had been awarded the DDA Urban Heritage award in 1993 for excellent upkeep. And one could see why. The walls were spotless and the painted windows gleamed. The nave was locked though. We walked around to find someone and reqesuted them to open. It was more of a wish than a hope. The people however were really pleasing and helpful and one of them gave us a short tour. The furniture was clean, even the rug on the floor was clean and there were 3 different information boards explaining the history and heritage of the building. The most important thing was that all the boards agreed on nearly everything, something which rarely happens in Delhi.

St. Stephen's from across the street

Inside the award winning church

The few minutes in the church had made us forget the purpose of our quest. Walking outside, we passed along a street of nut sellers with shops extending to the street. The colourful shells and skins made for fascinating viewing. Dotting the nut stalls were shops with sweets made of pure desi ghee. It was tantalising for the tongue and torture for our growling stomachs. But we persevered. The biryani beckoned and it demanded an empty stomach. A few minutes more and we entered Lal Kuan, a narrow, crowded and sometimes smelly street. In other words, typical Old Delhi. We could see some domesticated pigeons flitting around in an orchestrated flight over the street.

Lal Kuan is named after a historical Mughal well made of red standstone. Today, the well occupies a non-descript area on the side of the street, marked by a peeling INTACH board. The mouth of the well has been closed with wooden planks and sits inside a small shed, which forms the temple walls. To see the walls of the red well, you ,must request the priest to move his planks a bit and peer down into the dark hole, which may still have water. Noone knows.

The remains of Lal Kuan

Since this was Lal Kuan, everyone knew Rodgran Gali and pointed us further down. After what seemed like aeons, our bellies on fire, we reached a small bylane. About 15 feet above us, entangled in a mesh of electric wires, stood an old sign announcing

"Mohalla Rodgran"

The sign that will strain your senses

We were ecstasic. We had arrived. Biryani was round the corner. But the first person we asked knew nothing, neither the second, nor the third. We kept walking and finally found someone to point us to the right place. It was no restaurant. It was no eatery either. Hakim Biryani fills only wholesale orders in a huge kitchen. We had found our holy grail only to realize that it was beyond our reach, as hungry as we were the 5 kg minimum seemed a bit much. No amount of begging for a taste would melt their hearts. Understandable. How could they take off a few hundred grams from someone else's order and feed it to us, even if we had walked 7 km and 3 hours to reach there. Sadly, they were good and honest people. I called my supposed friend and lambasted him. But after scarfing down lesser biryani from a stall nearby I secretly thanked him, for leading us astray. Along the way we saw many things which we would never have otherwise seen.

I left the place, promising myself that one day I would find a reason and a following of people large enough to place an order. I would finally conquer the biryani from Hakim.