Understanding a city’s form though its food. That’s
what we did with Vernika Awal one humid day this summer, on the food-walk she
customised for us in Mumbai.
Our requests for ‘no chillies, only vegetarian
food, small servings, and architecturally interesting destinations’ may have
seemed a trifle restrictive for a walk devoted to food. Vernika (who, among other things writes a blog which really lives up to its name, https://delectablereveries.com/) didn’t just take
these in her stride, but made them the ingredients for a hugely enjoyable culinary
and cultural experience.
And so, we ended up sampling a very eclectic mix
of fare and places, beginning with a rendezvous in close proximity to the
quite-literally ‘Regal’ Cinema. On our own, it is unlikely that we would have noticed
the outwardly modest street-fronted café, though it is obviously popular. Its
mosaic-tiled interior was redolent with a menu teeming with non-vegetarian
dishes, a motley crew of diners, taciturn waiters, cast-iron columns, vintage
fans and sepia photographs of the Taj Mahal Hotel. As we registered these
details, Vernika filled us in with the history of the place, its specialities,
and her favourite snack of Bun-muska
& Akoori —and apparently that
of a legion of St. Xavier’s students.
Our next destination was a short distance away, and
a world apart. A small and no-nonsense eatery, it served Marathi and Gujarati
vegetarian food amidst scrupulously clean, business-like tiled floors bustling with
diners. We were introduced to a new sort of drink, neither lassi nor chaas, in the
familiar company of old faithfuls like Sabudana
khichdi and kotmeel vadi. We spent some time in conversation about cameras and
cooking, and given that the weather was sultry and we had a car at our disposal
(thanks to Vernika’s friend and colleague, a camera/car/cooking buff), drove
part of the way to our next stop.
This was a quaint single-storey bakery
sitting plum in the middle of taller concrete buildings. Reputed to be the
oldest bakery in Mumbai, it led into an all-in-one space dominated by steel
trusses and nonchalant waiters, with a brief menu chalked in with specialities
like Mawa-cake and fiery ginger biscuits. And finally, we were driven to a
family restaurant presided over by a benignly smiling manager, with a grand
finale of elegant spinach samosas (not
drowned in oil), aamras-puri, fried karela fritters, sugarcane juice and other
seasonal dishes, served amidst a view of a magnificent 18th century
Shiva temple.
The walk was not just about stuffing ourselves
silly with food—which was quite delicious, and covered a varied trajectory. The
food-breaks were like interludes, perfect for our small appetites, like pauses
for reflection (while chewing!) in between moving. It helped that Vernika is as
much addicted to books as to food. So, our conversation was not just about trading
information on the best places to eat in Kolkata vs Mumbai vs Delhi, opinions
about the relative merits of kotmeel vadi
from different sweet-shops, where it is safe to drink sugar-cane juice, where
do you get the freshest idlis and dosas, but also about the best bookshops in
town, favourite books and films, photography, Satyajit Ray. Since most of the
destinations that provided a background to these interludes were situated
within a few kilometres of each other, in Mumbai’s distinctive Art-Deco and
Victorian Gothic precincts, it more than fulfilled our architectural orientation.
It was fascinating for us as architects, otherwise
consumed by the form, detail and planning of buildings, to see these precincts
from the lens of the varied sort of food available here. Everything Vernika
chose for us to eat was peppered with several stories, including tracing the
provenance of an eating place through its name and ownership. So, why are cafes
Irani and not Parsi? Why are Irani
cafes often situated at the corner of roads and streets? How is this related to
the sequence of immigration from Persia and Iran, and Vastu-shastra? Why can seasonal
food customs of Gujaratis be sampled only in one particular Gujarati restaurant,
in a city filled with Gujaratis? How and why do certain urban spaces transform
in the early mornings and evenings because
of the schedules of offices determined by the city’s spread? And what time should
you show up there if you want to taste the wholesome spread that caters for
this schedule!? Some of these questions hadn’t even occurred to us. Others we
thought we’d already got the answers to.
The astonishing variety and price, catering to so many
sorts of pockets, and the people who provide or patronise these food-options,
added a very different dynamic to the architectural facades and spaces. It
helped us to appreciate, yet again, what the Dutch architect and educator John
Habraken means when he writes of: ‘an environment that is never seen as a whole
as we see it when we look at the map, but always partial, in sequence,
dependent on one’s movement in it’.[1]
If professional planners did not see cities merely
at the scale of plans and maps, our cities would be less impoverished—both in
terms of their ability to generate incomes as well as initiatives and
innovations. Ordinary people have the potential to transform problems into
possibilities not just for earning money, but in contributing to the richness
of urban-experience. The form and planning of architecture can greatly help or
hinder such human activity. That is why the continuous stretches of buildings
lining the street and roads of Mumbai allow far safer and more interactive
areas, than Delhi’s roads and streets separated and punctuated with isolated
facades and isolating boundary walls.
Habraken sums it up like this: ‘We experience an
urban environment somewhat like we experience the inside of a building; finding
spaces connected to one another through which we can move.’ [2] These connections need to
be both physical and emotional and experiential. And to see these connections,
designers, architects and planners need to come down from the vantage point of scaled
maps and drawings where people are invisible. The best way to annihilate our arrogance
and ignorance, and to put ourselves in the shoes of those whom we design for, is
to walk through a city. And to be provided with more than food
for thought, the best way is, to structure food-breaks as you walk – just as we
did.
As I wrote this, I suddenly remembered Kamu Iyer’s
book Boombay, From Precinct to Sprawl,
where he leads us through the spaces and history of Bombay as experienced by him
from childhood to his professional interventions as an architect. Charles
Correa, in his foreword to the book, describes it as ‘a leisurely stroll through
the city, sometimes in a tram or bus but most often on foot’. Iyer is deeply perceptive
about his city—a circumstance that owes as much to his great familiarity with it
as to his training as an architect. He is able to see possibilities gleaned through
his own primary experience of walking though the city, as when he writes:
For me, the wide
footpaths around King’s Circle (now called Maheshwari Udyan), the plaza outside
the railway station and Ruia College, the Indian Gymkhana and Napoo Garden were
special. Around King’s Circle, the front setbacks of buildings were merged with
the footpath, making it a wide urban spaces where people stroll, vendors sell
newspapers, magazines and used books, and stray hawkers try and make quick
sales. This is also the place where people meet while waiting for a table in restaurants.
It struck me a simple and effortless way of making an urban space.[3]
Here’s hoping more of us find the time to take leisurely strolls through our cities, and to fashion and experience a palette
of urban spaces that cater for several palates. Because finally, a city is only
as interesting and memorable as its people – and its food!
Photo Credits: Anisha Shekhar Mukherji/ Snehanshu Mukherjee
[1] The Appearance of the Form, ‘Sharing’, N.
J. Habraken, p. 26, Awater Press, Cambridge, Masssachusetts, 1988.
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