Street Food in Indian cities

Street food agnomen is given to foods which are sold on stalls in and around any market place. India is a country of various language and food. Visiting Indian metro cities and not having street food is considered as real miss of fun as well as taste. I have been fortunate to travel & stay in many cities of India such as Kolkata, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore and many others. Out of these cities Kolkata, Chennai and Delhi are considered as Metro cities in India, Of course it includes Mumbai but I have not visited this financial capital of India yet.

Kolkata, West Bengal

 The street food is amazing at Kolkata various streets such paani puri at Esplanade popularly known as Dharmatalla, sweets all across Bengal, Rolls at park street, Momo all around Kolkata. There are several other varieties you can test without any fear of health issue.

Amazing paani puri

Bengali sweets

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Rolls varieties

Momo: Popular food of north east

 Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh

 Lucknow is famous for its soft and sweet culture hence food varieties is bound to be sweet desserts apart from famous tunde kabab.

Kulfi faluda

Tunde Kabab

Jalebi : goes well with curd

                                                                                                                                                                                

                  

Delhi

This is capital city of India and offers varieties of north India food on street. The taste is amazing that you will not like to miss if you happen to try.

Paratha & samosa: not to be missed

Various curry's

          

Chennai, Tamil Nadu

Chennai is on southern part of India. You can try Chennai tea and coffee sold at street as well as fired corns, chilli & banana bhajji  along with coconut water. But you have to be little careful with any other street food as water is not that great here and so better to slip in restaurant for awesome iddli and dosa.

Fried corn

Chennai Tea

Chilli Bhajji and Coconut water

                                                                                                                                                                 

Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh        

This city offers India best and most popular biryani and non- vegetarian varieties.  Seek kabab are mouth watering. During Id best of halim dishes are made in this city. Apart from food don't forget to buy pearl neck-less for your loved once near Char Minar.    

Biryani

Street fish fries

                                                                                   

Seek Kabab

This blog is unending if I continues city by city. I am sure many best knows street foods and cities have been given a miss in this blog so if you have tried any please make sure you add in comment section for wider audience benefit.

“When people wore hats and gloves, nobody would dream of eating on the street. Then white gloves went out of style and, suddenly, eating just about anything in the street became OK." as told by Jane Addison        

 Thank You!

Satender Kumar Mall

Twitter: satenderiiit

JOURNEY: Where everyone is ALONE

Journey where everyone is alone; might sound sarcastic as you may happen to think how came everyone is alone in a journey? Journey unites people and allows them to meet and experience change. But dear there are certain journeys where everyone is alone. Let me unfold the known secret. Few journeys taken towards your soul, character, behavior, duties, love, kindness and finally death to name few are those journeys which everyone has to experience it alone. These are ultimate journey and you will be failed to name anyone who will be along with you to complete this expedition. It’s only individual who are held responsible for each of the above promenade. Purity of soul; Diligence in Character; Charm in behavior; sincerity in duty; grandness in love & kindness; departure from earth; All these and many more are solely depend upon you. Except yourself you cannot blame anyone in its collapse. By all means you can give credit to someone in its rise to some extent. But the fact remains that you are companion-less.

I am going to narrate one small story from my religion i.e. Hinduism holy book to further validate that we are all alone in this path. One day devout hermit named Narada Muni was passing by a deep forest way when he ran into jungle bandit, who insisted him to give everything he owns, from his clothing to the shoes he was wearing. Narada Muni asked robber if his family was part of this sin that he was committing and he told him to go ask his family that same question. Robber tied Narada to a tree to make him stay in that same spot until he was back. When robber asked his parents if they were with him on the sin that he was doing, they replied that it was his job to take care of them, and that only he was responsible for his own sins. His wife also said the same thing. Bandit then returned to Narada Muni and fell to his feet. He told him that he alone was responsible for the sins and asked him to help him get rid of the sins he had committed. This incident changed the bandit fortune. He met his soul and to get rid of his sins he meditated and later became greatest poet in Sanskrit literature and authored one of the great epic of India i.e. Ramayana. He is known by name Valmiki after his incarnation.

Each of us has come to this world with some purpose and duties to fulfill. If we happen to get a feeling of doing any social work or hunger of making change the way things are now or desire to make your country/home/environment/universe more beautiful for coming generations then remember this thought is just not touching your soul to make you feel better but analyze in other aspect it could be a natures ways of reminding for your unfulfilled duties so far from the creator of this universe. As ultimately you will be reporting to him. There you cannot blame anyone as you are blessed to be alone again. I am sure you will not think of misrepresenting the fact which we are used to while our stay in mother earth. So what are you waiting for? Get up and go ahead to fulfill your duties without brooding much on obstacles you are likely to face but on possible feasibility. It is also your duty to bridge smooth path between responsibility and duties. Duties do not give you any reasons to be free from your current responsibilities.

“The only journey is the journey within.” — Rainer Maria Rilke

Thank You!

Satender Kumar Mall

Twitter: satenderiiit

Connect ‘n’ Disconnect : From Traveler's Diary

In this blog of connect and disconnect I wanted to share some of my experience about arriving and departure from one city to another or one country to another. The joy and agony of connect and disconnect process. Constantly I have been part of this process since birth. But two factors which primarily bulldoze once to move from one place to another are education and livelihood factors. While moving almost all carries the same intuition that one day we will return back to our root. But very few live up their promise and remaining ones find home in their new place. Sure there is more than one ingredient which compels us to find home away from home and nevertheless feeling of world as family also helps to settle. Besides everything travelling teaches us lot in life. Our knowledge about life massively increases; we experience variety of lifestyle and ways of doing things in our day to day life. Apart from learning we get to interact culturally and most important share/taste food varieties.

Twin City: HyderaBad & Secunderabad Andhra Pradesh

Kolkata, City of Joy : West Bengal

For education, I left my village at early age to join boarding school in Siliguri, West Bengal.  This is the place where I met a teacher whose teaching changed my life. She is so graceful and her art of teaching is phenomenon. I treat her both my teacher and also a mother. Twenty year passed and both of us have never missed to call each other to wish on Birthday and anniversary events. The boarding food taught me not to be finicky about food. Food is food and it can never be bad but of course we can categories in taste i.e. Sweet/sour/tangy/spicy/tasteless. Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone. Unfortunately the school did not have affiliation to host board exams so I happen to leave the city and moved to my home state Uttar Pradesh (UP) to complete my remaining four years of schooling before hitting college life. The pain of separation from the city was more than what I had experienced during I left my village to arrive in this city. Eight years was well spent in this city. In 2000, I completed 10^th standard from Bahraich (small town in UP) and 2002, 12^th standard from Lucknow (capital city of UP). Meeting different students and people of different IQ really helped me to set goal viewing the capability and competition to be faced. I always believe that you are the best judge on your weakness and strength. But in 21^st century we have to change the approach to match the pace of competition. If we work on our weakness and we believe that it can be turned into strength than dear, you are sadly mistaken! What we end up is with more mature weakness. So the new approach should be to focus on strength and learn to manage your weakness. Because it’s your weakness which keeps you sober. However I got another chance to travel West Bengal capital city Kolkata (city of joy) because I was allotted college in that state to complete my IT engineering from IIIT. Well spent four year came to an end in June 2006. This city taught me to manage my expense. I started taking tuition classes early morning and late evening up to 10^th standard. But point to note is that I had 98% attendance in my college uniform all 4 years. I am sure many of you will laugh that college and 98% attendance. I must be a fool but it was only because I knew I will not get this golden time back in my life again so wanted to make most of it. My entire students were female. They worked hard and I did justice in teaching them. Best reward I got while saying good bye to city was that their parent’s eyes were in tears and they wanted me to ensure that I give them equal replacement teacher. So travel for the reason of education came to an end. Needless to mention street foods of Kolkata will beat restaurant.

I had job offer of Satyam for Oct 2006 but three ideal months was spent by a trip to Dubai which was sponsored by my cousin brother who had also financed my engineering studies. The reason to visit Dubai was to explorer market and try for job if possible. I remember Abraham Lincoln once had said ‘How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.’ Hence the belief of studying in good college guarantees job shatters. I happen to meet a popular business jargon ‘EXPERIENCE’ in the initial two week of job hunt in UAE. And then I just left the idea of searching job and started enjoying the city and its vast culture to full extent. I returned back India via Karachi (Pakistan) with a night halt as the cheapest fare was of PIA at that moment. Hurray my brother did not ask me any reason and gave me some money to survive first two month and travel to Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh (AP)) for joining Satyam. Hyderabad is twin city of India i.e. Secunderabad, Nizam’s princely state. We get pearl ornaments and very good city with lots of places to visit/excursion. I travelled on New Year day to Chennai (Tamil Nadu) just happen to stay for 3 month in AP. It was New Year, 2007 & new place. Many of us think Chennai is rough city and also it not admired by many for its weather condition. I was used to similar sea coast city i.e. Kolkata so weather hardly bother me anywhere. I experienced Chennai for complete 1 year before travelling to Bangalore in Feb 2008 as intra company transfer. City is not rough that’s what I realised. One needs to adopt the city way to feel the smoothness. I happen to learn few daily use Tamil words and its use in day to day helped me gaining many localities people. Impressing local people is easy as they feel lot about their language and culture so showing respect gives natural acceptance. They appreciate my interest to pick their language and in turn I got my way through. It is fantastic city with immense cleanness all around and very well connected with state transport with cheaper fare. If you want to see people passion for movies then it is Chennai. I had experienced the release of ‘Shiva jee’ (blockbuster Tamil movies of greatest Indian Super start Rajnikant.) Only you need to be careful while travelling in auto. Or I will suggest better don’t opt for Auto as mode of transport in Chennai at all. Now I will not bore you with Bangalore story as this is international city and please experience you self about its weather and its modernity. I left Bangalore for good on March 10^th 2010 and travelled to place where I am currently at on 31^st March 2010.

Chennai, Tamil Nadu

Bangalore, Garden city, Karnataka

This blog is quite long is what a obvious feeling you will experience but believe me I have tried to cut sort to maximum. So keep traveling, if it does not help you in anyway then at least it will help you writing a better blog than this one on same topic.

Thank You!

Satender Kumar Mall

Twitter: satenderiiit