Delhiwale: Taste of Chawri

The unwieldy e-rickshaws are stuck beside one another

The unwieldy e-rickshaws are stuck beside one another. A handcart loaded with a large parcel is caught between them. Beside his fruit cart, the vendor rests his chin on folded arms. Overhead, cables sag past signboards advertising wedding cards.

The vendor stands motionless behind a giant platter of daulat ki chaat. (Mayank Austen Soofi)

Just another difficult afternoon in Old Delhi’s super-congested Chawri Bazar. The traffic is going nowhere. A little away, a vendor stands motionless behind a giant platter of daulat ki chaat. Mubarak! The wintertime street dessert is back.

His shirt sleeves rolled up, vendor Sunil says he hit the streets with the season’s daulat on October 16. A fine white net, held with binder clips, is shielding the dessert from flies. Through it, the golden-yellow top is visible, with white froth beneath the edge. Silver-coloured foil bowls are stacked beside a checked cloth. A serving spoon rests against the platter’s rim. The dessert is still whole.

Despite its name, daulat ki chaat has none of the hot soury chatorapan expected of chaat. Milk and cream are whisked until froth rises. The aforementioned golden-yellow icing contains kesar and pista. Bhoora, the ground sugar, and roasted khoya are added when serving. The first spoonful scarcely stays long enough in the mouth to be truly analysed. The froth simply disappears, leaving a fleeting sensation of cold sweetness.

The daulat season lasts through winter. Summer heat makes the froth collapse. Around Holi in March, the daulat is withdrawn and its vendors turn to other street specialities, or they go back to their villages. For now, the chaat is surfacing across Delhi and beyond, including Gurugram’s Sadar Bazar. But it has to be tried in the dust and chaos of Chawri Bazar. Here the traffic barely moves. People jostle past. Vendors’ cries compete with horns, and the mixed scents of other street foods intrude. The irritation, the exasperation, the sense of adventure in reaching (or discovering) the cart add to the thrill of the first spoonful.

The making of Daulat ki chaat is not easy; it involves lot of churning by muscled hands. Each vendor has a version of the process. Once, a daulat maker described mixing thick buffalo milk with cream at night, leaving the container uncovered on his accommodation’s roof for the oas (dew) to settle. But another vendor once confided the ice to be a more popular substitute for dew. There’s also some mythical lore about making the chaat under the moonlight night.

Whatever, this afternoon, Sunil is busy adjusting the paraphernalia of his daulat cart. The Chawri jam persists.