Delhiwale: The goat whisperers

Not kebabs nor kulfis, visit Old Delhi this time to see the shop that stocks succulent gular leaves for goats

Today, we ask you to head to the Walled City to celebrate an establishment that feeds not humans but goats. Open from 9am to 2am every day, this shop with no name has been selling fodder for decades.

The shop is run by two brothers — Muhammed Nawabuddin sits during the day and Muhammad Shahbuddin sits during the night. (Mayank Austen Soofi / HT Photo)

Run by two brothers: Muhammed Nawabuddin sits during the day and Muhammad Shahbuddin sits during the night. Their principal customers are not kebab vendors but Walled City’s households, many of whom rear goats. You can find a few other storefronts stocking gular leaves, but this one is the oldest. It opened more than 50 years ago, according to Mr Nawabuddin.

The shop is not your typical oppressive Old Delhi hole-in-the-wall. It is fairly spacious and the wall has a beautiful niche, an architectural element usually seen in old mansions. The shop is stacked with bundles of gular leaves from floor to ceiling.

While we were romantically imagining the two brothers climbing gular trees every morning to pluck the leaves, their explanations brought us back to the realities of the business world: every night, van-loads of gular leaves arrive in the Walled City from Muzaffarnagar in UP.

Indeed, if you want to see the goat-food traders in action, simply hang outside Turkman Gate during the pre-dawn hours.

On our part, we simply bought a small bundle of gular leaves from the unnamed shop and went off to the nearby alleys in search of hungry goats.