Bhopal Food Trail

Bhopal eats in two registers that barely touch each other. The morning one is poha: flattened rice, pale and unstirred, vanishing under chopped raw onion and a heap of sev, with a slice of lemon left on the rim of the plate for you to squeeze yourself and a jalebi sharing the same plate rather than following it. The evening one is Chatori Gali, the narrow lane in Ibrahimpura where the old city keeps its kebab griddles and its nihari pots. The lane is close to dead in daylight and fills as the sun drops behind Bhoj Taal. This is one of the few Indian cities where the Muslim old-city kitchen is the mainstream local food rather than a speciality, and the register is Afghan-Mughal by way of the Begums: gravies built slowly on browned onion, with kulcha to mop. Be clear-eyed about what the lane is. It is built around meat, and around buffalo in particular, so a vegetarian evening there comes down to a plate of aloo and a lot of watching other people eat. The New Market side of the city is the better call if you do not eat meat. Nothing in Chatori Gali is arranged for comfort either. There is no silverware and there are no chairs worth the name, so you stand and eat while the crowd works its way past you.

Poha first, in the morning. It is topped rather than mixed, so the onion and sev go on at the counter and the lemon stays on the side until you use it, and the jalebi belongs on the same plate rather than after. The old city's tea is sulaimani, which carries a hint of salt and is more a breakfast thing here than an all-day one. The middle of the day belongs to the water. Bhoj Taal, the Upper Lake, is the obvious call — it is the same sheet of water the old city watches the sun drop into — and Van Vihar National Park runs along its southern shore. Come to Chatori Gali in Ibrahimpura after dark. Take the bun kebab at the mouth of the lane first, while you are still hungry, then move to a korma or a nihari with kulcha and share it, because one plate is enough for two people. Paya is a cold-weather order. Between November and February it belongs on the table; outside those months put the appetite into korma instead. Finish with paan and ask for gulkand in it. In this city the shop matters more than the leaf. Season: November to February is the sweet spot, and October and March still work. Bhopal in May is hard work.

Bhopal's food is Afghan food that settled down and stayed. What that arrival brought — meat cooked long, gravies thickened with onion and nut rather than tomato — met the habits of the Malwa plateau and a steady borrowing from Lucknow and Hyderabad. Then came the Begums. Between 1819 and 1926 the state passed through four women in succession — Qudsia, Sikandar, Shah Jahan and Sultan Jahan — an arrangement with no real parallel among the princely states. Sikandar Begum is the one the records are loudest about. She commissioned a regular army and inspected it herself, and she hunted tiger. In 1863 she became the first Indian ruler to perform the Hajj, and wrote the journey up afterwards in Urdu. What the palace kitchens standardised under this line is more or less what the old city still cooks, and Shah Jahan Begum's own fondness for paan is why Bhopalis treat paan as a matter of civic pride rather than a habit. The result tastes like neither of its parents. Take rezala. In Kolkata and in Lucknow it is a pale, creamy white; the Bhopali version comes out green, because the city folded in a local weight of fresh coriander. The change is attributed to Shah Jahan Begum, whose court festivities were built around colours — jashn-e-hariyali was the green one. That is a city adapting what it borrowed rather than copying it.