Fast Food

In Britain we're used to Indian fast food, the takeaway, arriving at our front door in tin foil boxes stacked on top of each other in a plastic bag. In India itself, fast food is a lot more than dishes from a restaurant menu delivered to your door. Indeed India has a deeply entrenched, all-pervasive culture of fast food, at the heart of which is a love for snacks which transcends cultural differences between states, social divisions of class and caste, and gaps between generations. Across the country, in the biggest metro city and the smallest rural town, a huge variety of instant and enticing cooked and uncooked food is served out of tiny shacks, off the back of wooden carts and from brightly painted mobile stalls. During my ride home each day the auto-rickshaw passes a Pani Puri seller whose cart is always, always, surrounded by four or five people standing in a loose group whose jaws will be furiously working on the overfilled Puri they've just gobbled up. As well as these cobbled together street food outlets, there are more formal roadside dhabbas, India's greasy spoon cafés, that serve quick eats and filling cheap dinners.

Whether eaten standing in front of a cart or sat in a plastic chair at a vaguely clean table, the fast food on offer can be deliciously appetizing. From Pao Bhaji, Pani, Bhel and Sev Puri, to Poha and Mumbai's Vada Pav, you are guaranteed spice, the tang of chopped coriander, the heat of green chillies or the crunch of crisp puris. A favourite of mine is Pao Bhaji, which combines a thick tomato sauce swimming in butter and garnished with fresh coriander and broken cashew nuts (the Bhaji) with small buns that are slit in half, toasted and buttered so that their rounded tops glisten with grease (the Pao). You dip the buttery Pao into the Bhaji or spoon the sauce onto the half buns. If you use up your Pao before finishing the Bhaji it is perfectly acceptable to order an extra round, at least in my company. We often get our Pao Bhaji fix from a simple roadside eatery near our flat in Ahmedabad. This place, 'Shivshakti Pao Bhaji Corner', has a lockup space on the end of a row of shops. The lockup is grimy with dirt and grease, but the food is cooked on a cart parked to one side. In front of the lockup is a space for tables and chairs, separated from a busy crossroads, and its traffic and fumes, by nothing more than a single line of parked scooters and motorbikes. Despite the fumes we love eating there.

Another of my favourites is Poha, a dish made from rice and flavoured with mustard seeds, green chillies, salt, curry leaves and sometimes sugar and peanuts. There must be some turmeric involved too because the rice is a rich yellow colour. Poha is commonly eaten for breakfast in Western and Northern India, and sometimes served with an accompanying spicy subzi or sauce. In Gujarat it often comes garnished with finely chopped onion, tomato and coriander, and this may be common in other states too. In Ahmedabad I've had Poha from a cart at the side of the road and worked my way through a plate of the stuff with zeal, before watching the seller prepare another batch from rice soaked in warm water. At first it looks a lot like wet, mushy newspaper, but once it's been added to a pan lined with hot oil it is transformed into a dish ready to be sold.

No discussion of fast food in India is complete without a detailed description of Pani Puri. It is impossible to walk down almost any busy street in an Indian city without seeing a Pani Puri stand with its glass front displaying piles of hollow, crisp puris waiting to be filled and eaten. To make Pani Puri, sprouted moong dal, small chickpeas and a spicy brown sauce are spooned into each of these puffed balls made from wheat flour. The Puri is then dunked into a tureen of green water, the pani, and handed to the eagerly waiting customer. When you put the puri in your mouth and chew, crisp crunch mingles with the firm moong and chickpeas, and is drowned by the sloshing pani that escapes as the puri is shattered. Pani Puri can be delicious, but because the pani may or may not be potable, it can also prove debilitating. Both Dani and I have spent several days in bed as a result of eating it and not only because we had not yet adjusted to the local common bacteria. Even locals can succumb, as a colleague of mine did after indulging his love for the food at the wrong stall in Delhi, and spend days struck by severe sickness. The snack clearly has something of a reputation for having this effect; there are branded Pani Puri stalls that advertise their product as 100% 'bac-free'.

On college campuses in Delhi, instant fast food has been taken to another level. Here you can buy plates of Maggi noodles, the packaged instant noodles beloved by bachelors and those studying for their bachelors that are available in every supermarket and general store. Somehow though there's something special about these particular noodles, something that makes them taste better than when they're made at home over a hob. Perhaps it's the effect of eating them outdoors. Or maybe they taste better because, as with other street food, there's a whole experience around buying and eating them. Part of street food's appeal is the speed and simplicity with which it's made while you wait and watch. And of course you get to eat delicious food without having to do any hard work.