A ‘fast’ snack to begin your day
‘Khajla’, a Ramzan delicacy
It looks like a giant golgappa, or an extralarge raj kachori. Some might confuse it with the enormous bhatoora served in a landmark Connaught Place restaurant. But it is neither. This thing is only seen in select parts of Delhi, and rarely.
This snack is called khajla, available only during the month of Ramzan when Muslims fast from dawn till dusk. Soaked in milk, the thick, flaky and sugary khajla is a deep-fried bread of maida. It is usually kept for sehri, the pre-dawn meal after which the fasting begins.
It is said that khajla’s robustness helps a fasting person to survive the day. “It gives you enough strength to withstand long hours without eating,” says Sabeeha Jhinjhianvi, a homemaker in Old Delhi’s Chitli Qabar Chowk, who lives within hearing distance of Ameer Sweet House.
This afternoon, this mithai shop’s friendly cooks are extremely busy in the kitchen making the khajla. Since the kitchen abuts the shop, as though it were an adjacent store, its goings-on are clearly visible from the street.
The sight is majestic. Most of the space in the kitchen is taken over by the khajla, hundreds of them. They are piled up into towers, each tower broad at the base and tapering nears the top — just like Mehrauli’s Qutub Minar.
Despite the heat of the day and the warmth emanating out from the bubbling hot oil in the cauldron, the cooks are showing no hint of discomfort. They are in fact in a fun mood, pulling each other’s legs about a Facebook post.
Despite the chatter, the work at hand is continuing without a pause. Deepu is rolling out the dough, Arvind is deep frying the khajla, and Jayveer is ladling each one out as soon as it swells into a balloon.
Meanwhile, a few steps away, two poets in Modern Tea House are sitting across a chippy wooden table. Over glasses of sweet milky (malai mar ke), they are discussing khajla.
Poet Tasleem Danish is telling his fellow brethren Muhammed Ayub about his visit to another city where, “Bhai, I came across a khajla that was exactly like the khajla of our Dilli... But it was not empty…it was filled with halwa.” The other poet is in awe.
A kilogram of khajla costs ₹200.