Crunchy souvenirs from Ujjain

A pavement stall stocked with biscuits from a holy town, and the elegance of its owner

Normalcy has returned in the third year of the coronavirus pandemic, at least in one particular public space. A thread that linked Gurugram’s Jama Masjid with the temple town of Ujjain has reclaimed its pre-pandemic tautness.

The object of our interest is a biscuit cart that looks very modest, but happens to be a long-time landmark in the area.

Traditionally, a gourmand may visit the Friday mosque in the Millennium City’s Sadar Bazar for the crispy kebabs charred live at a stall on the mosque’s plaza, or the spicy biryani cooked every afternoon beside a park facing the mosque.

Some people, though, come to specifically visit this cart, parked close to the mosque. The pavement enterprise gets its biscuits from Ujjain, the town in Madhya Pradesh famous for Mahakaleshwar Mandir.

During the long periods of the coronavirus, the biscuit cart operated intermittently. “Arre janaab, now the supply from Ujjain no longer gets disrupted, and I’m getting fresh biskut (sic) five times a month,” says cart owner Nashir Ahmad Khan in perfect Urdu that he renders melodically, like a poet reciting his verses.

Made in Ujjain’s Kanha Bakery, these biscuits are arrayed out in chocolate, jeera, ajwain, cherry, and coconut flavours. They are as tasty as the ones made every morning in the legacy bakeries of Old Delhi. Why not get the stuff from closer home then? Clad in his trademark safari suit, Khan patiently expounds on Gurugram’s relationship with ‘Ujjain biskit’.

He reveals that these were introduced to the town more than a decade ago by an unnamed wholesaler who first started to “import” cartons of biscuits from the Ujjain bakery. Gradually, a few other wholesalers followed, and, like sugar in milk, a souvenir of Ujjain blended into Gurugram.

While the other vendors selling these Ujjaini biscuits must be as friendly as the owner of this cart, it is still rare to come across a man so polite, elegant and literary minded. To hear Khan speak his long strings of sentences so pacifically fills one with calm and awe. The biscuit trader is also very dapper. Tapping his finger determinedly on his chest, he declares that “I will wear safari suit marte dam tak (till I die).”

The cart serves daily from 10 am till 8 pm.