Jilipi Utsav!!

Jilipi Utsav

Jilipis, or Jalebis, as North Indians call them are a concoction of sugar and Gawd knows what else.. here is a quote from Wikipedia:
“Jalebi (is a sweet common in India and Pakistan. It's hawked all over city streets (street food). It is easy to make, consisting of deep-fried, syrup-soaked batter in large, chaotic pretzel shapes. Jalebis are mostly bright orange in colour but are also available in white and best served warm and dripping. Jalebis when served cold have a minor chewy texture, with a crystalised sugar "crunch". Jalebi is sold at the Halwaishop, or the traditional sub continental sweet maker. The southern Indian lookalike is jangiri.”

Birida, the chieftain of our C-Mess group instituted the tradition of the Jilipi Utsav. (Utsav means festival) To clarify matters, the C-Mess group, also called the 'Hoi Hoi Sangha' was constituted by a bunch of grad students who lunched and took their afty tea at the C-Mess. Birida, (I will explain in some later post why he was called Birida) was the de-facto, and de-jure Samrat, or king of the Sangha. He once proclaimed from the rarefied air accessible to his six and a half feet height that we should get Jilipis after tea, and that was how it all began.

The Utsav took the form of a few of us, typically Birida himself, Debu, Usmanbhai (Suman) and urs truly cycling down to Mathikhere to a shop called Mahalakshmi Dhaba. A Dhaba is a very cheap, eatery, typically seen on highways, and they cater to truck-wallahs, and the occasional brave regular city bloke on a drive as well. There are very few Dhabas in South India. I should have mentioned that Dhabas were originally a Punjabi creation. However, the Mahalakshmi Dhaba was that rarest of rarities, a Dhaba in the middle of a city in South India. They serve a rather smashing selection of parathas, excellent samosas and fabulous Jilipis. The Jilipis and samosas come piping hot off the kadai. This, we grabbed and headed back for campus. The problem was that if we were unsupervised, the Jilipis would be somewhat... less in quantity at the point we arrived on campus. Hence, Ruchira-di decided to come along to supervise the purchases, or sent along some female representative. I don't quite know why, but the girls were, by default assumed to be more trustworthy.

Now, sitting on the carrier seat of a cycle is at best, a somewhat painful proposition. When that cycle is executing fast turns, hopping over speedbreakers (which decorate the streets of Bangalore in profusion: to no apparent effect) and duelling with insane autorickshaw-wallahs, riding on the rear seat can be quite a character building experience. All too often, I have seen Ruchira-di get off the cycle with eyes still tightly shut and mumbling what I can only assume, are prayers. There are other disadvantages too: one gets the metal carrier imprinted on one's behind.

Such problems solved, we finally got the Jilipis to the waiting crowd. At which point, there was something like a feeding frenzy of sharks. People hit with fists, elbows, claw and sometimes bite to make off with the most Jilipis. I have seen grown, educated, and one might imagine civilised wimmen fighting over a chunk oh hot Jilipi. Hunger sated, you find some ten odd people standing around looking peculiarly satisfied, licking the syrup off their hands.