| July 26, 2008 | Saturday | Rajab 22, 1429 |
D for depression — beware the doom!
It’s pretty darn impossible to go wrong with chicken. Until and unless you’re a hopeless cook, whether you fry, broil, roast, sauté or cook your bird in any other fashion, chances are you’ll end up with a half-decent meal. That’s why I truly believe that chicken is one of the safest meats, as far as experimenting with new dishes goes.
Spurred on by my newfound love of chicken, I set out to find in the city of lights a dish that I had not savoured since childhood. All I could remember was nibbling on juicy chunks of chargha bought from a joint in North Nazimabad’s once famed Golden Gate area (for the life of me, I’ve never seen this bloody gate) many moons ago.
The search brought this writer and an intrepid and incredibly hungry band of culinary companions to Boating Basin one recent Saturday night. Now wisdom dictates that one should steer clear of Boating Basin or other ‘food streets’ on weekend nights, for the simple fact that three fourths of Pakistan’s population is out feasting away at these places. But driven by the demons of gastronomy, wisdom has no place in the greater scheme of things for a hungry journalist.
So to Boating Basin we went. One has to say the place deserves a separate write-up, for if I’m not mistaken, ever since the eighties, this strip of land located close to the sea (or is it the stinking sewage depot deceptively and rather elegantly named Nehr-i-Khayyam?) has become one of Karachi’s most popular places to eat out. Dodging the burgers, pizzas, shawarmas, karahis and God only knows what else, we zeroed in towards the target: chargha.
A dull neon sign displaying the Minar-i-Pakistan lets you know you’ve arrived at Master’s hotel. The layout of the joint won’t exactly earn it a place in the Michelin Food Guide, but stuff the décor, it’s the food that counts! At least that’s my mantra when eating out.
There are two options as far as seating arrangements go: plastic tables and chairs, which usually have the leftovers from the previous customers’ meal, or charpoys where you can have your meal while resting on gao takiyas in a more relaxed manner. I’ve tried both methods, and my vote is for the charpoy.
As the waiter approached, I asked him if Master-Ji was around. He replied in the negative and instead handed us a menu card, which indicated that we should forget about Master-Ji and enjoy his delightful creations instead. In my first visit to the restaurant, I decided to stuff all else and ordered just the chargha; however, on a subsequent trip chicken handi was ordered as well, as the number of diners in the party had increased. Here’s the combined blow-by-blow of both encounters.
‘Just what the hell is chargha?’ a dining companion asked, raising a very pertinent question. Though I am no expert on the genealogy of Pakistani cuisine, to put it quite crudely, chargha seems to be a cross between traditional chicken tikka and fried chicken. I am confused whether it is truly fried or roasted on an open fire a la sajji. However, one thing is for certain: it tastes damn good.
When you order a Lahori chargha, a whole spiced bird is brought out. But before the clucker makes its grand entrance, diners can cool off with soothing bowls of raita, which are brought out with a tangy salad, which seemed to contain sharp-tasting Arabic turshi, along with the usual suspects – cucumbers, lemon wedges, tomatoes, onions et al. Master-Ji’s desi salad is a real winner.
As for the bird, well, it was scrumptious to say the least. One can attack it bare or aided by fluffy, steaming naans. This writer tried both the sesame seeded variety as well as the plain kind. Both kinds make a fine accompaniment to chargha.
The meat was tender and quite well-done, while the skin was beautifully crisp, with a tangy flavour, presumably a result of the marinade. If a little fresh lemon is sprinkled on to the succulent flesh of the chicken, the culinary experience is taken to the next level. If the zesty taste of lemon does not float your boat, you can always dip your morsels of chargha and naan into the creamy raita.
As a sidekick, the handi was quite tasty as well, though this writer couldn’t quite make out the difference between it and a karahi.
The chargha ‘yatra’ had been a roaring success. On both occasions, my dining companions appeared to be satisfied men after the bird had been laid bare. I don’t know just how Lahori the chargha really was, as I’ve never had the pleasure of supping on chargha in Lahore, yet it seemed to go a long way in promoting inter-provincial harmony.
Interestingly, I am told that joints which claim to sell ‘Karachi style kebabs’ in the Punjab capital happen to exercise a magnetic pull on customers.
MORE than the searing summer heat, worsened by power outages, it is the acute state of depression that is dominating the landscape.
Islamabad, as the seat of the federation, is a very strong indicator of what is a massive volcano of discontent building across Pakistan.
The unprecedented price spiral in basic commodities from food to fuel in the last few months has cornered the ordinary citizen, turning his or her life into one unending misery.
The situation has come to a pass where the purchase power of the middle class is rapidly reaching a dead end. It doesn’t take great imagination to figure out what inflation is doing to the lower class, where existence itself is a day-to-day affair.
There is a general impression that people living in Islamabad, the most expensive city in Pakistan by a distance would be slightly better placed to fend off the economic crunch but that is not the case.
Given the seeds of discontent, riven by a draining power struggle following the events of last March, Summer 2008 was always going to be a test of nerve for the government of the day and, of course, the people.
However, what few had bargained for was that it would turn into a nightmare with apparently no end. For the less privileged, the greatest fear in Islamabad today, is what does the next sunrise hold for them.
The increase in prices of daily essentials almost every week has turned their lives upside down. The shock in seeing inflation cut a swathe is compounded by the unavailability of food items they can’t simply do without.
Pakistan may be a nuclear power, its army one of the best equipped in the world and a large chunk of its rulers filthy rich but the reality is that the state can’t get a majority of its people to have two square meals a day without them worrying about where the next meal will come from.
People had still to recover from the hike in gasoline prices — with Federal Petroleum Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi providing a somewhat symbolic fumble on the difference in the new arithmetic — before yet another bombshell last week twisted the affordability map further.
Federal Water and Power Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf apologised Thursday — wizening perhaps from the faux pas of his colleague in the Petroleum Ministry — before slipping in the bad news on raising power tariffs.
It is all becoming a rather sick joke and the rhetoric about “alleviating poverty” notwithstanding, it seems, as one observer put it — simply, an attempt to wipe out the poor.
The sense of desperation amongst hoi polloi is acute now. Romance with the idea that the advent of “people’s representatives” will usher in a change has proved to be a fiction.
The lay citizen is not concerned with what economy the current regime inherited or who is playing what games to perpetuate a seemingly fragile hold on power.
It may be argued that such observation is not substantive given that the new government did inherit a troubled house.
But many will agree a certain lack of urgency and lackadaisical approach to solving people’s pressing problems is pushing a frustrated citizenry to a state of depression.
One finds such worry-strewn faces in and around the capital everywhere. Personally, never before has one received so many requests for assistance/loan even from people, who were until now making do.
An auto parts shop owner in Sector G-10/1, who gets to see his family only once every quarter because he cannot afford even a single rented room in the capital, asked last week if one could help find him one for Rs5,000. He has been ‘living’ in the small shop with his father and younger brother for ages!
But if this is about people with lesser means, what do you have to say about a top traffic police officer, who one knows to be an honest gentleman, conceding to yours truly the other day that even with his wife working to supplement the family income, it was becoming a struggle to cope with the rising inflation?
What the powers-that-be don’t seem to realise is that the people’s state of depression could find an outlet in highly undesirable consequences. Folk wisdom suggests one should fear the one who has nothing left to lose.
The writer is News Editor at Dawn News. He may be reached at
kaamyabi@gmail.com
