Sometimes the search for good food becomes unnecessarily personal. You eat something once, somewhere, and then spend the next few months trying to find a version of it that feels right again.
For the past three months, I had been searching for good mutton in Delhi. Not the unnecessarily expensive kind served in a small bowl at a place with dim lights and a complicated menu. I wanted something simple. A proper plate of food. Spicy mutton, soft enough to break easily, with gravy that actually tastes like it has been cooked patiently.
Delhi is an interesting city in this regard. Every state has its own Bhavan here, and many of these Bhavans have canteens serving food from their respective states. It is possibly one of the easiest ways to travel around India without actually leaving Delhi.
That is exactly how I reached Bihar Bhavan. It had been raining that day. Delhi looks slightly more forgiving when it rains. The roads become slower, the trees look greener.
The plate arrived with litti, chokha and a bowl of mutton curry. I broke open the litti with my hands and dipped it into the gravy. The outer layer was crisp, the inside was soft and full of sattu, and the gravy had slowly entered every small crack. The mutton was spicy, rich and comforting.
There is something beautiful about eating regional food in a place like Delhi. A city can sometimes feel too large and too impersonal. But then you enter a state Bhavan, sit inside a simple canteen, and suddenly someone is serving food that carries the memory of a completely different place.
Maybe food is also a kind of geography. Some places are found through maps. Some are found through recommendations. Some are found after three months of searching, on a rainy day, inside Bihar Bhavan.