lunch at Chanda's

Feeling a bit peckish, we pull out our 2006 guide, which recommends a lovely elderly couple who run a restaurant.  It all seems simple enough, but navigating the labyrinthine streets is more of a challenge than we expect and soon we find ourselves back at the textile walla we visited earlier, a lovely man who is more museum curator than merchant.  We’d already spent an hour with him, as he decoded the world of fabric arts-- old vs. new dyes, various embroidery knots, antique mirrored wedding tunics, door hangings, camel blankets, and embroidered silks.

We tell him our destination, and he sends a young boy from his stoop to guide us there, and good thing too.  The boy turns this way and that, and at a hole in the wall, we follow him up something between a ladder and steep stair into Chanda’s one-room home.  Putting the pieces together, we’re guessing that when her husband died, she couldn’t keep the restaurant, so moved her trade into her own kitchen.  We know it would be a long and strange experience when she pours water into a pot and drops in two potatoes.  Thus begins lunch.  

We are her second—and likely last--set of customers that day.  We sit and watch her cook, and with a mix of English, Hindi and culinary gestures, she shares her secrets of making vegetable masala, Rajasthani dal, puri and papadam, and also bits and pieces of her life…maybe.  Here she is at