Some do savings, some do shami

The best batata bhaji I ever had was on a train from Hyderabad to Delhi. I had been smelling it since my neighbour got on in Nagpur and placed his towel-wrapped tiffin carrier dangerously close to me. He must have noticed because his first words to me were: “Aren’t you going to eat?”. I said something about the next station. He waved that away and handed me a stack of chapatis and a fist-sized dollop of batata bhaji.

The sabji was delicious — new potatoes gently bathed in onion-garlic flavoured oil, lifted by ultra-fresh curry leaves and slivers of green chili, slightly sweet and nutty. I started absent-mindedly, mesmerized by just how much a great cook can coax out of the most mundane ingredients, and realised too late that with my easy hand with the sabji, I would have to chew through several unadorned chapatis. Fortunately, the train stopped just then. I ran out promising to come back with some nice guavas, and threw the rest of the chapatis under the train, praying that he was not looking. More than 40 years later, I can still recall just how stupid that felt.