The capital city’s oldest Durga Pujo brings Old Delhi’s expert bawarchis to cook up a storm in a school playground.
On the third day of Durga Pujo this year, I spotted an old iron hamam dista—a mortar and pestle—in one corner of the makeshift open kitchen at Bengali Senior Secondary School’s playground in Old Delhi. My mother recognised it instantly. They were used by Kallu, a cook who helped prepare food for Bengali club events and Kali Pujo from the 1970s to the 1990s. My mother, who had studied at the Bengali School, and has been a member of the club since childhood, said they were his prized possessions.
Nearby sat an iron chulha and kadhai, both blackened by decades of use. Placed on coal and brick at the side were five degchis, sealed using the dum technique, but the fragrance of smoky meat tenderising revealed what was being made. Behind them lay piles of discarded school chairs and desks from the Bengali School—where the Pujo is held. The cooks sat here for their beedi breaks.
The Kashmere Gate Durga Pujo at Alipur Road is the oldest in Delhi, going back to 1910, when the city only extended as far as what is today known as Old Delhi. When the British shifted their capital from Calcutta to Delhi in 1911 and brought with them officials and businessmen from Calcutta, a group of Bengalis—mostly English-educated officials working in the postal services, railways, banks, and other government jobs—gathered to celebrate in Roshanpura. My family was part of this small community that made Delhi home in the early 1900s.
For these early Bengalis, Delhi lacked the cultural anchors they had left behind in Bengal—no Kali temples, community Pujo, or markets selling familiar produce. There was hardly any room for literary or musical exchange. To make this city their own, they began with faith and familiarity: the first Kali Bari (a Hindu place of worship for the deity Kali) in Tis Hazari built in 1917 after the earlier temple was destroyed in 1857; the Bengali Senior Secondary School which taught Arabic, English, and Bangla; the Bengali Club where people met to play table tennis, read poetry, and organise plays; and the Bengali festival of Durga Pujo. These institutions became the cornerstones of a new Bengali identity in Delhi.
During the early decades, the location of the Kashmere Gate Pujo changed often, first set up in dharamshalas, followed by the Women’s Polytechnic (now Ambedkar University), which was right behind my grandfather’s house. In the 1970s, it moved to its present-day location, at the playground of the Bengali School, which is also where food stalls first made an appearance.
During the early decades, the location of the Kashmere Gate Pujo changed often, first set up in dharamshalas, followed by the Women’s Polytechnic (now Ambedkar University), which was right behind my grandfather’s house.
As incomes rose within the community, weddings and other club occasions started becoming more lavish, seeing a slew of rich foods now catered at these events. At one such wedding, bawarchis from the Jama Masjid had prepared meat-based delicacies, and impressed by their food, the club members invited them to cook at the Pujo. My grandfather Shyamal Mittra, who was then the convener of the club food stall, was closely involved in this decision. A man named Babban Miyan was invited to prepare biryani for rupees 40 per plate on the premises of the school.
Today, nearly 60 years later, the same kitchen is erected in the school playground. The biryani now costs a hefty rupees 450 per plate, still cooked on wood fire by Babban’s descendants. The man at the helm now is Giasudin, who started this work when he was 20 years old. While I’ve been attending the Pujo for the last 24 years, this is the first time I walked into his kitchen and spoke to him.
Inside the open kitchen, on one side, are the five chulhas—fashioned out of bricks—burning coal made from keekar wood. “Humari biriyani ka zaika iss lakdi ki vajha se hi aata hai,” Giasudin told me—It is this wood that imparts the perfect smoky flavour ideal for the dum biriyani. He explained that these chulhas can cook 25 dekchis of biryani and korma. If they used gas, they’d need 25 separate stoves.
The team Giasudin leads includes eight to 10 men: Masood and Zubair handle the kebabs, Shahrukh and Mehboob, the biryani and korma. Shahrukh, the youngest, is learning under Giasudin, just as his uncle Yasin did before he passed away. As we spoke, Giasudin told me his ancestors came to Delhi with Shah Jahan and worked in the royal kitchens. There’s no way to verify this, but I wanted to believe him. He sees himself as part of a long line of cooks whose work outlives them.
The kitchen, though temporary, is designed with thought and precision. The chulhas are placed away from the firewood, positioned in a way that the smoke doesn’t enter the pandal. Utensils sit near a row of taps that pull water from the school building—for easy washing and drainage. A tarpaulin covers one section for protection against the rain.
Giasudin told me about the times the kitchen has had to move over the years—from adjacent to the stage to behind the school building and finally here in the playground. Once, the police had asked them to stop cooking due to fire laws, and so, to comply, they relocated and continued. I asked him how he manages when things go wrong. “Khaana bann hi jaata hai,” he said with a smile. Food always gets made.
The slow-cooked yoghurt-based meat in the korma falls off the bone, perfectly soaked up by rumali roti, while the biryani is seasoned with whole spices and chillies and therefore milder in flavour.
That calm was put to test this year when it rained. The sky opened up just before noon, flooding the meat room and soaking the firewood. I ran to the back, expecting chaos, but found the cooks sitting in a circle, smoking beedis. “Everything is soaked, what will you do now?” I asked.
Giasudin responded, “Baarish rukne do, sab bann jayega.” Let the rain stop, everything will happen. When the rain stopped at half past twelve, they relit the fires. By two-thirty, the first pots of biryani and korma were ready.
The evenings brought the crowds. Nearly 2,000 people line up through the four days of the Pujo for free bhog served in the afternoon, and just as many return at night for biryani and kebabs. The slow-cooked yoghurt-based meat in the korma falls off the bone, perfectly soaked up by rumali roti, while the biryani is seasoned with whole spices and chillies and therefore milder in flavour.
The lines stretch endlessly, with people standing shoulder to shoulder. Some get frustrated—hours of waiting at times, only to be told the biryani or korma is over. You can see it on their faces: they are tired, disappointed, and sometimes angry.
Anirban, who has been coming here since he was a child, had travelled over two hours from Gurgaon. He first came here with his father, and now he had brought his son along. The biryani isn’t the best in the city, he admitted, but he still comes every year. When the korma ran out before his turn, he seemed defeated, saying that this isn’t uncommon—if you’re late, you will inevitably end up missing either the korma or the biryani.
A member of the club since the mid-1950s and former general secretary of the Pujo, 75-year-old Siddhartha Baul—or Jolly Dadai, as I fondly call him—told me that in the 1970s, when he and my grandfather managed the club stall, they would receive frantic calls from people running late, begging to reserve 10 plates of biryani and five plates of korma.
I asked a friend of my grandfather’s, Badal Ray, rather candidly whether he attributed the popularity of our Pujo to the food. He looked at me sternly for a second before breaking into a smile. “Let me tell you a running joke we’ve had for years,” he said.
Badal dadai sells Bengali books at the Pujo every year; his stall is right at the entrance. The Pujo pandal is set up in such a way that upon entering, the idol is straight ahead, and the food stalls are to the left of the entrance. He often watches people walk in, take one look around, and immediately head left. “After they’ve eaten,” he laughed, “they come to my stall and ask, ‘Toder ekhane thakur hoye na?’—Isn’t there an idol here?” People are so mesmerised by the food, they tend to miss the idol completely.
The success of this Pujo—and what makes it so unique—is that the organisers come from the same institutions, having meticulously built this community over decades. While a century-old, the histories of this Pujo and this community are still accessible.
For instance, Dr. Hemchandra Sen—considered among the earliest Bengali residents in Delhi, whose pharmacy in Chandni Chowk is remembered as one of the first Bengali-run enterprises in the city—would later become one of the foremost patrons of the Durga Pujo (and our family doctor too). Around the same time, community members like Ashutosh Ray, who founded the Indian Medical Hall Press, and Swaminath Banerjee, who started Bengal Paper Mills, were setting up small businesses in Old Delhi. Others held government jobs, like in the Government of India Press or the Post and Trade Office. Their children, too, studied together in the Bengali School in Civil Lines. Over time, these shared spaces of work and worship created a close-knit group that still comes together each year, keeping an old community intact.
The Bengali settlement in Old Delhi began when the city was still just Shahjahanabad. The food they ate the most after arriving in Delhi—the biryani and korma—became central to their Pujo celebrations. I asked Badal dadai and Jolly dadai why biryani and korma, which aren’t traditionally Bengali, became Pujo staples. They laughed and said, “Who said so? Ask any Bengali, and their favourite food will be biryani.”
Ishani Banerjee (@ishaaanniii) is a chef with a love for cinema, literature, and storytelling through food. At The Locavore, she delves into indigenous food systems and documents recipes from across India.
Inside My Kitchen
Every kitchen has a unique story to tell. Attempting to capture some of these stories from across India, Inside My Kitchen is a series that examines the relationship between the kitchen and the people who inhabit it.
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