NEW DELHI: The paths of love never run straight, and this is a fact that any food lover who visits Noida’s Brahmaputra Market can attest to. The markets built during Noida’s halcyon days were spread out to serve several sectors sprang up all over the burgeoning cityscape, but the mighty Brahmaputra continues to see an endless flow of people and of course. provide for residents as well as visitors.
Some of Noida’s oldest chemists, dry cleaners, grocers, photo studio and clothing stores still operate here, but it’s in the evening that BP (as it’s commonly known) becomes the city’s premier street food destination. From the early ‘90s, the broad stone-paved courtyards that bedeck the market have attracted food carts and hawkers like, well, the flies that their wares attract. Indeed, as the market grew more popular, it also drew in more pests and it was only after the mass culling of street vendors by the Supreme Court in 2007, and the subsequent assurances by the former of stricter quality control, that dustbins began dotting every corner and hygiene standards arose. In spite of the inevitability of the street vendors’ return, one still remembers the despair felt by Noida residents during those bleak few months when BP lay bereft of its cornucopia of cuisines.
Thankfully, those dark days are past and today BP is bustling with more people than ever. And given the vast choices of foods available, from rolls and rabri to kebabs and curries to soups and shakes to waffles and whatever else you go-to guy (s). through the ever-more labyrinthine lanes created by the jostling carts and stalls to make their way to their particular favourite chaat or shawarma seller, and then wait patiently to be served, in a wholly desi rendition of ‘eat, pay, love.’ Abhimanyu Jain has lived in five countries in the past decade, but whenever he returns to visit his family, the Noida native makes a beeline to BP for “the best Aloo Tikki hands Mutton roll, Kulfi for dessert. may be added, depending on how hungry he is, but those three items are sacrosanct. Whenever this humble scribe happens to be passing the place, is press-ganged by family to buy several packets of Chicken Momos and Thukpa from one particular nameless stall selling the same. If by (extremely rare) chance, that particular momo merchant is not there, we’re told to forget it, as no other dumplings will do. So much for going with the flow.