There are always two sides to everything, if someone says; “Delhi kisi ka nahi hai”, then the opposite would be “Delhi saab ka hai”. Delhi has a huge migrant population, belonging to different socio-economic strata, and they have brought their food habits with them, gradually these food habits have become a part of Delhi’s street food culture.

Most of the street food carts we notice in Delhi sell samosa, zalebi, bread pakora, khasta kachori, tikki, gol-gappa, dahi bhalla, desi burger and namkeen ladoo to name a few. One day, while walking from the Haiderpur Metro station to the nearest Mall in Shalimar Bagh, I noticed an array of carts selling pyazi, fried litti chokha along with channa, samosa and zalebi. Pyazi is a popular Indian snack, made of gram flour, salt, onions and chilli, there were two types of pyazi, a bigger one and a smaller one. On inquiring, I found that the cart owner is from Bihar, and all the other surrounding cart owners also belonged to Bihar.

I have always known that liiti chokha is heated on a grill, and served with allo and baingan ka bharta mix, never heard that it is also fried. The fired litti chokha looked more like kachoris. Now many months later, I came across a similar cart in Noida, Sector 5 ‘F’ Block and what caught my attention were the two chutneys that were being served with the pyazis, fried litti chokha and chana.  One was of lal mirch and another of mustard.

No prize for guessing this cart-owner, too, is from Bihar, his name is Ram Avtar. Ram runs it along with his son Ravi Kumar. Ram told me that he puts up his cart only for half-an-hour in Sector 5 Noida, otherwise he stations it for the whole evening at Sharma Market in Sector 5 Noida.

Ram said, for the mustard chutney, first black mustard seed is soaked and then grounded, the grounding process continues with ginger, garlic, red chilli powder, garam masala and surprisingly mango pickle. In the mirchi chutney, giner and garlic is grounded with dhaniya, garam masala and lal mirch.

A single pyazi cost Rs 1, a bigger pyazi cost Rs 5 and 100 gm chana cost Rs 10.