Going by my love for different cuisines, from time to time, I feel I must have been born in that land to which the cuisine belongs in one of my past lives. At times, I strongly feel, I must have been a Tibetian for my love for momos, sometimes Italian for my love for penne white sauce pasta and sometimes Malayali for my love for Malabar parotta and beef fry. The fact that in this life, I am an Assamese, and I love steam and fermented food of North East, I feel I must have been a North Eastern, too, in one of my past lives. My latest fascination is to imagine that I must have been an Afghan.

Thanks to the exodus of Afghans, and choosing to make Lajpat Nagar in Delhi, their home away from home, foodies like me got an opportunity to dig into the simple, yet sumptuous and larger than life Afghan cuisine, there is a reason, why I call Afghan cuisine larger than life.

I have been visiting the Afghan restaurants in Lajpat Nagar for close to three-four years now. It has always been a meal with family and friends; only recently as I had to kill time while waiting for someone, I decided to while away my time at the Afghan restaurant, Mazaar, in Lajpat Nagar’s Central Market. If the motive is to kill time, the first place that comes to your mind is a coffee shop, but it struck me that perhaps at the same price of a coffee and a snack, I could get something more sumptuous and filling at an Afghan restaurant. And, here’s how Afghan cuisine is a large-hearted cuisine.

The Afghan restaurants in Delhi have a sit-down area along with the customary tables and chairs. Although, you wouldn’t find a queue waiting outside the Afghan restaurants, it is not easy to get a table, and the wait is all the longer for the sit-down area. Reason being that Afghans like to eat at leisure, unlike Delhittes, they are not in a hurry to finish off their food. Every sit down area has a big round pillow, where the Afghan men lie back and enjoy their food while sipping green tea and reminiscing their lives in Afghanistan.

Also, I have noticed that the Qabuli Uzbeki, Pulao and Qorma Chalao, don’t come alone, it always comes with a little gravy of rajma, roasted eggplant with curd and the huge Afghan roti. Although, not in context to this story, you will find a similar culture at restaurants in Jama Masjid and Jamia Nagar, where people make request for gravies to be reserved. So what happened on that day at Mazaar was that since no tables and chairs were available, I decided to become a pseudo Afghan by deciding to lie down on the sit-down area. The meal of a plate of mutton pulao, Afghan roti with rajma and roasted eggplant went on for two hours that day. As I was waiting for my plate, I saw an Afghan sitting opposite me finish off a plate of pizza, some more Afghans joined the party and ate the quintessential pulao with the gravies, on an average the occupancy time for each sitting area was almost an hour. And the icing on the cake is you are only charged for a plate of pulao and that is around Rs 180, so isn’t Afghan cuisine large-hearted?