Karachi still home to many pre-Partition traditions and foods

[Naveed Yaseen]

Text and Photos By Amar Guriro
KARACHI: With the migration of Muhammad Rizwan’s grandfather’s family, they brought along a certain culture and taste of food and even after the passage of 62 years, his family has managed to maintain the traditional taste of Delhi sweets.

Before the partition of the sub-continent, Rizwan’s grandfather was running a small shop of sweets near Jamia Masjid Delhi but after migrating to Karachi, his grandfather discontinued his profession. However, Rizwan’s father then opened a small shop that is now known as Delhi Darbar Sweets.

Thirty-year-old Rizwan had heard a lot about the taste of the food of Delhi from his grandmother and always wanted to go there to see what the hype was about. So he visited Delhi a couple of years ago and found that the claims made by his grandmother were true. “Delhi is famous for its traditional food items which range from Nihari, Kebab, pani puri and other spicy foods, sweets and dry fruits,” said Rizwan. Though he has introduced different sweets to his shop but the traditional taste has been maintained through the years.

Many shops, including Rizwan’s, that opened in the late 1950s and early 1960s are still named after various cities of India. Some of the names inspired by famous Indian cities include Bombay Restaurant near Cantt. Railway Station, Kerala Muslim Hotel in New Chali area near Habib Bank Plaza, Delhi Rabri Shop, Delhi Dahi Baray, Delhi Faluda (a glass full of sherbet, ice cream and Lehnga seed), Bombay Dry Fruit Store and Delhi Stores, which sell items such as hair oil on Burns Road.

Burns Road is a street in the downtown of the city and is famous for its traditional food such as nihari, haleem, biryani, chicken and mutton karhai, dhaga kebab, gola kebab, fried finger fish and sweets such as rabri, dahi bara, kheer, mithai and traditional drinks such as lassi, fruit juice and cold milk.

According to elder residents of the area, most people who migrated from India to Karachi preferred to live on Burns Road and a majority of them came from Delhi. “In the 1950s, the newly migrated people were looking for dishes that were famous in Dehli and the shopkeepers of that time not only adapted the names and reproduced recipes of nihari, haleem, gola kebab, dhaga kebab and dahi bara but also decided to include the name Dehli while naming their shops to conjure an effect,” said an elderly resident of Burns Road, Haji Shafaqat.

Indian names were not the only ones that were adapted and, in fact, many people named their shops on names of their countries of origin. “With the passage of the time, these names became trademarks and most people firmly believe that only certain shops serve food with such taste,” said a shopkeeper of the Burns Road area, Usman.

Karachi is a cosmopolitan city with about 17 million people belonging to different cultures and backgrounds and the people have all imparted a little bit of their heritage in the form of traditional recipes. “The beauty of the city lies in the fact that you can find food from any city of Pakistan such as Peshawari chappli kebab, Pushtoo style kehvah chai, chargha, sajji or Indian, Iranian and even Afghani food,” said Shafaqat.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...008_pg12_7