Dreaming a Paradise

HUNGER. It was prevalent everywhere.

- Chitvan Gill

If Buland Masjid was created as a paradise for the hopeless, the destitute, it has succeeded in becoming a paradise for the hungry. Food is everywhere, even to be stumbled upon in dark alleys.

In his Parallel Lives, Plutarch describes the Metoecia, or the Feast of Migration, a celebration of migrants leaving their boroughs and uniting in one city. Here in Buland Masjid, every day is a feast. The migrants have brought, with their rituals and traditions, memories of cuisines of their distant lands. Food is the connection that brings back the sense of the tender touch of love, hearth and home. Men haul carcasses, baste, cook. Dough is pounded vigorously. Rotis, naans, breads, tandoors. Bakeries turn out rusks and biscuits. Vendors crowd the narrow streets peddling strawberries, pastries; popcorn machines release the smell of warm butter; a man guides his cart outfitted with an unfathomable contraption which emits flaming sunbursts and rolls out perfectly formed nankhatais.