Delhi’s most democratic bread.

[Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi]

At night, people in Shahjahanabad eat heavy dishes such as kebabs and biryanis. In the morning, they have the equally heavy paya and nihari. Between waking up and breakfast, they also have sweet milky tea and fenn; the stacks on the bread counters create a scenic backdrop to the morning scene of children going to schools, or beggars sleeping on pavements.

Flaky and crisp, fenn is one of Delhi’s most democratic bakery products. Priced at 1 Re, it is a teatime companion for the homeless as well as the wealthy. The rickshaw-wallas mull over the pointlessness of the new day by soaking fenn in their tea. The newspaper readers do the same while pouring over the state of the world.

Not bigger than your palm, fenn’s crumbly facade is streaked with shades of brown. Made of maida flour, it is so flaky that when you take it in your hand, slivers of its skin peel off the surface. Some stay, some fall down.

On its own, fenn is very dry and it snaps in the mouth making crunchy sounds. Light and with no distinct flavour, it is deliciously addictive. In the arguments over how this city (or this country) is going to the dogs, it is easy to lose the count of fenns you have eaten. Many find it an ideal complement to tea.

The classic way is to dip fenn in the tea and raise it to your lips. When your mouth feels the outer moistness of the morsel melting into its inner crustiness, the moment is exquisite. Now take a sip of the tea. The warm liquid rushes in along with the few crumbs that the fenn left behind. This too is joy.

Where Fenn is sold in every roadside tea stall in Delhi Price for one fenn Re 1

Pick one

Flaky and crisp

Fenn-powered

Stacked against the glass counter

Street View

Another view

Dip dip dip

Good day, kaka

A la recherche du temps perdu.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Today is the ninth meeting of The Delhi Proustians, a club for Delhiwallas that discusses French novelist Marcel Proust. Every Monday evening for an hour we read his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time.

It is 7.03 pm and The Delhi Walla is with Jonas Moses, an irregular member of the club. Opening page 152, I say, “I admire Marcel’s ability to dissect feelings. The minute divisions that together constitute a remembered moment are separated, considered, described individually and then they are re-united into a single stream for a deeper appreciation.”

I start reading.

When I was tired of reading, after a whole morning in the house, I would throw my plaid across my shoulders and set out; my body, which in a long spell of enforced immobility had stored up an accumulation of vital energy, now felt the need, like a spinning-top wound and let go, to spend it in every direction.

“He is telling me my own experience,” I say. “When I shut myself in my library for an entire day and emerge out only after writing or reading something substantial, I walk along the bazaar streets as if a great invisible force is thrusting me forward. The world seems new.”

Mr Moses is not looking inspired.

Suddenly, a man who is carrying an Ernest Hemingway, enters the room. Approaching our table, he says, “Hello, I’m Sourabh Gupta. I’m a writer and I have come to be a part of The Delhi Proustians. I have been meaning to come for a long time but I was busy with my family. My son was born two months ago.”

Mr Gupta, who lives in Noida, blogs here. He continues from where I had left off.

The walls of houses, the Tansonville hedge, the trees of Roussainville wood, the bushes adjoining Montjouvain, all must bear the blows of my walking-stick or umbrella, must hear my shouts of happiness, these being no more than expressions of the confused ideas which exhilarated me, and which had not achieved the repose of enlightenment, preferring the pleasures of a lazy drift towards an immediate outlet rather than submit to a slow and difficult course of elucidation.

I order coffee for Mr Gupta.

To give you a sense of what Proust can do to a reader, here is a list of topics Mr Gupta touched upon in the next half-hour.

1.Teju Cole’s Open City, a book on New York walks
2. Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
3. M.C. Escher’s paintings
4. Bach’s fugue
5. Gödel’s incompleteness theorem
6. The theory of Strange Loops
7. Ingmar Bergman’s film Wild Strawberries
8. Herman Melville’s short story Bartleby
9. Writers who prefer not to write, from Enrique Vila-Matas’s Bartleby & Co
10. Plato’s The Republic
11. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein
12. Novelist W.G. Sebald
13. V.S. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival
14. Ernest Hemingway’s short story The Big Two-Hearted River

And Mr Gupta is reading Proust for the first time.

The tenth meeting of The Delhi Proustians takes place on 20 February, 2012.

Where Indian Coffee House (it has three seating spaces; enter the enclosed area that looks to Baba Khadak Singh Marg), Mohan Singh Place, near Hanuman Mandir, Baba Kharak Singh Marg, Connaught Place Time 7 pm Nearest Metro Station Rajiv Chowk

Living with Proust

Decoding Marcel, with Sourabh Gupta and Jonas Moses

Such a long journey

One of the one percent in 13 million.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Sitting on his patch of the pavement, he takes a sip of the chai, and again looks at the blur of people walking in front of him. The Delhi Walla met Rakesh Kumar Mishra, 34, a seller of second-hand magazines, novels, and guidebooks at his stall in Connaught Lane, a pedestrian street in Connaught Place, the colonial-era commercial district.

“These are old magazines so not many people stop here,” says Mr Mishra, pointing to old issues of Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, GQ, Good Home, Harvard Business Review, Better Homes, and The Caravan carefully arranged against a brick wall. Stacks of Time, Newsweek and National Geographic, a couple of Hindi language novels, and a few Lonely Planet guides in French and Swedish are spread out on a blue plastic sheet. Pointing to a last year’s issue of The Economist, Mr Sharma says, “Take it for 15 Rs.” The paper‘s newsstand price is 200 Rs, the same amount that Mr Mishra earns daily.

The magazine seller arrived in Delhi from his village in Bihar in 1996. He started operating the stall a year later. “I could have become a rickshaw puller but a relative who was running this stand decided to leave home for good, and so he sold it to me.”

The stall is not licensed by New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), which means that it is illegal.

“Sometimes I ask myself if I did the right thing by coming to Delhi,” Mr Mishra says. “I don’t think I would have earned less in my village than what I make here.”

Mr Mishra lives in a one-room house in Shahdara, east Delhi, with two factory labourers. The monthly rent is 500 Rs. His wife, Suman, and daughters Khushi and Sadhvi stay in the village. “I often talk to them on my wife’s mobile phone.”

Everyday Mr Mishra wakes up at 7 am, prepares his lunch (rotis and subzi), and reaches the metro station by 9 am. He carries the magazines in his torn plastic bag.

At 10 am, as office-goers are passing through the lane, Mr Mishra is ready with his display of Men’s Health and Vanity Fair. A postcard-sized photo of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, is placed on the ledge of the wall for good luck. A string of green chilies tied to a lemon hangs from a tree vine to ward off the evil eye.

At 2 pm, Mr Mishra has lunch. At 8 pm, he leaves. “After reaching home, I cook, eat and then I sleep.”

On Sunday, Mr Sharma goes to the weekly book bazaar in Daryaganj to hunt for second-hand foreign magazines.

Taking out tobacco from a plastic pouch and rubbing it on his palm, he says, “If I get a license from NDMC, I will open a food stall. It has more money.”

[This is the 54th portrait of Mission Delhi project]

Since 1997

No subscription, no lending

No evil eye please

Business hour

This too shall pass

Searching for the stylish.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The Delhi Walla saw this man one morning at Turkman Gate, one of the five surviving gateways built to protect the Mughal-era Shahjahanabad. He was in a white shirt, white pants, white topi, black waistcoat and black strapped sandals. His beard was white. The hair on his head was dyed with henna. There was no one dressed like him.

Established by Emperor Shahjahan, the Walled City has seen better days. Chickens are slaughtered beside roadside drains. People spit on walls. Beggars lie doped. Flies buzz on street food. Electric cables dangle dangerously. Chaos rules. This man has disturbed the disorder.

The white of his dress is without a spot. His sandals are polished black. His nails are clipped. His waistcoat is partially unbuttoned. His sartorial sense, however, has something deeper to say.

The man’s skull cap, long beard and the absence of mustache loudly proclaims his Islam. His western-style shirt and trousers announces his modernity. A living counterpoint to Samuel P. Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations, he shows us another world is possible.

The marriage of civilizations

Spotless

Steal my attitude

He reads?

The beard and the style

Truly stylish

Into the wild.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Situated between Purana Qila and Mathura Road, National Zoological Park has 75 species of animals, birds and reptiles.

The area is wooded. Squirrels hop across trees with slanting branches. Tired visitors lounge on the grass. Each tree is marked by a steel plate bearing its name. One dead trunk is identified as White Mulberry.

It takes two hours to walk through the zoo. There are benches along the way. Parents with small children ask the shortest route to lions and bears. You can hire a ‘trolley’ to be driven through the garden in 45 minutes (charges applied).

Life in the zoo is lethargic. Mynahs perch listlessly on the backs of sea horses. The duck pond is covered with fallen leaves and plastic bottles. Birds are kept behind wire meshes. (Blue-yellow macaus make quite a racket.)

Larger animals are treated with more dignity. Ringed by moats, their open enclosures have trees, grass and rocks. The two rhinos share their island with eagles and peacocks. Deer tend to ignore the zoo visitors, blackbucks try to hide behind trees. The lion doesn’t easily show himself. The roar of the white tiger, the principal attraction, hints of frustration. The python in the Reptile House looks doped.

Monkeys roam free. The railway tracks run along the boundary. Coca Cola kiosks also sell namkeen packets and ice cream bars. Stuffed animals are sold near the exit gate.

One notice board illustrates a man behind bars. He is surrounded by curious-looking animals. The caption says: “Put yourself in their place.”

Time 9 am to 5 pm, Closed on Friday Ticket Rs 20 Nearest Metro Station Pragiti Maidan

Postcards from Delhi Zoo

A la recherche du temps perdu.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Today is the eighth meeting of The Delhi Proustians, a club for Delhiwallas that discusses French novelist Marcel Proust. Every Monday evening for an hour we read his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time.

It is 7.14 pm and The Delhi Walla is comfortably seated with Marcel. The coffee house is crowded but my table is empty.

I show off my Proust, trying to say, “While you people are wasting your time in useless talk and bad coffee, I’m reading the world’s greatest post-modernist novel.”

[Yawn]

Reading Marcel is like a punishment.

[Looking at the watch]

The first volume has 610 pages. I’m on page 110. There are seven volumes.

[Requesting a steward to take my photo]

A sudden craving for Dickens.

Great Expectations.

Oliver Twist.

David Copperfield.

Abandon Marcel?

[Checking text messages on the mobile phone]

Turning to the book flap. It says, “… this huge and complex book is also a panoramic and richly comic portrait of France in the author’s lifetime, and a profound meditation on the nature of art, love, time, memory and death.”

I must carry on with Marcel Proust.

The ninth meeting of The Delhi Proustians takes place on 13 February, 2012.

Where Indian Coffee House (it has three seating spaces; enter the enclosed area that looks to Baba Khadak Singh Marg), Mohan Singh Place, near Hanuman Mandir, Baba Kharak Singh Marg, Connaught Place Time 7 pm Nearest Metro Station Rajiv Chowk

Distractions

Passing thoughts

Messaging Marcel

Don’t talk, but read

I won’t ditch you Marcel

Romance in the subway.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

This msg is for cutie pie who boarded Metro from Pitampura on 2 February around 8.30am & left at Sec 16 Noida station. She was wearing blu jeans & black levis tee. U were looking gorgeous. I am the guy standing near u. Is there any chance of new frnd. If you too liked me, reply me.

— A message on “Dil Se”, a classified section in the HT City, Delhi, supplement of Hindustan Times.

A train pulled into the yellow line underground Metro station at Rajiv Chowk, below the bustle of Connaught Place. The doors opened. They entered. The doors closed. The train moved. Leaning over her in the crowded compartment, his blue-green eyes resting on the beauty spot on her left cheek, he said, “I want to coat you in honey.”

She laughed, saying softly, “All the uncles and aunties are staring at us.”

Anayana wishes to keep her romantic life a secret. She talked to The Delhi Walla on the condition that I change her name. The 23-year-old knows that her relationship could end in nothing. She is a marketing analyst, he is a PhD student. She is Kashmiri, he is French. Her conservative parents might never agree… to what? She met him at a Metro station. He would eventually return to his country. Can a long-distance relationship survive?

One February evening, pointing to the little circle that indicates Rajiv Chowk on the Delhi Metro route map, Anayana says: “I first saw Laurent (name changed on request) here.” It was 11 am, nearing the end of rush hour, but still crowded enough at Delhi Metro’s biggest junction station, which is rarely anything but a blur of fast-moving bodies. “I was walking towards the exit near my office,” Anayana recalls. “Laurent was with a friend who was telling him that Delhi is designed at right angles. I don’t know what came over me… and I said, ‘No, Delhi is a circular city.’ He smiled at me; I smiled too. Stepping out of the L-block exit, I gave him my visiting card.”

The origins of this love story can be traced back to 1998, when the construction of the Delhi Metro began. In 2012, the subway system has 200 trains running on 190km of tracks daily from 6am-11pm, carrying around 1.8 million commuters every day.

The Metro has changed the way Delhiwallas tackle their city. The Capital has arrayed itself into a rainbow of lines – red, yellow, green, blue, violet and orange. The pillars under the elevated Metro tracks serve as landmarks and, on occasion, as a guiding system for lost sheep, e.g. “Haven’t reached yet? Just follow the Metro, and turn left at pillar No. 125. The wedding venue is right opposite.”

The Metro track also marks the boundary between stifling tradition and relative liberty. At least one Bollywood film has documented that the modestly dressed girls of Old Delhi fling off their veils as the train leaves the Chawri Bazar station.

That the Metro is convenient for more than just commuting became evident in 2011 when a management student launched MetroMates. The website helps travellers find love on the tracks. “The idea of MetroMates came when I noticed people staring at each other, wanting to strike up conversations but not knowing how to do it,” says Sameer Suri, 25, who started the dating service with his brother Harsh. It has more than 8,000 registered users.

In the old days of getting from A to B, Delhi’s Blueline buses were romantic only in films like Dil Se.. (1998) and Sarfarosh (1999). In real life, they were dreaded for rash driving, overcrowding, jostling and groping. Usually, if a girl locked eyes with a man on the bus, it meant she was glaring at him.

Anayana, who commuted in buses during her college years, says: “I looked ugly on buses, but look like a babe on the Metro. You also smell better. You reach on time and have fewer fights with your boyfriend.” Praising the anonymity of the Metro, she says, “If I’m spotted with a boy in an autorickshaw or on a bus, I might be in trouble. But if I’m seen talking to Laurent on the Metro, I can always say I met a friend on the train.”

In January 2012, Hindustan Times Group launched a product targeting Metro commuters like Anayana. A little smaller than an A4 size paper, HT Mini is for those who, according to Vasantha Angamuthu, HT special projects editor, don’t have the physical space to read a traditional broadsheet or a tabloid newspaper. Describing the paper as a conversational sparkler, Ms Angamuthu says, “If you are travelling on the Metro and you need a pick-up line, you can quickly glance at the Mini, scan all that has happened in the past 24 hours and approach the object of your affection, asking her or him, ‘Did you read the bit on Vidya Balan?’

The malls and multiplexes in the vicinity of Metro stations have become popular meeting points for people in love. Some action can also be spotted right inside the coaches. It is far from unusual to see youngsters holding hands, whispering into each other’s ears and sometimes even embracing. A TV ad for a toothpaste has a couple pretending to kiss in what looks like a Delhi Metro compartment. A discreetly shot YouTube clip that shows a pair kissing each other on the Metro has received more than 1,00,000 hits. Smooching is still an extremely rare sight on the trains but, as the Dil Se classified proves, relationships are budding in the general compartments.

“The daily proximity and exposure to each other helps build a relationship, which could bloom in an office café, a college canteen or on the Metro train that you catch daily at 10 am from Rohini,” says Samir Parikh, chief psychiatrist at Max Healthcare. “The Metro is air-conditioned, more comfortable, and has commuters from all walks of life, which makes it easier for you to find someone like you.”

Ex-radio jockey Rochie Rana, 31, made a friend in March 2011 when she took a train from Saket. “This American was sitting next to me. I was reading a Murakami, which gave me a good excuse to banter with him (‘Have you read Kafka on the Shore?’). Soon, we started traipsing the city together.” In this too the Metro helped them. “We regularly met at the Nehru Place station, where we would stand in front of the Metro route map. He would put his finger randomly on some spot and we explored it that day.”

IT professional Sumanta Roy, who blogs at OMGDelhi, likes people-watching on the violet line that connects Central Secretariat to Badarpur. “The most handsome commuters are from south Delhi, and many of them go to Khan Market in the violet,” he says. “Once a dashing-looking man, while parking his Mercedes at Moolchand Metro station, offered to treat me to a drink. I was flattered.”

However, it’s the blue line that has the most attractive passengers, according to an online Train of Love survey conducted by the MetroMates website in January 2012. In the survey – which included inputs from around 300 Metro commuters – 48% of the respondents voted for the “lookers” on the blue line, 39% disclosed they look for friendship on the trains and platforms, 22% look for dates, and 10% for love. Some 37% of them said they like staring at beautiful fellow travellers, 87% said they are attracted to other passengers, but only 7% could muster the courage to actually talk to someone they liked.

Anayana and her Frenchman would often go to a library in Civil Lines. Since Anayana lives in Noida, she takes the blue line, while Laurent, a resident of Greater Kailash-I, comes north on the yellow line. They avoid Kashmere Gate because Anayana’s ex, with whom she broke up last year, uses that junction to change his connection for Pitampura.

Priya Bhattacharji, a 24-year-old brand consultant working in Sainik Farms, is practised in what she calls “passive interaction with good-looking boys”. She says, “In the underground stretches, it’s dark outside the windows, so you stare at all the eye candy. They know I’m looking, but — and this is the best part — these boys don’t make me feel self-conscious.”

Surrounded by commuters, Laurent said the most unlikely things to Anayana. “Once he told me that he wants to run a brothel on socialist principles,” she says.

Every night, Anayana gets down at the Noida Sector 15 station. If she is late, she calls her father as the train reaches Yamuna Bank, four stops from home. “I don’t want to think of the day when I would have to tell mummy-papa about Laurent,” she says, waiting for the home-bound train at Rajiv Chowk. “But he is now in France and will come back late in the year. I don’t know whether what we have between us can last for long. But I’m happy.”

The train arrives. The recorded voice announces, “Please mind the gap.” The doors open. Anayana gets in. The train pulls out.

Flying kiss

Looking for me?

Where’s your lover?

Just friends

Metro Romeos

“I’m reaching”

Lonely hearts

Find a mate

Delhi’s grand Friday mosque.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

In the beginning, the things I was to love so passionately in Shahjahanabad did not immediately strike me: the hill-side alleys, the butcheries, the Sufi shrines, the domesticated goats, the old wooden doors, the carved balustrades, the unknown tombs, the trees flourishing in most unexpected places.

I imagined that my repeated excursions to the Mughal-era capital were due to the Jama Masjid mosque, the most imposing landmark of this 17th century city, established by the builder of Taj Mahal.

Each time as I approached the mosque from the narrow road of the Matia Mahal bazaar, I would be overwhelmed by the dark red tone of its stones.

Over the years as I began to experience the deeper, vaster multi-layered world of the Walled City, I detached myself from Jama Masjid. It was a place where tourists go to sightsee.

One morning while walking in Shahjahanabad, I sat down on the stairs of the mosque. Hemmed in by meat shops and guest houses, the edifice, its stones looking softened under the winter sun, seemed to soar high up in the air. The traffic noise appeared to originate from a distant land. Jama Masjid felt remote, which was strange because it is the area’s most intrusive landmark. Its dome crowns every view in the town. I know many windows in Matia Mahal, Chawri Bazaar, Lal Kuan, Farash Khana and Chitli Qabar from which one can see, across layers of jumbled roofs, streets beyond streets, the off-white dome of the mosque. It could also be distinguished from the K-Block of the colonial-era Connaught Place.

To refine our impressions of Shahjahanbad, it is necessary to minutely examine the mosque, down to its every minor detail. Through words and images, the series Stones of Jama Masjid will invocate the essence of Delhi by concentrating on the physical aspects of its great monument. The tourist destination must be restored to its local sensibilities.

Where Shahjahanabad Nearby Metro Stations Chawri Bazaar, Chandni Chowk Time Sunrise to sunset

Stones of Jama Masjid

The philosophy of nonsense.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Three heart-shaped outlines.

The Delhi Walla saw these drawings in the Oberoi Hotel flyover. They are depicted on the pillars adjacent to Lodhi Road, which runs through the underside of the flyover.

This is the third instance that I have come face-to-face with De Bhasar movement in Delhi. (Click here to view the first exhibit.)

According to Wikipedia, De Bhasar or Bhasarism is a cultural movement that began in Nantes, France, during the post 9/11 Gulf War, reaching a tipping point between 2007 to 2009. The movement involves graphic designs and literature, which concentrates its anti-sentimental politics by rejecting aesthetic birth-control measures through anti-catholic works. De Bhasar might be regarded as pro-Berlusconi in nature.

“Heart, a vital organ of human anatomy, has been reduced to being a prop for the business prospects of Hollywood,” says Guy Shanaynay Baraka, the American author of over 50 books of essays, poems, and drama. A Trotskyist poet icon, Mr Baraka has lectured on Bhasarism extensively in the Caribbean and Africa. Talking to me on phone from Addis Ababa where he was attending the launch of his new collection of essays, Somebody Please Blow Up the First World, he says, “Art is bullshit unless there are teeth or trees or lemons piled on a step. But that is not even the point. The real question is the dehumanization of people who live under the flyovers of our Third World megacities.”

The flyover, next to two luxury hotels – The Oberoi and Aman – is home to a dozen homeless people.

Mr Baraka is a frequent traveler to the capital. He likes to walk in the boulevards of central Delhi, and search for road-side graffiti inspired from De Bhasar.

“Look at the assertive brush strokes by this anonymous Bhasarian,” says Mr Baraka, referring to sketches on the Oberoi hotel flyover. “In these ‘hearts’ you feel a sense of the bizarre, a sense of the melancholy, a sense of the comic, a sense of the hopelessness of urban poverty. You also see a smile at the bottom of this gloomy world. You know the masks of drama, the actor smiles and the actor frowns? That geography, that aesthetics… that sense of the wonderful, I have always been intrigued by this Bhasarian strain.”

The night is cold. Two men are sitting beside the most prominent De Bhasar illustration in the Oberoi hotel flyover – the one with the cupid’s arrow. Do they know they are in such close proximity to a great art movement of our times?

Despite a creation of the decadent Europe, Bhasarism is showing anti-Brussels sentiments, and the politics of its leading theoreticians is heading for a shift. It is beginning to express sympathy for the proletarian underclass of the global economic slowdown.

“De Bhasar might have originated from the antics of capitalist clowns like Silvio Berlusconi, but it has mutated into a radically different ideology that attacks oppression, exploitation and mediocrity indirectly or directly,” says Mr Baraka. “The Wall Street bankers have destroyed our faith in capitalism. Bhasarism is becoming a natural ally of the present-day Greeks and the homeless.”

Sense of the Oberoi hotel flyover

De Bhasar in Delhi

A la recherche du temps perdu.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Today is the seventh meeting of The Delhi Proustians, a club for Delhiwallas that discusses French novelist Marcel Proust. Every Monday evening for an hour we read his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time.

It is 7.02 pm and The Delhi Walla is with a young woman. This evening we don’t plan to read, but eat Proust. A reader from France has parcelled me madeleines from Paris. In Swann’s Way, Marcel’s narrator suddenly remembers his childhood after eating a madeleine soaked in tea; this is the point when the novel meets its theme.

Therefore, a basic knowledge of madeleine is essential to understand Proust.

According to Larousse Gastronomique, the bible of French food, madeleine is a small cake whose ingredients are flour, butter, eggs and sugar. Lacam, a chronicler of the history of pastry-making, says that the great pastry-cook, Avice, when he was working for Prince Talleyrand, invented the madeleine. “He had the idea of using quatre-quarts mixture for little cakes baked in an aspic mould. M. Boucher and Careme approved the idea. He gave the name of madeleines to these cakes.” (Memorial de la patisserie.)

Other authorities, however, hold that far from having been invented by Avice, these little cakes were known in France long before his time. They believe that were first made at Commercy, and were brought into fashion about 1730, first at Versailles and then in Paris, by Stanislas Leczinski, father-in-law of Louis XV, who was very partial to them.

The recipe for madeleines remained a secret for a very long time. It is said that it was sold for a very large sum to the pastry-makers of Commercy who made of this great delicacy one of the finest gastronomic specialties of their town.

Recipe for Commercy madeleine: Work together in a bowl 2.5 cups (625 grams) of fine sugar; 5 cups (625 grams) of sieved cake flour; 12 eggs; 1.5 teaspoons (5 grams) of bicarbonate of soda; the grated rind of lemon; a pinch of salt.

Method: When this mixture is very smooth, add to it 1.25 cups (300 grams) of melted butter. Mix well.

Put this mixture in special buttered madeleine moulds. Bake in a very slow oven.

Recipe for plain madeleine: 1 cup (250 grams) fine sugar; 2 cups (250 grams) sieved cake flour; 1 cup (250 grams) melted butter; 4 eggs; a pinch of salt; vanilla or other flavouring.

Method: Put the sugar, flour, eggs, salt and flavouring into a bowl. Work with a spatula until the mixture is smooth. Add the melted butter.

Butter and flour the required number of madeleine moulds. Put in the mixture. The moulds should be two-thirds full. Bake in a 375 degree F. oven for 15 to 20 minutes.

In Delhi, madeleines are available at L’Opera bakery in Khan Market.

The eighth meeting of The Delhi Proustians takes place on 6 February, 2012.

Where Indian Coffee House (it has three seating spaces; enter the enclosed area that looks to Baba Khadak Singh Marg), Mohan Singh Place, near Hanuman Mandir, Baba Kharak Singh Marg, Connaught Place Time 7 pm Nearest Metro Station Rajiv Chowk

Proust is served

Remember the past?

Soak in tea

Crumbs for you

Proust’s bite