The sweet potato civilisation

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

His face is exuding as much affectionate calmness as the great tree of this three-way tiraha. Both are area’s landmarks. The tree, it seems, has been here at Old Delhi’s Tiraha Behram Khan since the beginning of time. The middle-aged Raju too has become an element of the locality’s lived memory. He has been manning a corner of the tiraha for three decades, his modest cart bearing the season’s changing fruits all through the year.

And with the arrival of the cold season, Raju has switched to shakarkandi. The fruit is a part of Delhi’s distinctive wintertime ambiance. Indeed, scores of street vendors across the city shift their loyalty to shakarkandi around this time—Pappu sits outside Khan Market, Anandi Lal Nishad in Gole Market, Ram Naresh on Lodhi Road, Somveer in Lodhi Garden, Ram on Barakhamba Road, Radhe Shyam on Mathura Road, and Pushpendra Singh in Green Park Market.

In chilly evenings, long after the sun has gone from Hazar Nizamuddin East, and the colony dwellers are ensconced within their houses, shakarkandi vendor Subhash walks through the deserted lanes, carrying the fruit basket on his head, and the tirona stand under his arm. “Shakarkandi le lo, shakarkandi le lo…”—his cry wafts along the air, reaching distant lanes. Suddenly a window might flap open, a friendly voice crying out— “Arre o shakarkandi wale bhayya.” One evening, following such a summon, he installed his tirona stand outside a house door, and roasted a bunch of shakarkandis on a bed of smouldering coals.

Lately, shakarkandi has anglicised into sweet potato. Connaught Place has scores of shakarkandi sellers, but the banners of their attractive street booths prefer to display “sweet potato” rather than the poetic-sounding shakarkandi.

Meanwhile, in Old Delhi’s Tiraha Behram Khan, Raju, the aforementioned shakarkandi vendor, doesn’t only serve the salted variety, but also the sweetened version, in which the mildly charred shakarkandi is sprinkled over with bhoora, the powdered sugar. This evening, he has stacked dozens of shakarkandis into a delicately balanced pyramid, studded with lemons on sticks. A customer comes, takes out a shakarkandi and topples the arrangement. “I have been seeing Raju since he were a launda (boy),” she says.

Shakarkandi’s “peak season” will go away by February, Raju says. But the long-lasting man of the tiraha will hopefully still be here, with his fruits of the season, as should be the tiraha’s long-standing tree.

This season of sweetness

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