I was perplexed when we encountered multiple situations where our search for a house bumped against the ‘vegetarians only’ requirement. Till then I thought of Delhiites as a staunchly meat eating people. When I thought of Delhi I always thought of it as a Muslim and Punjabi city with Mughlai and Punjabi food influence, in my mind heavily dependent on meat.
When house hunting, contrary to this belief, we found many more eateries serving purely vegetarian food, many times vegetarian versions of what I thought was predominantly meat dishes like chaap. Chaap as far as I understand is minced or cubed things cooked on skewers. The area we live in is full of chapp places selling paneer, soya, green jackfruit, and so on. I assumed it was a very specific thing about our neighbourhood.
Today the INTACH heritage walk however completely changed my understanding of delhi residents. We were supposed to meet near the Jain Temple in front of the Red fort. I was curious how a Jain temple ended up just outside the Red fort gate. It was astonishing to learn about the importance of Jain treasurers in the Mughal courts. The history books told us about the Rajput and maratha warriors in the court but I never heard the stories of other communities. Our walk through Chandani chawk and surroundings with multiple Jain temples, and havelis of Jain merchants further wiped out my mental map of delhi as a culturally/historically Muslim and Punjabi city.
devayani tirthali 