Makhan Malai, Nimish And Lucknow
During one of Lucknow’s winter mornings, to be precise, not of Lucknow but kilometres away in a village on the outskirts of Lucknow, we were looking for badminton rackets.
Winter mornings are slow. Nobody knows or cares when the sun comes up, for people take their own sweet time to wake up. And anyway, who would dare to push one’s limb out of one’s blanket and be a victim of unforgiving cold? And what is there outside to attend to anyhow? There’s hardly any activity in the day happening, and so hardly any hunger. However, it is another matter that when you are at the dinner table and food is spread before you, the warmth of the food as it enters your mouth and the feeling of it travelling through your digestive tract is ethereal; you end up eating more than you should. It is precisely because of this that the four of us city-folks who were in the village over a function had decided to give our bodies some exercise and an excuse for us to take our bodies for strolls in the sun. However, Lucknow and its surroundings are renowned for their cuisine, including hot, brewed cups of tea and paan. Where will we find the rackets in the city? All around us were food stalls serving all kinds of food items. But we were adamant, and so we kept roaming on bikes from one end of the market to another, which in Lucknow is like playing hide-and-seek, for each road of shops has cross-roads in between which themselves have their share of crossroads, and so if you are not careful, you can keep on walking or driving endlessly. The chaat-walas know this, and you will find them with their travelling baskets full of food items appearing just when you feel hungry for a bite. Everything in Lucknow is decided upon for your convenience. By magic, whenever you need a cup of chai, you will see a shop selling chai, or a biryani will become available just when you feel like having biryani. Anyhow, we were not that kind of hungry. Or any kind of hungry, for that matter. Varieties of food at home were already overwhelming us, and so the idea of eating outside was out of the question. What was not at home were badminton rackets. And we roamed and roamed the streets while stopping in between to ask passersby where we might find one. While some gave us vague directions, many simply gave us stares. At last, someone told us about a sports shop. Whatever that was, it became our last hope. By now, we were getting resigned to the fact of any activity for our bodies and even our bodies at this point were craving for rest, a meaningful, time-tested Lucknow break.
We reached the place after a hiatus. The shop was crammed with all kinds of things, which stretched from floor to roof. There was just a narrow passage for customers to stand and interact with the shopkeeper, who was on the other side of a table that extended from the start of the shop to the end of it. We shared our mutual namastes and mentioned what we were looking for. Luckily for us, he had them. And he had multiple kinds, cheap, less cheap, costlier, and so on. We were looking for something for only a week or less, and so decided on a cheaper kind. As we were bargaining the price, an old chap entered with a basket and a container that contained one of the most appetising, mouthwatering, delicate-looking dishes. Hue of yellow, frothy to the sight, and full of mellow lingering fragrance. My companions were aware of what it was. I was seeing it for the first time. Up till then, I was not even aware of its existence or even imagined such a thing to exist, and even if I had imagined, I would think five-star hotels to churn this delicate-delicasy for a bomb of a price. The shopkeeper asked the old man to serve us each a cup of this. Yep, just like that. I had forgotten, this was Lucknow. Everybody here is interested in feeding you, especially when you are an outsider. They are utterly, unbashedly, and why should they not, proud of their place, culture and food above all. And they believe that everyone should have a taste of it. We did some yes-no-yes-no but eventually took it and oh-my-senses the taste and feel of this dish when you drop it on your tongue. Absolutely light like a feather; there’s not much for your mouth to chew or even lick. But it somehow fills your mouth on its own, effortlessly and by some witchcraft, occupies the whole of your bodily senses. I later learnt upon reaching home that it was called Makhan Malai or Nimish.
I just remembered that day and my discovery today while reading Nandita Haksar’s “The Flavours of Nationalism”, where she describes how ‘the frothy Nimish epitomises the famed culture of Lucknow. This frothy, light sweet has both nazaakat and nafaasat (delicacy/elegance and refinement/exquisiteness). This is what I learnt about it from the internet:’
Makhan Malai and Nimish have become synonymous but few know that there is a minor difference between the two. While the former originated in India using cow’s milk, the latter is an Afghani dessert in which horse’s milk was used. But the method is almost the same as in both Makhan Malai and Nimish, the mixture of milk, cream and sugar is hung in a clay pot all night under the winter sky. The peculiar freshness and lightness comes from a dollop of dew, the secret ingredient added to it by Mother Nature. Early every morning, the clay pot is taken off the peg and the mixture is blended using a mathaani (manual wooden blender), to make it frothy.