Old Delhi’s Badshah Halwai, aka Shamman Sweets, sits on Ballimaran’s main market road, the counter crowded with food photos. Fittingly, directly across the road, the arched gateway of Punjabi Phatak opens into what feels like Ballimaran’s food pantry. For that alley is lined with scores and scores of eateries.
Yazdaan Roti Wale turns out rotis. At Shakeel Parathe Wale, parathas sizzle on the tawa beside crates of eggs. Flyers at Abid Breakfast announce khasta kachori and dal wali kachori. Zaiqa Hotel offers bade ka qorma and bade ka keema. Angeethi promises chicken lollipop. One of these eateries has been in Punjabi Phatak long enough to connect the street to its past. Ghanta Ghar Wala stands close to the street’s entrance. Traditionally a winter sweet, the black halwa is made by boiling milk for hours with desi ghee, maida, sprouted wheat, sugar, kewra, saffron and crushed nuts. This shop’s backstory is worth telling, for it helps explain the street’s name. Haneef started as a young kitchen apprentice in the house of a wealthy family. The family belonged to a Punjabi Muslim community that had migrated to Delhi from Multan in the 18th century. All the families of the community had settled in this part of Ballimaran. The aforementioned family later helped Haneef set up a paan stall just inside the street’s gateway. Subsequently, the young man learned to make black halwa from a halwai near Chandni Chowk’s Ghanta Ghar, converting his paan stall into a dairy and black halwa shop. His descendants continue with the business of halwa, the shop remaining part of Punjabi Phalak’s daily street life. Passers-by slip effortlessly into a kind of yard chat about nothing in particular. Amid all the eateries, what stands out is not an eatery but the signboard of Welcome Guest House. It bears the oddly out-of-place figure of a woman traveller in a broad-brimmed hat and knee-length skirt. She looks more like Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple setting out to solve a village murder in England than any woman walking in an Old Delhi lane.
A taped notice inside settles a sensitive matter: extra gravy costs 20 rupees. Founded in 1948 by Mohammed Haneef, it is famous for its sticky black halwa. Haneef died 34 years ago.
Because of this Punjabi settlement that the lane came to be known as Punjabi Phatak, the gateway of the Punjabis, it was.
Overheard this rainy Friday afternoon: “Pet mein gas bani hui hain,” and “Abke thand jaldi ayegi. Nearby, citizen Ishtiaq, passing time at Wali Meat Shop (see his photo in green kurta), observes that “by now all the Punjabis have left Punjabi Phatak, only the Phatak is left.” As things stand today, Chandni Chowk’s Ghanta Ghar has long vanished, but it survives in this shop’s name and in an illustration on its mithai boxes. This is Haneef’s lasting tribute to the place where he learned to make what is today considered Delhi’s best black halwa.
