Homeward bound

A Gujarati returns to Ahmedabad and finds a city transformed by prosperity, pride and yes, Amul cheese

For most non-Gujaratis, all Gujarati food is the same. For Gujaratis, however, there are many variations. I am a Mumbai Gujarati, a distinction that may not make sense to those who don't know that till 1960, the state of Gujarat did not exist. Much of what we now call Gujarat and Maharashtra were part of a state called Bombay.

My father was from Rajkot, which is now a part of Gujarat, but which was, when I was born, part of Saurashtra, a state on its own. My mother was from Ahmedabad, which is now the capital of Gujarat.

Gujaratis from all of these cities had different food traditions. Mumbai Gujaratis invented bhelpuri and Pav Bhaji, two dishes that are popular all over India. The food of Saurashtra was (and is) intense and flavourful, with grains such as bajra featuring.

Even in today's Gujarat, cities like Surat have their own cuisine: Surti street food is second only to Mumbai in terms of variety and innovation.

Till recently, Gujaratis treated Ahmedabad rather as Punjabis treat Chandigarh: as a city where the food is bland and uninteresting. Just as Punjabis look to Amritsar, Ludhiana and other cities for culinary excellence, Gujaratis regarded the food of Ahmedabad as being inferior to the food of say, Surat or even Mumbai.

I spent a lot of time in Ahmedabad when I was young because my grandparents lived in a grand house in Shahibag, with maharajs and servants. And though it was all very lavish (they were rich), I found the food unexciting. This was as true of the food in the rest of the city. To eat well in Ahmedabad, you had to eat ice cream (which was always very good) three times a day. And it was largely a vegetarian city: it was hard to get any meat outside of the Muslim localities.