Why Bengal's iconic jhalmuri and telebhaja may be seeing a change in fortunes in Kolkata

Looking back at the intense poll campaigning of the preceding weeks, the one predominant image that comes to mind, especially if one thinks of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is of food. If it wasn’t photos of local BJP leaders dressed up in traditional Bengali attire holding fish in their hands, it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi enjoying a quick snack on jhalmuri (a puffed rice delicacy) while on the campaign trail earlier this month.

It’s as if after losing out to the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the state in the previous election of 2021 — despite its confident posturing even back then — the BJP has decided to abide by the old adage “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”. Only in this case, replacing man with Bengali.

Indeed, the PM couldn’t have made his choice more wisely. If a snack was enough to help Modi lose the ‘outsider’ tag that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee keeps labelling him with, it would be the jhalmuri — puffed rice spiced up with a dash of mustard oil, salt, green chilli, groundnuts and chanachur (something on the lines of UP favourite Dalmoth). Without the sweet and sour chutneys that give bhelpuri its character, the jhalmuri is drier, crisper, sharper in its flavour, with a tinge of pungency from the mustard oil.

To have it once is to crave it again.

“I had jhalmuri as recently as yesterday,” says Kanishka Chakraborty, a 60-year-old communication professional and food blogger based in Kolkata. “For me, it is the perfect evening snack. Because it’s muri, I feel it’s healthier. And it is not so heavy that it will make me skip dinner. I have jhalmuri at least once a week.”

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For generations of Bengalis, evenings have meant a snack of jhalmuri, or plain muri with telebhaja — fritters.

You would find it in the hands of officegoers calling it a day, kids heading home from the playground or extra classes, the elderly engaging in adda at the para (neighbourhood) tea shop. The monsoons, especially, go hand-in-hand with muri-telebhaja.

But with evolving tastes and lifestyle changes (many preferring to opt for non-greasy, healthier food), are the demands for traditional snacks still as high?

“Over the past two decades, especially in Kolkata, street food has undergone a major evolution,” agrees Anindya Sundar Basu, a food writer and photographer. Basu, and his wife, Madhushree Basu Roy, have recently edited the book Kolkata By Heirloom Cities, the street food section of which, he says, was done by him. “Growing up, every school would have at least one jhalmuri wala outside the gate. He would customise the muri as per the age of the client; less spice and chili for a younger child. As we grew up, we would start demanding more spice,” he recalls. “Now I see fewer jhalmuri walas across the city; you will find them more in the suburbs,” he adds.

Chakraborty has the same thing to say about telebhaja stalls. “In the business district, I find fewer telebhaja shops these days; they are more of a residential area thing now.” He himself indulges in it not oftener than once a month. “And then I would relish a single beguni [a slice of brinjal, dipped in batter and deep fried].” The reason, he informs, is health-related.

For decades, West Bengal capital Kolkata has been famous for its range of affordable street food options. In addition to the already mentioned jhalmuri and telebhaja, there’s shingara (the Bengali samosa, where the filling is not made of mashed, but diced potato), phuchka (Bengali purists would scoff at equating it with gol gappa), chaat, ghugni (a cooked chana preparation on the lines of chole), crisp egg or chicken rolls... the list goes on.

“One can’t forget the chop-cutlets [fish, vegetable, chicken, mutton]. And omelettes [often pronounced mamlette by the lesser-educated Bengalis],” reminds 52-year-old Somini Sen Dua.

A recent health scare has kept her off fried food for about a year now. “But jhalmuri is something I have every other day, with tea, in the evenings. I make it at home,” she says.

Perhaps that is the thing about jhalmuri; it might be making a slow return to its origin inside home kitchens. “Jhalmuri didn’t start as a street food. It was during the Second World War when a crowd of soldiers came to Kolkata that migrant workers in the city started selling them jhalmuri on the streets,” says Basu.

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Meanwhile, in recent decades, other non-traditional options have made it to the list. Indian-style Chinese being rustled up at street corners, biryani being sold from matkas on the pavement, steamers of momos stacked up on a cart…

“We also have sandwiches and falafel being sold on the street now,” says Chakraborty.

Street vendors admit to the loss in business.

Phuchka has survived the onslaught, but some of the other traditional fare, feels Basu, are losing out.

Madhav Sarkar, a chaat seller, sounds almost philosophical as he talks of the less-than-steady clientele. “Some come, some go; some new people come, and then they leave,” he says.

Part of the shift is generational.

Ayana Bhattacharya, 17, likes streetfood, but admits that she doesn't indulge in it more than one or twice in two months, and that too is mostly restricted to phuchka. "Especially if I am eating with my friends. When I am out with my mother, we have jhalmuri sometimes. Telebhaja is not something I like," she says.

Her statement matches the observations of Shaktiman Ghosh, general secretary of the National Hawkers Federation.

“Among the new generation, the love for chop, telebhaja and jhalmuri is on the decline. They are more attracted to pizza, burgers, and chowmein,” he says. Competition from organised players, food delivery apps and packaged foods has added to the pressure.

“Even jhalmuri is now being sold in packets by big companies. Many prefer to have food home delivered through delivery apps like Swiggy and Zomato, rather than going out. But few street food vendors are registered on those,” adds Gosh. The resultant drop in business in recent years has been as much as 40 per cent, he claims.

There are also socio-cultural narratives running parallel to the food tale.

A resident of an upscale South Kolkata neighbourhood, Dua contends that there are two muri-telebhaja shops outside her apartment. But after a moment’s thought, admits that the customer base is mostly made up of the staff working in the building — drivers, security people… And when she wanted to treat the support staff of the apartment recently, she chose to buy them Chinese. "It's more filling, and a novelty for them," she explains.

Chakraborty, however, feels the divide is more cultural than economic. “The vernacular population, those extremely Bengali, are more loyal to the muri-telebhaja snack,” he says.

And then there is nostalgia, irrespective of age or social position.

Ayandrali Dutta, a food writer, culinary commentator, and content strategist based in New Delhi, may often make jhalmuri and even telebhaja at home, but when she is in Kolkata, she just has to pick up the chop and shingara from her favourite outlets. “One of my fondest memories of travelling from Rourkela, where I grew up, to Kolkata as a child is of the vendors selling chops and shingara at stations,” she says.

For Basu that memory is of the jhalmuri walas on the trains. “It was my first exposure to food theatre,” he says. “The flourish with which they would add the oil, the sound they would make with the ladle as they mixed the ingredients, and then the precise way they would take out the little paper packets, pour the mix in it and serve with a bit of coconut stuck at the top,” he says, thinking back.

And because nostalgia has no age, even Dua’s college-going daughter, Saira, has a favourite street food flavour that she must revisit every time she is home from Paris. “She has to have the jhalmuri and chat outside Vardaan Market [on Camac Street],” says her mother.

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Perhaps it is this urge to revisit a familiar flavour that he gives Ghosh the confidence to say that Kolkata’s street food “is a city tradition and it will remain”.

Incidentally, over the years, an inside joke among Bengalis has been that after decades of industrial stagnation under the Left Front and uneven growth under the TMC, the only businesses that continue to thrive in Bengal are muri-telebhaja shops.

When he posed with his packet of jhalmuri, did the PM unwittingly become a part of this joke? Or was it a promise of uplifting the lives of even the likes of the modest muri shop owner if the BJP comes to power in the state?

What can be said with absolute certainty, though, is that the PM was in good company when he chose to be a patron of Bengal’s iconic street food; Lakshmi Narayan Shaw & Sons, a telebhaja shop in North Kolkata’s Hatibagan dating back to 1918, reportedly once counted among its regulars no other than Subhash Chandra Bose.