Remembered Delight At 6500 Feet Closer To Heaven….Half A Century Ago

Author: Yesuthasen P

Coonoor of the fifties was so very different from what it is now; green hillsides with hardly an ugly flat roofed building in sight, no crowds, no traffic jams, no noise, no pollution, no pot holes on the roads. The British influence had not completely disappeared and nowhere was this more evident than in the bakeries, the best of which was, without doubt, the appropriately named Eat and Enjoy.

As you climbed up the dozen or so steps that led up from Mount Road to the bakery, the smell of fresh baked bread and the fragrance of almond icing, gently intruded into and eventually overcame the “sweet half English Nilgiri air”. Once you entered the bakery and stood in front of the big glass case, your decision making skills were severely tested and it was a struggle to decide what to buy. You spent quite a while letting your eyes wander over the goodies on offer and made the final choice almost always with a tinge of regret that you had to leave so much else behind.

My favorite was the delectable chocolate éclairs, yummy chocolate covered pastry with delicious chocolate cream filling inside. I am pretty certain that these eclairs led to the invention of the term “melt in the mouth", as that is exactly what they did while transporting you to a state of bliss. The “coconut rolls”, cylindrical cakes covered in roasted coconut flakes and sealed off at the two ends with icing, “Queen” cakes, “Japanese” cakes, green “butter beans” and cream cones were some of the unforgettable pastries that led short lived lives in the bakery’s glass shelves as well as the big green box that a couple of employees would bring to our doorstep once a week. The icing on the cakes at so many other bakeries and restaurants all over the country and, for that matter, in Coonoor itself in later years, never quite matched up to Eat and Enjoy’s delightful standards.

The flaky mutton puffs and a variety of biscuits (the word “cookie” had not yet entered our vocabulary) were really good but they have been equalled, in recent times, in cities like Bangalore, Dehra Dun and Poona.

Coonoorians of yester year did not have to put up with factory made bread. Besides the fresh stuff that we got at the town’s bakeries, the man from the Staff College bakery would bring us loaves in a spherical basket slung over his shoulder. There is nothing like the smell, and taste, of freshly baked bread, that was often warm when it reached us.

Imperial Stores at Bedford Circle sold some awesome marzipans and jujubes and nearby Foucars had, besides pastries, bottles of hard sweets, the best of which was the white and black striped, peppermint flavored “bulls eye”. It felt good to let it float around in your mouth for a long time as it dissolved at its own pace. Years later Alankar Bakery, which occupied the same premises as Foucars, would give you a nice “coconut ball” and a range of pastries, which, while being very good, never quite measured up to Eat and Enjoy’s standards. In this century V.R Bakers, who are a few meters downhill from Jograj, had some super lemon tarts. Unfortunately, a couple of years ago the man who used to make them decided he was too old for this kind of thing and retired. Thus yet another delicacy is gone for ever.

Sadly, as subsequent generations lost interest in the business, these establishments disappeared and their delectable offerings became a distant and cherished memory. The only survivor of that age is Crown Bakery, near the market in lower Coonoor, which is still run by the descendants of the founder. Their specialty was, and probably still is, the crunchy, flaky “varkey”. For a long time, you could get varkey only in the Nilgiris. However, over the years, pale imitations, inelegantly called “porai”, appeared in Chennai and other towns. However, connoisseurs still swear by “Ooty Varkey”.

My school did not have a cafeteria but we had a “tuck shop”, which consisted of steel trunk managed by a middle aged couple. Their star offering was a sweet called “joba”, a sticky,sweet, light brown cylinder, the likes of which I have not seen anywhere in the world. The joba, too, is now part of a forgotten history.

Halva, on its way to Asia from Turkey, had, with some structural changes, become “Alva” by the time it reached Calicut. The Alva Man, who hailed from that town of Alva excellence, could be found in the school during breaks, sitting near an aluminium box which had glass windows through which we could see the two varieties of Alva – reddish brown and black. His reported habit of cutting his toenails with the same knife with which he sliced the alva, earned his products the sobriquet “Toe Jam Alva”. Strangely, this unhygienic habit did not affect the demand for his products!

Well over half a century has gone by, but these memories of Coonoor abide. And, sometimes, I can close my eyes and almost taste that chocolate éclair and smell the almond icing. Some things are beyond time and space. I can not help thinking that when my time comes and I finally go to that home beyond the sky, I know I will see that green steel trunk…