An En-'thaal'ing Experience

First things first ... Happy New Year !

A couple of days back, I was invited to a Bori wedding along with a few friends. Never been to one before, so well.. here I am publishing this post.

All Bohra's have their meals in a 'thaal', which is a large steel plate, three feet (!) in diameter. Usually, eight to nine people sit around the thaal and eat from it. Food items are brought in at regular intervals and everyone shares the dishes. The first thing to arrive is a small katori of salt. Everyone consumes a pinch of it which enhances the digestion process. After that, a sweet comes followed by a snack, then again a sweet and so on.
Happy occassions are initiated with a sweet called "sakhrana"- a small mango coloured mawa form of rice and sugar. Anyone had the Bengali chumchum sweet? It's a little bit like that.

In the next forty minutes we experienced a succession of superb dishes.

A round of salad items in the form of dry bhel and dahi idli came first. Then came the item one otherwise would have had last. Ice-cream. And a big bowl of it too. There was a block of Orange flavour as well as Tender Coconut. Each one of us was given a spoon and we dove into the bowl centrally placed on the thaal. Good things never last do they ? But a dazzling replacement of chicken in red sauce was brought in immediately. Absolutely tender to the bone. And finger licking good. If that wasn't enough, a round of souffle made its way to the thaal. Aesthetically pleasing and in terms of taste simply overwhelming. Small green pieces of "khas" rasgulla were embedded in it which when bit into, released that minty gush of liquid, empowering the taste buds with a captivating new flavour. Pity it got over in a flash. Evergreen kababs made their entry thereafter, bringing smiles all over. All this while the dahi idli and the dry bhel was replenished as soon as its depletion was evident. Sprite was constantly passed around. Soup was next, made from milk and corn. Nice and hot. Yes, the biryani made its mark and we were busy having that for what seemed like a good fifteen minutes. Marvellous. To finish off, all of us had a paan each.

Bloated with such well prepared delicacies, I returned home wondering when the next thaal opportunity would come my way.