I know you love to hate it and hate to love it. But let's talk about hot, spicy food

The missing chilli and other ghost stories

I had a couple of rare samplings in Bengaluru last week. First, when I ordered Andhra-style mutton fry from Nandhini and wept in strange gratification for the next hour or so. Their pepper mutton is a shade more powerful. Chilli usually stops at the mouth, throat, ear, or nostrils. The hotness of pepper travels further, breathing like a large, poisonous jellyfish inside you.

The second tryst was at an unusual place. Naga Kitchen in Bengalure's Kamanahalli is one of the very few Northeast joints outside the Northeast, and the smoked pork with dry bamboo shoot is earthy, simple, elegant and infused with flavours we boring tandoori Indians are unaccustomed and unexposed to.

But the real hotness of Northeast India's famous chillies rises from this rooftop eatery's Naga curry. It's an innocuous mishmash of potato in a gravy, but minutes after you've eaten it, you realise something is wrapping around you silently like a boa. You are sweating.

The Raja Mirchi chutney that follows is an open attack. It has the full-bodied bhoot jolokia, so venture with utmost caution.

Bhoot jolokia, or 'ghost chilli', is recognised by Guinness World Records as the world's hottest. To put things in perspective, it is 401.5 times hotter than Tabasco sauce.

The only remotely comparable thing I've sunk my teeth into is Bengal's dhani lanka. Both chillies have a hammer-like quality. They are so strong, they strike you in an instant, throwing you back.

Really hot Indian food is becoming rare in our cities. I recently had mutton curry at Shauji Jagdish eatery in Nagpur. In spite of repeated requests from the owner to order 'medium', I went for 'tikkhat'. It was quite the same experience at Sahiba in Nashik with gaonthi kombdi (country chicken curry). The gravy is black, and red at the edges; a bit like embers.

In Delhi, the sauces that some of the roadside momo guys make, can kill. They make you want to desperately douse your tongue in something soothing; the way a dog feels when its tail is on fire.

Phuchkawalas of Kolkata can keep adding chilli paste till you burn. There are stories of cooks in north Bengal and Orissa's forest bungalows who made delectable but often heart-stoppingly hot fowl curry for visiting government officers.

In Mumbai, the Andhra fish curry at Mahesh Lunch Home is decently hot. Some say, food at Purepur Kolhapur in Vile Parle (East) makes the cut, chilli-wise. There is a dhaba-type joint in Chembur that serves an intimidating misal pav. And yes, Mamledar-chi misal in Thane is supposed to be maddening.

But the spread of rounded, sweet-slanted Gujarati and Shetty cuisine, coupled with the shrinking of mill land and the closure of traditional Maharashtrian joints, has taken the sting out of much of Mumbai's food. Also, the new-age, lean-and-green health ethos has made our cities lose out on robust, spicy eating.

A plate of really hot, spicy food is cathartic. It challenges you, cleanses you of all other thoughts and emotions except the one numbing sensation, and eventually calms you. It alters reality by obscuring all other pleasure, pain or worry. Having devastatingly spicy food is one of the last surviving activities that help build character and are fun.

India still serves really hot food, but in smaller cities, towns and villages. In the privacy of homes. Our cities have cultivated the guilt about a hot, spicy meal from the West. Ironically, the West now entertains itself with spicy Indian food on Saturday evenings, weeps in pleasure in the many 'balti' or 'hot curry' joints in suburban London, Sydney or New York.

Yes, it is true that you end up spending a lot of time in the toilet the next morning. Use that time to come up with ideas.

Abhijit Majumder is Executive Editor, Mid Day.
Reach him at abhijit.majumder@mid-day.com
On Twitter: https://twitter.com/abhijitmajumder

"Exciting news! Mid-day is now on WhatsApp Channels