The specialties are is set for the eaters: Chiura (beaten rice), potato curry, chhoela (marinated buff meat), kachila (raw meat), thalthale, brains, phokso (lungs stuffed with minced meat), rakti (stagnated blood), fried fish, fried tongue, mushrooms, chicken, or mutton curry.
“How can you ask me how much a meal costs?” quips teenager Shyam Tamang as if it is the most stupid question he has heard in his life. “If you eat more, you pay more; if you eat less, you pay less,” he adds rather smartly. Shyam works for one of the modest eateries at Gwasma Galli. This lane houses nine other eateries set adjacent to each other. Popular among businessmen, schoolchildren and other locals alike, some of these nameless eateries have been around for almost twenty years now.
The latest dohori (Nepali folk) songs drift along the alley. As the wind gushes in and out of the signature Chinese curtains, a stray dog with an eyeful of cataract digs into a handful of meat and beaten rice shoved at him. When asked if he has played these songs on the stereo, Shyam quips yet again, “I didn’t play this, the radio did,” and gets back to washing the dishes.
“Five bags for five Rupees each,” a little schoolgirl standing on the tip of her toe says, looking at other seller next door. A serious looking Mandirman Maharjan promptly starts thrusting a ladleful of potato curry into a plastic bag – an art he seems to have perfected over the 10 years that he has owned the shop.
But he, too, has his woes.
“Business isn’t as good as it used to be,” Mandirman frowns. “We’re off for many business days because the workers aren’t permanent,” he nods. Mandirman claims that despite giving the workers a place to stay and food besides a salary of Rs. 2,000 per month, they don’t stick around for long. Similar whining echoes throughout the lane. They serve 50-60 customers everyday and the income varies from Rs 1,500 to Rs. 4,000 on a good day.
Boom! A motorbike has slithered on the wet slippery path, and the rider is flat on the ground. A dog yelps! All the shopkeepers step out to see who has gone for the cropper this time. The biker picks himself up and moves on with an air of normalcy.
“Of course, someone would fall,” comments a passerby. “These roads are never dry,” mutters a local lady wrinkling her nose as she steps into one of the shops to buy some choella. For the past eight years, Lakshman Rana from Chhetrapati has been coming to this shop everyday for his afternoon snacks. “I’m a regular customer here,” he says with a sense of pride. “I get aila (traditionally brewed Newari alcohol), too” he boasts.
Only regular customers seem to be considered special enough to deserve alcohol in this lane. “We serve it only to people who we know by virtue of their regularity,” says Uttam Manandhar, another restaurant owner. “Else, they start creating hassles for everyone,” he adds, chopping some mutton. Uttam used to be a Ward Office member in this locality.
Now he is not very much involved in politics and runs this eatery with his wife Sheela.
“We could make upto Rs.4,000 a day, but mostly we have regular customers and they ask for credit,” says Uttam. His customers vary from high-ranking officials at Nepal Airlines Corporations to paupers who come, eat and then claim that they don’t have money to pay. “I can’t make them puke it all out, can I?” says Uttam in a matter-of-fact tone.
Sumati Manandhar in the adjacent shop has just started to run a small 12-seater eatery rented at Rs 4,000 per month. She and her jolly husband like to be known as shreeman and shreemati Manadhar (Mister and Missus).
“We used to have a cold store earlier but now we run this place,” says Sumati. “By chaanas, we have 60 people on a good day but otherwise it’s good even if it’s 15,” opines Sumati’s husband rather optimistically.
At the end of the alley, Ram Kumar Basnet, single-handedly, has been running the oldest eatery for the past nineteen years.
“When I started this place, the rent was Rs. 300 and now I pay Rs. 7,000 for this place,” he says. “I don’t sell buff,” he boasts. He claims that his eatery is free of the category of meat that he considers profane. “I sell mutton for Rs. 80 per plate and one piece of fish is for Rs. 30. Naturally, my quality is better compared to other shops,” he asserts. “My elder son is in America, and now my daughter is also going to join him,” he says as he unassumingly lists how she has passed her SAT and is now preparing for her TOEFL exams.
“Things were good before (King) Birendra died,” he says. For him, since then, there have been strikes, and the whole country has been going downhill. “There’s a strike almost everyday these days, and then people don’t come to work. If they don’t come to work, we don’t have business!” he utters quite cogently.
Gwasma Galli is the remnant of an era, the time when none in Nepal knew that tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. None bothered to care that sour cream makes it Russian, or lemon and cinnamon make it Greek, or soy sauce makes it Chinese. Back then, afternoon snacking meant potatoes, beaten rice and every imaginable part of the animal anatomy. People kept a track of how their customers handled alcohol and served accordingly.
Take a peek at the medieval Gwasma Galli: Even the Hippies have come and long gone, but its native gastronomic legacy lives on.
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