Now I Know What A Non-Khatai Is !

We were at the end of a long street, waiting to  to touch base with Rajender who was to escort us to the dargah and also take us on a guided tour of Fatehpur Sikri. The charming aspect of roads is that they have crossroads and intersections and we were parked in front of a ramshackle market with odds and ends and hawkers selling fruit and vegetables, small eating joints on either side. There were vendors with the  gazak and chikki and rewadi, winter ware that continues to delight, but the eye was also entranced by what looked like baked rose florets.

 I stepped out of the car and enquired as to what they were, thinking of their resemblance to what we called naun-khatai at New Delhi. The nankhatai is  usually a mix of maida and dalda  that continues to be made in bakeries all over North India. In Chandni Chowk the  dough is  kneaded in a plastic container and set to bake on a hot iron griddle on coals which is covered by a tin plate. The khatai,  warm and fresh from the griddle makes for   delicious morsels that shoppers and shopkeepers snack upon and are available off  cycle thelas that ply in the lanes.







I chose a vanilla flavour made with butter, and eventually  purchased  non-khatais for five rupees per piece. I carried them back to the car and distributed them, at that precise moment on a winter afternoon, when the sun feels a little bleak and the sky begins to  gray in shared anxiety. On contact with the mouth the  khatai  disintegrates into little khatai crumbs  that can be  slowly relished, munched and swallowed to allow ,   a comfortable warmth  to spread through one's being. A  cup of tea would  have  heightened the pleasure, but Rajinder had responded to our phone call and we headed in the direction of the monument.
 On our return  we stopped  on the other side of the road, at a larger stationary outlet and bought boxes of non-khatai to take back home to Delhi. All these years, I had imagined that these delicate biscuits were called nan khatai because they were made of maida in the same way as nans were. Innumerable local bakeries  at  New Delhi  which sell this  delicate biscuit always referred t it as nan -khatai.



 The nickel  finally dropped.  They were  termed non-khatai because no fermenting agent was used to make them, unlike the nan which requires a little bit of   be fermentation   before it can be rolled out and  baked into delicious crisp breads. Non khatai indicates a baked item that needs no fermentation.

 Odd, how language routinely fine tunes and  resets our understanding of both the everyday and the unusual. The non khatais on the road leading to Fatehpur Sikri are the largest  and most aesthetic  khatais I have ever seen.  They are also light, crisp and crumbly and  a great pleasure, both to view and eat. They definitely deserve a GI tag. Take a look and  try them out  if you are in the vicinity!