Eating poetry.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The first thing Guptaji’s cart offers is kavita; and this poetry is free. The kulfi comes next; in portions of 10 rupees, 20 rupees and 30 rupees. Indeed, before anyone could ask for kulfi, the eyes land on the Hindi couplets painted in white across the blue cart attached to his bicycle.

One of the first verses on Gupta Kulfi Bhandar lays out a clear business policy:
Nazuk hai zindagi, pareshan hai zamana,
Tumhe udhar dekar, hame kya kamana.
(Life is fragile, times are tensed.
Lending you credit, what will we earn?)

These verses have travelled with the gentleman’s kulfi cart for decades. Did the kulfi man originally write these lines? He smiles, nodding and shaking his head at the same time.

Either way, the poems ride through the city every day. The kulfi man wheels his cart out of his home in Andrewsganj at 11.30 each morning. By then, he has already been awake for more than six hours. He gets up at five and, with his wife Pushpa Devi, prepares about a hundred fresh kulfis before loading the cart. For the past 25 years, he has been cycling his cart through Bhogal and Ashram in South Delhi, returning home around 10 at night.

The man himself is an endearing character. What goes on inside his mind is, of course, hard to know. On the surface, though, he is quick with a smile. He laughs easily and carries himself with the same cheer that runs through the verses on his cart.

Another couplet of his calls out to anyone passing by the cart (see photo):
Phool hai gulab ka, khushboo liya karo,
Kulfi hai khoye ki, maze liya karo.
(This flower is a rose, do take in its scent.
This kulfi is of khoya, do take in its joys.)

The poem is in fact factually correct. The couple make every kulfi with that same khoya, plus adding other stuff such as milk, almonds, cardamom, and pista.

The kulfi man, it must be said, is not one for big sales pitches. Instead, he lets this particular couplet do the talking:
Chand ki taarif sitaron se pucho,
Kulfi ki taarif khane walon se pucho.
(Ask the stars about the moon’s glory.
Ask the kulfi eaters about the kulfi’s glory.)

And this couplet on the cart tips its hat to the season:
Kahi garmi kahi sardi, yeh sab kudrat ke nazare hain,
Pyas unko bhi lagti hain, jo darya ke kinare hain.
(Somewhere it is summer, somewhere it is winter, such are the ways of nature.
Even they feel thirsty who live by the river.)

The shifty seasons also force Guptaji to shift his business. Summer and the monsoon keep the kulfi moving, but winter obliges him to commit to a vegetable cart. That cart bears aloo-gobhi, but no poetry.