Smokin' Chicken and Choki Dhani

When you go to Jaipur, everyone who's already been to Jaipur tells you DON'T MISS CHOKI DHANI. And I mean everyone!!!! And so, we went to Choki Dhani. It's a nice place. You start off with a sapera or whatever they call a snake charmer, though I didn't see the saamp.Then you get a teeka and then you get to pay to get in!! Once you're in, there are the dancers and the dancers and oh yes, let me not forget the -you guessed it - the DANCERS! With multi-layered pots, pots of fire, plates, glasses, knives, forks & spoons ( well, not really:-), dancers in blue, green, black & red,dancers in every shape & size, everywhere you looked - dancers!!! And then we found the girl with the mehendi cone - yeah, joined the queue instantly and waited. Got a pretty bel done on my left hand, love mehendi on my hands, but it's years since I've had it done.Then of course, the oont ride & the haathi ride, no no, not me... but the kids, they enjoyed themselves so much. My sister's younger son was so happy after the camel ride that you couldn't get him to stop smiling even if you tried and none of us were about to anyway.We finally got to dinner and found to my brother-in-law's utter horror that one had to sit cross-legged on the floor. Not a problem for the rest of us, but he was so uncomfortable, it was all we could do to keep from laughing at him. And then while we were trying so hard to keep straight faces, he started reciting the list of muscles which were aching! The laughter lasted till I heard a thud in front of me and found a small triangular brick had landed on my plate. We were eating by the light of small earthen lanterns which was romantic and mysterious until that point - it suddenly struck me, the blinding reality - the lights were dim so we wouldn't see what we were eating.The brick was deep brown and well baked. It reminded me of the Laurie Baker houses you see in Kerala. Well, make your bed and lie in it or in this case buy your brick and eat it - so slathered it with white butter, peeled off the top layer and finished it. The curries started to arrive, each one more murky than the first and I looked at them and muttered that I didn't even know what I was eating. My nephew, the older one, looked at me and said "Ha! but I know what I'm eating. This is what we get in the mess Monday to Friday"! Poor boy, we go all the way to Rajasthan and take him out and feed him MESS FOOD. And about ten minutes earlier, he and I had been discussing the relative merits of barbecued chicken vs. smoked chicken and he was telling me about some place his friend had found where you got the most delectable smoked chicken! As we progressed to the fourth variety of half-cookedchapati, he turned to me with such a forlorn look and said 'Imagine,we could have been sitting on chairs and eating smoked chicken'. And to make matters worse, we got back to the Club where we were staying, to find out that they had a barbecue there every evening. It was so hilarious, we laughed almost through the night, imagine going on holiday and eating bajra ka roti as a special treat. Well, all experiences go together to make a holiday, I guess.

So dear ones, if you're going to Jaipur anytime in the future, go to Choki Dhani to see the dancers (they're pretty) and go to Choki Dhani because it's full of teenagers in short skirts on camels, but go tothe Handi resaurant (opp the GPO) for dinner! Order the Afghani Chicken, it's ..oh... it's... well... you just have to eat it! And the world's best Butter Chicken too! And don't forget the mutton simmered over a slow fire in a handi for hours, the aroma clings to you and the meat melts across your tongue when you put it into your mouth and you don't even know which part of you is tasting it.