A Lonely Food Street in the Rain

“Do you serve momos?” I asked the aging man in Monkz Café, the only stall that was open at about 11 this morning when I visited The Old Monk Food Street in my hometown of Thodupuzha. According to the omniscient Google, this is probably the only place in this town where momos are available.

“What?” the man who managed everything – brewing tea/coffee, serving snacks, and collecting the cash – nearly scowled.

I repeated the word ‘momo’ in singular since Malayalam has an aversion for plurals and the man’s demeanour made me defensive.

He gave me a smile that was typically Malayali: mocking as well as naughty. That smile made me wonder whether the word ‘momo’ has some vulgar connotation in Malayalam.

I told him to give me a dal vada and a coffee, a common order in a Malayali tea shop. As I sat in the elaborate food court which was empty except for a group of youngsters and one other client, I observed that all the stalls in the ‘food street’ remained closed. A few shutters were partly open.

The signboards above those stalls told me that momos as well as gol-gappas and chaats could indeed be available in two of the stalls, probably at a later part of the day. One woman stood cooking at a stall, chopping onions. She said hers would open soon; a few others, only in the evenings. No one else was visible in any of the others stalls anyway.

The desolation must owe itself to the location of the ‘food street’, quite out of the way from the town. The River View Road is a recent bypass, skirting the town’s chaos and skimming a gentle river that rolls down beneath the monsoon showers. I guess people come in the evenings to take a walk by the side of the river though it is not a riverbank but a manmade, elevated construction that runs along the riverside. It does make sense to guess that some of the stalls open only in the evenings.

Now, in June-July when the monsoon is quite heavy in Kerala, it is not likely that people come to walk here at all. And so, the stalls for momos and gol-gappas may remain closed in the season. That’s what I gathered from the vague response of the woman who was chopping onions and who didn’t look particularly happy to answer questions from an old man who didn’t look like a potential client to her.

Dark clouds were gathering over the river, which now carried not just the usual outflow from the Idukki dam but also the heavy burden of monsoon rain. As I walked back to my car in the Old Monk parking lot, I didn’t fail to notice that the place, particularly the food court with its wooden tables and benches, has a peculiar romantic charm if it isn’t crowded. One a warmer day, I will definitely return here with Maggie and order a plate of momos hopefully from someone who is pleasant. The place does promise much charm on a sunnier day. 

PS. This is the last of a 5-part series written for #BlogchatterFoodFest

PPS. Notice the additional language on the signboard beside the river asking people not to dump waste in the river. Not Hindi, not English, but Bengali - if I'm not mistaken. My hometown has a lot of migrant labourers from Bengal and possibly Bangladesh too.