Velvet sheen: Bade Mian’s kheer shop was set up as a one-room eatery over a century ago. (Express photo by Poshali Goel)
Every morning Jamaluddin Siddique wakes up to the call of azaan. After performing the namaaz, he makes his way to his shop, which has stood at the mean of Hauz Qazi Chowk and Lal Kuan for over 130 years. The one-room eatery, founded by his grandfather, Azeem Baksh, was long known as Siddique’s Kheer Shop before it was rechristened The Old Kheer Shop. But aficionados of the velvety dessert which the shop plies know it as the pit stop for Bade Mian’s kheer.
Over the last century, the family has earned its reputation on the basis of the delectable dessert it sells; however, Jamaluddin’s grandfather originally made his riches selling jewellery. “He sold jewellery in this very neighbourhood,” says Jamaluddin, pointing to the road outside his shop, where the Siddique family has lived and worked since his grandfather’s time. “With the profits they earned, they bought cattle, but soon realised that they could not use them to their potential. So, my grandmother started making kheer with the milk,” he says. While Jamaluddin mans the shop, his elder brother, Muhammad Shafi, makes the kheer at home. “We don’t just follow my grandmother’s recipe, we still make kheer at the same spot that she used to. We haven’t moved the bhatti from where she set it up,” he says.
Milk and rice are cooked slowly over the wooden fire at the Siddique brothers’ home till the milk thickens and acquires a slight flush. “Once the kheer is ready, I carry it on my head to the shop. It’s something our father used to do and when we apprenticed under him, he would make us carry the hot kheer on our heads too. Often, it would dribble down our arms and scald us. That’s why I can walk with the precision of a tightrope walker even now,” says Jamaluddin, with a laugh.
But Jamaluddin seems sceptical about the future of street food, particularly kheer, in Delhi. “It’s difficult to say what will happen to us. Besides, we don’t have any children as yet. My elder brother’s daughter, however, seems keen on taking this forward. If the right intention exists, I’m sure Allah will show the way.”