Tara Chand’s chhola kulcha stall (Amit Mehra)Putting high cut offs and admission woes behind, a new batch of students has started classes at the many colleges in Delhi University’s north campus. The space is replete with a number of tea and snack stalls which throng the roadside. Add to that a number of cafes and eateries that have come up and make Hudson Lane extremely popular. But there are some roadside food stalls spread across the campus that have been there for decades and still remain the go-to places for many students. We visit the iconic food stalls on the campus.
Maggi Points
There may be a number of Maggi stalls on campus but Tom Uncle’s Maggi Point remains the most visited. Situated at the crossing between Daulat Ram College and Ramjas College, it serves over 60 varieties of Maggi — from cheese butter, to oats vegetable, white sauce and Schezwan. Tom Uncle is actually Ramesh Kataria, who first put up a stall in 1978, selling nimbu pani, lime soda, aloo tikki and bread pakora. It was in 1995 that he introduced Maggi to the mix. “He was then known as Titu bhaiya, but later students from Khalsa College thought Tom Uncle sounded better. That was the bonding he had with students,” says his son Sandeep Kataria, who now runs the shop along with his brother Sunil. “These days people get bored pretty quickly and want something different, so we started innovating with different flavours to match different preferences,” he says. The duo have started another branch in Hudson Lane.
Top of the Class
Opposite Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) near the gate of the Arts Faculty, Tara Chand has been selling chhola kulchas for the past four decades. He came from Bareilly to Delhi to earn a living and soon decided that feeding college students was his best bet. For the initial few years before he set up a stall, he would go around with a tub full of chhola kulcha. His stall is now managed by his son Suresh Kumar. His chhola is mixed with matar, which he flavours with garam masala, hand-beaten red chillies and homemade amchur ki chutney, topping it off with onion and vegetable pickle. And if you are health conscious, you can skip the maida kulcha and ask for a wheat one instead. One plate costs Rs 25.
Spice Route
Sunil Sethi outside WUS Health Centre (Amit Mehra)Students who were on campus some 20 years ago still remember Sunil Sethi as the man in a white kurta pajama selling bhelpuri outside WUS Health Centre, facing one side of Miranda House. “The white kurta pyajama has become my recall factor,” says Sethi, who is now 60, and has been setting up the stall for the last 35 years. He had chosen this location, back then, very strategically, for it was right beside the stop where students boarded the U-Special buses. Sethi tried his hand at various jobs in Chandni Chowk and Tilak Nagar, but nothing worked. He decided to follow in the footsteps of his brother, who had an aloo tikki stall, and his uncles who ran tea stalls, and decided to set up a bhel puri stall in the campus. “I make the chutneys at home and make regular trips to the market and mandi to procure namkeen and vegetables respectively,” says Sethi. He sells one plate for Rs 40.
Not far from here, another bhel puri stall is quite popular. Mohanlal has been setting up his stall for the last three decades, and his story is not very different from Sethi’s. He migrated from Bulandshahr in a bid to earn a living, and after selling ice creams for a while, he eventually settled on campus.
Mohanlal selling bhel puri outside Hindu College (Amit Mehra)Chai Par Charcha
If you’ve studied in north campus, in all likelihood you’ve indulged in chai pe charcha at Delhi School of Economics’s JP Tea Stall. Popular for its garma-garam chai, masala coke and now lemon iced tea, it is a popular hangout in the campus. It is where many former students prefer having their reunion. Set up by Jaiprakash in 1969, it is now run by his sons, who are fondly called Deepu and Raju bhaiya. “My grandfather used to work in the university, so it was easy for my father to find a spot here and start this,” says Deepu. While one cup of chai sells for Rs 8, you can get lemon iced tea for Rs 18. You could complete the meal at D-School’s equally popular canteen, best-known for its mutton dosa, mutton cutlet, and chicken rice.
