Tanjong Katong's DARBAR

Someone asked me if I would (please) come to this place for lunch. 

It's not often that I get to go to Tanjong Katong Road for a meal, especially on a weekday, so I went. 

Darbar sits along a stretch of shop houses near the Mountbatten end of Tanjong Katong Road.

Located across the road from the present-day Canadian International School, the restaurant is easy to find, and if you, like me, dropped at the bus stop outside the school, well, they're directly opposite. 

I was a little curious as to what this lunch would be about. 

Particularly since Indian food's not my first time. 

There is, however, a bit of difference between one and the other, I discovered. 

Its' not every place that will serve you pieces of soft, tender butter chicken swimming in butter chicken gravy as thick as this.

Nor is it every place that will have this drizzle of (cream) all over the top too. 

We didn't have our butter chicken plain, of course. 

There was also mutton briyani, which, buried beneath this layer of (half-cooked) naan, you don't see. 

But it had everything.

Basmati rice in a bright, saffron color, chunks of tender, delicious, well-braised (boneless!) mutton, and what I call 'dry' gravy.

At first I wondered if it were necessary to pack it all into this little bowl instead of- like how some other places do- spread it all out on the platter and serve it to you (fast-food style)

But then I realized the message behind the service. 

And began to understand that life is just like this dish of mutton briyani where the warmth of the bowl embraces the rice within and keeps it warm, which then embraces the mutton within and holds it in the center, which said dish is then tightly sealed by the warmth of the naan's flour above. 

I guess there are many a lesson to be learnt when it comes to appreciating cultural cuisine. 

Some of it we get almost immediately.

Some of it we don't.

There might have been a lesson behind these little servings of accompaniments, for instance. 

But I don't know what they are, and even till now I haven't figured them out. 

Still, I suppose, it doesn't matter. 

Because just so long as I enjoy the huge serving of shredded carrot and cucumber in this scoop of cold, milky, refreshing yogurt, I am understanding that each part of the meal has its strengths, and like how all the seemingly separate sides of us are all part of us as a whole, the yogurt, the mutton, the rice, and the butter chicken come together in beautiful harmony.

You know, it was a fairly simple lunch we had that day- nothing fanciful, nothing elaborate, no big platters or gigantic, deep bowls- but me and my friend, we had a great conversation on cultural content and its definition in 21st century globalized world, and now that I think about it, had lots of philosophical meaning too.