Asma Mirza
When I saw this delicious picture of Murgh Yakhni and boiled eggs set to allure people, my memories went back to childhood train travels. Before the buses invaded Islamabad-Lahore route, traveling by trains, stopping at every station, enjoying the typical chanting of vendors was part of every child’s life.
The most interesting of all these voices would be the shrilly one, “GARAM AANDAY LE LO” (Have Warm Boiled Eggs). And the pleasure of eating those warm boiled eggs (with no fear of cholesterol and calories) was entirely unmatchable. Now when I see back, I miss that punjabi street delicacy in my life. I’m afraid the slightly newer generation is not even aware of its existence. Gradually, soups took over the place of decades old simple delights.
Have you eaten Garam Aanday just like that in chilly winters? Any Garam Aanday reminiscences from your life you want to share with us?
Image Courtesy: Dawn
?????? ???? ??? ?????
dont know how this yakhni is extracted from these hanging untouched murgheeez :D
Garam Anda’s are still in vogue in somewhat less moderinzed cities of Punjab at least. I recently enjoyed some during my stay at Khewra and Vehari during construction of high pressure gas pipelines.
During work hours we just orderd our excavator operator to find a tree and make a fire. Rest was upto those operators and miraculasly they managed to find some trees every time. Green trees often required High Speed Diesel to make them burn fast and give intense heat. Believe me the heat generated by burning wood is more intense and holds no match to the ones of Natural Gas and electricity.
Anyways, those were good memories that were not very far away in the past.
Once I was traveling Multan to Karachi in an overnight train (Bahauddin Zakaria Express) in the month of december and in Economy Class.
Eventhough the windows were shut, any teeny-tiny crack (and there were plenty) was sending piercing cold wind inside the coach. ‘sardi se thithray hoay’ people were huddled together in ‘khes’, ‘chaadar’, ‘kambal’ and whatever they could find. I was wearing a jacket but I had a window seat and I was literally shaking with cold.
The train reached Rohri around midnight and a ‘egg’ vendor came in with those typical howling cries of ‘garam anday’ which the author has mentioned in the post.
Those eggs were life savers in december cold of Southern Punjab-Northern Sindh. Almost every passenger bought a boiled egg or two.
The vendor was keeping those boiled eggs warm in a “water cooler ” :) and after giving an egg to the customer, he also used to pour ‘chutki bhar namak’ (a pinch of salt) on to buyer’s palm.
I also bought two eggs and got two pinches of salt on my palm.
khoob mazay le le kar khaaye mein ne woh 2 anday namak ke saath :)
During another train travel from Karachi to ‘androon-e-mulk’, our train was passing by Hyderabad and a father sitting in front of me bought a boiled egg from one of these ‘garam anday’ vendors and gave it to his two year old son who was playing on the berth above.
The child finished the whole egg in a minute but the father got scolded from his wife for next 5 minutes:
‘munnay ke abba! munnay ko poora anda kiyoon dia? anda garam hota hai !’ (and repeat).
For those 5 minutes, while the lady kept repeating, the father kept looking sheepishly at other passengers.
Well there is no significance of above anecdote. It is just a snap of my memories about ‘garam anday’ and railways of Pakistan :)
I want to thank the author for this post.
Lalmusa kay garan anday…. kya yaad dila diya…. mazza aaa gaya
what about gas? :P