Egg pakodas at Laala Moosa

The Missing Link

Nirupama Dutt
MEMORIES are recalled through the senses. There are the memories of the seen, the heard, the felt and the touched. There are also the delicious memories of the taste buds. And if it were not for these mouth-watering remembrances, I would never have known the name of some obscure little town in West Punjab called Laala Moosa. The memory came down from my mother who had not really seen the town but had passed it many times by rail during her sojourns from Rawalpindi to Lahore. What made the name of this town stay alive in her mind long years after Partition, migration and much else were the delicious egg pakodas that were sold at the Lala Moosa railway station.“I have never eaten egg pakodas as tasty as those sold at the Laala Moosa railway station!” She would say this and go onto describe in detail how hard-boiled eggs would be slit sideways, stuffed with spices and then dipped in garlic-flavoured besan batter and boiled to a rich golden brown. On an occasional winter Sunday evening she would prepare this delicacy for us and we loved it. But biting into her own share, she would exclaim, “All right! But the Laala Moosa fare was exceptional.”So this time when I got a chance to visit the Punjab of my parents, I would ask people of the various things I had heard from my elders of the land lost to us in an effort to put together some kind of a patchwork quilt of memories. In the process, I discovered many missing links and a lot more information about things that were still vague in my mind. But when I tried asking people in Lahore about Laala Moosa railway station and the egg pakodas that used to be sold there, I always drew a blank. The imperious Lahoris so proud of their own elegant city had little or no time for some God-forsaken Laala Moosa town.On the last day in Lahore, I sat chatting with Basheer Ahmad who owns an antique shop in the Falleti’s Hotel. Asking him about the rugs, doorknobs, silver jewels and much else that was littered about, I casually asked him of the place he belonged to. “I am from Laala Moosa,” he said. I almost jumped up crying Eureka! but stopped myself in time and launched off on the egg pakodas at the station that my mother used to rave about. The old man smiled and said, “Yes, you still get them at the station there. So many vendors sell just that. It is the speciality of our town.” I had found a missing link.