Food coma: Pork sandwiches in sleet-struck Darjeeling that could never be repeated

Fresh out of school and with no money in our pockets, five of us took a train to Darjeeling without having bought tickets. Those were the days when the general compartments of long-distance trains were so crowded that no ticket-checker in their senses risked doing their duty.

An overnight journey from Calcutta to New Jalpaiguri station culminated in a shared ride on a jeep that, unfortunately, we did have to pay for. This left us with precious little on which to stay and eat in Darjeeling, which was a disaster, considering how much we had been looking forward to stuffing our faces at Keventer’s and Glenary’s.

The driver ejected us at a hairpin bend soon after entering the town. A thin layer of sleet covered the roads. In April! By now dizzy with hunger, we looked around wildly and discovered a shack lurking in the shadow cast by a building, with the unmistakable aroma of roasted meat wafting towards us. No consultations were needed, and we marched as one in that direction.

No sooner had we occupied a bench than the proprietor informed us that all he had were pork sandwiches. Remember, this was a time when pork and ham weren’t easily available to middle-class Bengalis in Calcutta. I don’t think we retained our dignity in the manner in which we accepted his single-item menu.

Then the sandwiches came. Thick hunks of the softest white bread, and between them fat slices of roasted pork, pink-brown-white – a memory that makes me do inelegant things even now, all these years later – and did I mention the golden, melting butter? Perhaps it was the fact that it was my first taste of this particular form of roasted meat, so pure in its own juices, the fat and the lean bits teasing and tasing the tongue in different ways. Or perhaps it was sheer hunger. Or perhaps it was the unlimited supply at a wildly low price.

Nothing has even tasted as good, as fulfilling, and as heavenly. (Not even the fried pork momos that we were given on the house, and which ensured that I never could bring myself to love steamed momos.) Take me back, Kanchanjungha Express.