Tewari & Sons, 23, Chandni Chowk

Chapter 3: Aamne Saamne

The trick to making good motichoor ke ladoo, as Khushi had learnt from Baba was to throw in a fistful of sooji into the batter. This made sure that the ladoos got a texture that was just perfect. Five hundred ladoos were hardly a big order, but this had been the biggest order that Tewari & Sweets had managed to get in the last couple of months. And the best part was that it had come from someone who was not a regular patron of the shop. This could only mean good news for the business.

Tewari & Sons which was going to be sixty years old in January next year was started by Pradeep Tewari, a eighteen-year-old who had just moved from Allahabad to Delhi in search of employment. Jobs were scarce for someone who had only some schooling to his credit and he took on odds end daily wage earner jobs. An elderly relative of his, who ran a tea stall in Kashmiri Gate, employed him out of pity. Working at the tea stall, gave Pradeep the confidence that he could not only manage something like this of his own, it could well be his life calling. And thus, in January 1954, he began Tewari Chaat, with a low-interest loan from his father-in-law. He relocated his mother, father and fifteen-year-old wife to Chandni Chowk, to run this hole-in-the-wall enterprise. For the first six months, the only item on offer was Dahi Bhalla, something that they are known for even today. Each plate of dahi bhalla was made lovingly by Tewari's wife and mother, the lentil paste fried to give it the right spongey-texture, soaked in thick curd made from buffalo milk and care taken to not make it sour and topped off with saunth, a tangy and sweet chutney. Though, there were a dozen dahi bhalla stalls on very street that they were located, each recipe had its own twist and therefore a loyal clientele. Soon business grew and all kinds of chaat and savoury snacks made their way into the menu. In the year 1962, when Pradeep Tewari's son Mahesh was born, he decided to rename the store Tewari & Sons. It was also the year that mithais were introduced in the menu. By the time the second-generation Tewari took over, business had grown almost thirty-fold and it moved to become more of a sweet shop than a snacks place. It just made more business sense to make sweets, that had better margins and were less perishable than snack items. Though business was good, the facade of the shop like much of Chandni Chowk eateries did not transform and it remained the original hole-in-the-wall set-up.

While Mahesh Tewari took forth his father's legacy and turned it into a thriving business, he did not produce the progeny to make the Tewari & Sons legacy survive beyond his lifetime. A confirmed bachelor, he spent his time between having controversial opinions on the political climate, following fortunes of the Indian cricket team and trying to make Tewari & Sons the goto place for Bedmi Puri, Aloo Subzi and Nagori Halwa. His father made Dahi Bhalla the signature dish of Tewari & Sons, but unfortunately it was a crowded space. This is why Mahesh Tewari wanted to appropriate the relatively uncommon Bedmi Puri space, However, he did not meet with success. Tewari & Sons fate was completely sealed when in 1995, a local newspaper classified Tewari & Sons as the fifth best place for Dahi Bhallas in Chandni Chowk.

By the late 90s however, Tewari & Sons had run into difficult times. With large chains like Anandrams opening their well-lit air-conditioned places in Chandni Chowk, footfalls began to become lesser. The more aggressive places, with one-signature dish continued to thrive, but places like Tewari & Sons, which did not have any unique proposition began to suffer. Mahesh Tewari began to lose interest in the business, especially with his cricket obsession and betting taking a rather ugly turn. By 2006, the shop was mortgaged. In 2007, his house followed. A year later, in the height of the cricket betting controversy, a number of small-time bookies got pulled up and Mahesh Tewari was among them. Questioning revealed that Mahesh Tewari had put in money on behalf of many people, but finding no real evidence, he had been let off by the authorities. Mahesh Tewari died a few months after, evidently plagued by worries of debts that he had accumulated and a broken heart. Garima Gupta, a woman who ran another mithai shop just two streets away was named in his will. It took the lawyers a year to track her down, though she lived a few streets away. And the debt-filled and almost falling apart Tewari & Sons came to Khushi's family.