Chocolate Wheel and Trees

I've been on an old time nostalgia trip, of late and I can't say it's been an unpleasant experience. I was reminded of my rubber ducky, which I took to Tenth Tuitions and helped me out with mathematics, and that pretty much got me started off on a whole wealth of stuff.

Driving back from the Railway station last night brought back a lot of memories. On the way back home, one passes through some of the most beautiful places in Delhi, Lutyen's city, the India Gate, the mueseums, the Lodhi Gardens. The streets are wide, and lined with huge trees, and unless I find some great colonial stylings in Singapore(which I'm told I will), I'm really going to miss it.

I traced back my love for Lutyens Delhi to my very early childhood, when times were actually good. Every so often, I would be taken with my brother to a place in Jor Bagh called Chocolate Wheel, which was, in pre and just liberalized India, pretty much the only decent bakery availible. Here, one would eye rich chocolate pastries, tarts doughnuts and wonderful patties that were availible nowhere else, except the cheap imitations in Modern Bazaar. The counter was manned, or womanned by this very cheerful, robust, and fat lady who was also the resident baker. She remembered who you were, and always had a cheerful demeanor. This was bliss, and was my family's big celebration treat, a trip to the Wheel. Additionally, my birthday cake each year, for a good few years was procured from Chocolate Wheel, which they fashioned in whatever form took my fancy. Batman cakes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Cakes, and I frankly forget the rest. They had 'em all, that's for sure. Times then became a bit tough for family, and trips there ceased for quite a few years. When we returned after a period of many years, when bakeries had sprung up like mushrooms in the rain Chocolate Wheel had sadly not kept up with the rest. I haven't been there in some time now, and don't even know if it's still around, let alone what it's quality is now like.

But my fascination for the place stemmed not only from the inside, but the outside as well. The bakery was in Jor Bagh, which is as close as you can get to Lutyens without being in it. Same colonial architechture, same wide open roads, but what really impressed me was the trees. On the road leading up to the wheel were these wonderful trees on each side, which merged into each other in the middle, forming this wonderful green canopy, that provided shade in a hot summer sun and a sense of dark romance on a winter evening. Chocolate wheel in my mind is interlinked with this green canopy, one doesn't exist in my memories without the other.