For a Lahori, the holy month of Ramazan is punctuated with memories of piping hot aloo samosas, jalebis and pakoray piled into beautiful little steaming hills at roadside stalls by vendors that would pop up just as dusk was rolling in and the time for breaking our fasts approached. People of all kinds would throng these stalls, mouths watering and stomachs grumbling as the long hot day had taken its toll, getting their takeaway snacks packed into brown paper bags flecked with darkening oil stains, reminding the pakoray wala not to forget the relishes and chutneys that complete these delectable treats.

But, thanks to the outbreak of Covid-19, this Ramazan has a demonstrably different flavour: Congregating at public places, eating out at restaurants, casually hopping over to the samosa or jalebi stalls down the road are all no more. Families and friends getting together for iftar parties have become a thing of the past, as public gatherings are banned. Shops have been forcibly shuttered, with only a select few selling necessities such as grocery stores allowed to operate.

The demand for cooked food has taken a nosedive recently, since fewer people are venturing out of their homes, and most are wary of consuming food that is prepared outside of the safety of their own kitchens.

Visiting the handful of tandoors around Defence Housing Authority (DHA), Lahore, that have been given permission by authorities to sell the golden treats, TNS learnt about the strict safety and hygiene guidelines for them: every employee at a stall or shop is required to wear gloves and a facemask. They also have to have their body temperature checked daily to ensure that nobody carrying the virus prepares the food, and the risk of transmission is minimised.

The wonderful pop-up samosa stalls at every corner that were an emblem of Ramazan have not been allowed to set up shop in a bid to control the gathering of crowds. Only a few tandoors are selling fried food and that too behind a cloth curtain cordoning off the storefront from the public at large, in line with social-distancing measures. Chalk circles marked a couple of feet apart demarcate the floor or ground in front of every shop, so that the customers remain physically distanced from not only one another but also those selling the food.

The wonderful pop-up samosa stalls at every corner that were an emblem of Ramazan have not been allowed to set up shop in a bid to control the gathering of crowds.

The scene is a rather unsettling one: Unlike, in every way, from the scenes customary of every single Ramazan until this year. The bazaars are oddly deserted after 5pm, the prescribed time for grocery stores to close, and the hustle and bustle that once marked the approaching iftar is conspicuously absent. The overall mood in the market is tense and hushed, the salesmen at tandoors lack their usual energy and the customers appear wary of one another.

Sales are obviously tricky in this situation. A few enterprising shop owners have introduced home delivery services, advertising their menus via Whatsapp and conducting their food sales over the phone. A minimum quantity is required to justify the free delivery service. So it’s not really the same as grabbing a steaming hot samosa at the spur of the moment before the end of the roza.

In less regulated neighbourhoods, stalls pop up for just an hour prior to iftar and are removed soon after the evening prayers and time for breaking fast has passed. For comparison’s sake, major cities in Sindh are under stricter lockdown and the sale of traditional iftar items such as samosa, pakora, jalebi, and fruit chaat has been banned. These items may however be ordered through home delivery service as per the SOPs issued by the government.

Home grub

Given the hesitation to order food from markets where hygiene standards are suspect despite government imposed restrictions, many home-based cooking businesses have cropped up — for instance, The Party Platters and Noah’s. They sell frozen samosas of all kinds, ingenious puff pastry pockets and delectable desserts, to name a few.

With the ease of social media marketing on platforms such as Facebook where countless food interest based groups exist; Instagram where everyone follows blogs that promote such businesses; and WhatsApp where forwards spread like wildfire, getting the word out has never been easier. It often feels more comforting in the time of coronavirus to know that the food you are ordering is coming out of someone else’s home kitchen, as opposed to a crowded restaurant or tandoor where the virus may be lurking far more abundantly.

For the sake of our economy, the restaurant industry, and the pop-up samosa and jalebi stalls, one can only hope that the spread of the virus is somehow controlled in the near future so that lockdown measures can be eased. A fast feels somehow incomplete without the evening rush in the marketplaces, without the crowds gathering at food stalls competing for their piping hot packets of fried pakoras and namak paray as the Maghrib approaches. In the meantime, those who have been denied the opportunity to set up stalls, which is their seasonal means of income, must figure out new ways of making money to run their households and feed their families.

The writer is a bibliophile, lawyer and freelance journalist