We are told that Tandoori murga (or chicken), India’s contribution to the world of cuisine, was born in Peshawar in 1929. After India’s bloody Partition, the shop (later known as “Moti Mahal”) moved to Daryaganj in New Delhi, very close to the ancestral house of Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf.
Tandoori chicken gained in popularity when India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, began ordering this dish for official banquets. Visiting dignitaries that enjoyed the Tandoori dish, included American Presidents Richard Nixon and John Kennedy, Soviet leaders Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev, the King of Nepal, and the Shah of Iran.
Tandoori chicken’s history is traced to a young Hindu cook, Kundan Lal Gujral, who worked at a small shop called “Moti Sweets” in Peshawar, the border town of Pakistan-Afghanistan now much in news for other reasons. Many Hindus and Sikhs had made this town, inhabited by fiercely independent and tradition-bound Pathans/Pashtuns, their home as it provided great business opportunities.
At the shop owner’s request, young Gujral ‘invented’ this dish because the former wasn’t well and wanted a chicken dish sans lots of spices and curry. In those days Indian bread was cooked in bell-shaped ovens, set into the earth and fired with wood or charcoal. Gujral used the oven or ‘tandoor’ to prepare roasted chicken that were succulent inside and crispy outside.
Soon after came the butter chicken dish. “Instead of letting leftover pieces of tandoori chicken go waste, an inspired Gujral came up with a rich, creamy gravy to dunk them into. The butter chicken or murgh makhani was born.”
Swaraaj Chauhan describes his two-decade-long stint as a full-time journalist as eventful, purposeful, and full of joy and excitement. In 1993 he could foresee a different work culture appearing on the horizon, and decided to devote full time to teaching journalism (also, partly, with a desire to give back to the community from where he had enriched himself so much.)
Alongside, he worked for about a year in 1993 for the US State Department’s SPAN magazine, a nearly five-decade-old art and culture monthly magazine promoting US-India relations. It gave him an excellent opportunity to learn about things American, plus the pleasure of playing tennis in the lavish American embassy compound in the heart of New Delhi.
In !995 he joined WWF-India as a full-time media and environment education consultant and worked there for five years travelling a great deal, including to Husum in Germany as a part of the international team to formulate WWF’s Eco-tourism policy.
He taught journalism to honors students in a college affiliated to the University of Delhi, as also at the prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Communication where he lectured on “Development Journalism” to mid-career journalists/Information officers from the SAARC, African, East European and Latin American countries, for eight years.
In 2004 the BBC World Service Trust (BBC WST) selected him as a Trainer/Mentor for India under a European Union project. In 2008/09 He completed another European Union-funded project for the BBC WST related to Disaster Management and media coverage in two eastern States in India — West Bengal and Orissa.
Last year, he spent a couple of months in Australia and enjoyed trekking, and also taught for a while at the University of South Australia.
Recently, he was appointed as a Member of the Board of Studies at Chitkara University in Chandigarh, a beautiful city in North India designed by the famous Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier. He also teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students there.
He loves trekking, especially in the hills, and never misses an opportunity to play a game of tennis. The Western and Indian classical music are always within his reach for instant relaxation.
And last, but not least, is his firm belief in the power of the positive thought to heal oneself and others.