“India is one of the few places on Earth where, even for me, that’s not a burden." The one where Anthony Bourdain tapped his inner vegetarian on the India-Pakistan border and found that veggies weren’t so bad after all.
By the time Parts Unknown’s third season opened in April 2014, ten years ago virtually to the day, the tone had been set. So it was somewhat of a surprise that the season-opening episode, The Punjab, marked a subtle but noticeable shift away from the established template to the extent that Bourdain followed anything resembling a template. There is a focus on simmering border tensions between India and Pakistan, a situation that, if anything, is even more pronounced today than it was 10 years ago. There’s a renewed focus on food — the sourcing of food, the making of food, serving food, and the role food can play in alleviating tensions in borderline conflict zones — and in that sense The Punjab reflects some of Bourdain’s earlier work on No Reservations and even, to some extent, his earlier A Cook’s Tour.
The old Bourdain is still there — cranky, irascible, and witty as (heck) — but, strange for an hour about border tensions and an ever-present threat of war — there’s an optimism that wasn’t there in earlier Parts Unknown programs on Libya, Congo and Jerusalem. The colours are brighter, people — Pakistani and Indian alike — smile more, and the food, even to Bourdain’s jaded point-of-view, is, well … divine. It’s almost enough to repudiate his vocal, lifelong stance against vegetarianism. Almost. This is Bourdain we’re talking about, after all.
“To eat around this part of the world, Punjab in particular, get used to eating a lot of vegetarian: chickpeas, dough. India is one of the few places on earth where, even for me, that's not a burden. … In the Punjab, meat or no meat, you are almost guaranteed a free-for-all of intense colours, flavours and spices.
“Unlike some of the joyless vegetarian restaurants in my sad experience, vegetables here are actually spicy, all taste different, have different textures, and are served with extraordinarily good bread. Who knew.”
And, later: “If this was what vegetarianism meant in most of the places that practice it in the West, I would be at least half as much less of a dick about the subject.“
And then, turning to the camera — breaking the third wall — “Look, hippie, if you made bread this good, I might eat in your restaurant. Mmm.”
Along the way, there are visits to the backstreet eatery Kesar de Dhaba Amritsar (“The best food isn’t cooked in people’s homes, you find it on the streets); the kulcha, a type of small bread cooked inside a tandoori-style oven, marinated in butter (“a perfect little flavour-bomb of wheat dough pressed against the side of a very, very hot clay oven, slathered with butter and served with a spicy chickpea curry on the side. Did I mention the butter?”) and the chole, chickpea curry cooked to piping hot and immersed in spices, onions, tomatoes, and herbs, at — and this name is real — the All India Famous Amritsari Kulcha in, wait for it, Amritsar.
What, you thought it might be somewhere else?
The old Bourdain is still there, though, despite his uncharacteristically sunny disposition (“The religion doesn't matter,” one of his local sidekicks tells him, “Food is the religion here”), and it isn’t long before all this vegetarianism starts to wear on him.
“Checking off my list of things to do in the Punjab, I got to score some animal protein. It's time. I've been going all Morrissey for two days now and frankly, that's enough. I need chicken.”
For the record, Morrissey is not just famously “different” — according to a fan interview published in SPIN in 2018, the former Smiths frontman only eats food that is beige.
And don’t call him a vegan, at least to his face, if you value your life.
Back to the chicken, and cue the Beera Chicken House.
And if you think that means beer and chicken, you would only be half wrong: Sikhs, the prevailing religion in the region, abstain from alcohol.
No matter, at least not for now.
Bourdain again: “When we are talking must-haves, tandoori chicken is just that.”
“I have some lemon in it,” he’s told “You will enjoy it.”
And how.
“Sensational. Wow. People (here) do love their food.”
History is everywhere Bourdain goes in The Punjab, but as always with Bourdain, his personal take is, well, Bourdainesque.
“Leaving the fertile plains of the Punjab behind, I'm headed out towards the Himalayas. In getting there, at least the way I'm going, hasn’t changed much in the last hundred years….
“Truth be told, I'm an angry, bitter man when I board. I'm guessing there ain't a Shoney’s or a P.F. Chang on the way.”
Bourdain finds himself on what he can only liken to the tourist train on the Universal Studios backlot in Burbank, Calif. — “You go on the King Kong ride. … while my stomach growls, I become the kind of traveller I warn against -- gripey, self-absorbed, and immune to my surroundings. But as my brightly coloured little train heads up into the hills from Kalka Station, known as the gateway to the Himalayas, my worldview starts to improve.
“The unnaturally bright colours of India start to pleasurably saturate my brain. The views from the window of ridiculously deep valleys, hundred-year-old bridges … it's, well, breath-taking.”
And how.
Bourdain even takes time to wonder what was involved in building a train track to the roof of the world, as the High Himalayas are often called.
“Already behind schedule and plagued by cost overruns, Colonel Barog” — the British engineer tasked with building the line up to the British hill station town of Shimla, a man so famous nobody seems to know his first name, this, according to the Times of India — “screwed up.
“When he realized the two ends of this tunnel didn't meet in the middle, he shot himself.
“It's the kind of personal accountability I would like to see more of, frankly.
“Or is that just me?
“But all my snarkiness fades as one can't help but reflect on what it took to dig, drag, blast and tunnel one's way up this route back in the day.”
For a man who nurtured an almost cult-like status as a grumpy traveller with disdain for everywhere and everything, Bourdain finds himself, well, enchanted.
“I've been to Mumbai, Kolkata, Rajasthan, Kerala,” he says at the end. “This is a part of India that's different than any of the others. Look, it's fascinating and beautiful.”
Not unlike the show itself.