Diary: First Dates, First Pizzas, First Sundaes At Delhi's Iconic Nirula's

Dream Ice-Cream

For the Archie comics–fed youngsters of 1980s Delhi, Nirula’s was the cool hangout joint, a la Pop Tate’s Chok’lit Shoppe. There were few real boyfriend—girlfriend couples like in the Archies, but we more than made up for it in our minds. Boys would discuss their imaginary girlfriends, the many ups and downs in their relationships—‘Today she came up right in front of me on the stairs and kasam se there was a faint smile on her lips’ or ‘Yesterday she kept looking at me from the bus window till it turned the corner’—that a passer-by who overheard it would never guess the girl in question didn’t even know of the narrator’s existence. And suddenly it wasn’t idli-vada or chole-bhature over which to tell these tall tales, but sundaes and sodas, pizzas and burgers, just like the kind Jughead Jones devoured. To be seen at Nirula’s with a real girl was the stuff dreams were made of. Your face glowed, you grew taller, your chest expanded. You would sit across her and casually ask if she would like to share an HCF (Hot Chocolate Fudge), and when you got it you would sit next to her, and there would be something very intimate about both of you thrusting and twirling the long spoon through the layers of soft ice-cream, the crispy nuts and the dark gooey chocolate and slurping together the intermingled goodness. News spread fast, your friends turned green, for a few days you would be floating above them, and sometimes get threats from the girl’s ‘official’ imagined boyfriend.

Salami Films with Shami Kabab

Though the first big Nirula’s was in CP, my haunts were the ones in Chanakyapuri, at the Priya Cinema complex in Vasant Vihar, or sometimes the one under the Def Col flyover as I was struggling to finish college in the South Campus. Going for a film at Chanakya and then discussing it over mutton salami pizza, which came in a delectable design of sizzling, golden salami rounds with strips of green chilli in between them, was the top treat. These outings would be few and far between, only when we had saved up enough pocket money. We would be blown by the expanse of The Last Emperor, the eroticism of Fatal Attraction or the swagger and style of The Untouchables or the inscrutability of Full Metal Jacket in Chanakya Cinema and talk about them for hours over a mutton chop or a shami kabab platter, to end with one of the 21 ice-cream flavours. There was stigma here too. If you ordered a strawberry or a tutti-frutti, you were flaky and if you went for mango you were desi. If you were one of the Camus-carrying, Goddard-dissecting, Lady Ella-humming members of the gang, you had to order Jamoca Almond Fudge.

Ahead of Times

Nirula’s was a little glimpse of the First World, a momentary escape from the dreary middle-class world of government quarters, sweaty buses, stuffy classrooms. But we were privileged—to reach the Def Col Nirula’s, we would cross over the unused railway lines on either side of which were rows of shanties with tarpaulin roofs standing on undulating bricks by the open drains with stagnant black water like an unbreakable glass. Nirula’s was a glitzy oasis, a piece of Manhattan for us—by the way, if you ordered Manhattan Mania ice-cream you were crass—or our idea of it then, where it was self-service, nobody came to take your order, you paid first and ate later, you had to empty the trays into bins after you finished and we thought those juicy burgers and pizzas were all gourmet food, as junk was yet to become notorious. Those were still innocent days, the late 1980s, India was on the cusp of globalisation. None of us had any idea then how many fast-food chains, how many cinema theatre franchises, how many TV channels were to hit us soon. Incredibly, in the maze of the golden arches, the umpteen Col Sanders, Nirula’s has only had a domino effect, growing to over 70 outlets now in the NCR.

Farewell and thank you, Mr Deepak Nirula, 21-scoop salute to you, may your soul always be sated.

(This appeared in the print edition as "Nirula's Diary")

Satish Padmanabhan Managing Editor, Outlook reminisces about Delhi’s iconic Nirula’s on the passing away of its founder Deepak Nirula.