Guntur Bomb

I come from Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, India. Apart from education and rowdies, this place is very famous for hot cuisine - Guntur chilli, Guntur gongura, Guntur avakai – those names are enough to ooze saliva in mouth.

Guntur mirchi bajji with green chilli chutney – it will top the world's hottest food menu. And, the hottest mirchi bajjis in the Guntur city are made at our street – Donka Road.

On casual browsing, when I stumbled across a post on Guntur Mirchi in a national magazine, The Outlook, it brought back some memories.

When I was 6 or 7, my uncle (father's younger brother) took us to the Bajji bandi for the first time to return the favors my brother and I did to him at our shop.

From that day, mirchi bajji has become part of my life – it is our favorite pastime. Bajji party is the standard treats for every occasion. I have friends who take the bajjis daily.

The important fact is that I have never heard of stomach ulcers and gastric complaints from any localite I know.

I miss the Guntur Donka Road mirchi bajji badly :-(

Some excerpts from the Outlook article (source:http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?233612) -

You wonder what Guntur would be like without its chillies.

Guntur's chilli trade is second only to Mexico's in the world; a bad season shakes the city to its very hub.

This, though, is but a momentary lapse, as Srinivas Rao will tell you. This Gunturian has been wheeling his cart to Donka Road Crossing punctually at 7 every evening for the last 22 years, dishing out over 5,000 plump, green chillies a day dipped in besan and deep-fried in a kadai the size of a small lotus pond to his enthusiastic clientele. His business, Rao informs us in between skimming the chillies out of the blubbering oil, is booming as never before. No, Guntur can't do without its mirch masala.

Are you still wondering about the title, Guntur Bomb – it is the common name for our own Guntur mirchi bajji. Brahmanandam makes a reference to Guntur Bomb in Chiranjeevi's Chudalani Vundi movie.