An evening in Old Delhi

It is 15th August today. 63 years back, India won its freedom. Difficult to fathom how a nation so large was dominated by a little island somewhere north of Europe. Anyways, its also the time when Muslim festival of Ramzan begins. Going to Old Delhi at this time of the year is like celebrating Diwali.
It was a bright Sunday evening. Lakhs of colourful Kites dotted the skies. At Jama Masjid, families sat together on the huge verandah, with food spread out, with little kids impatiently waiting to break their fast even as the elders gossiped and wished each other.
The view from one of the four minarets of Jama Masjid is a sight to behold. You can scan the entire horizon of Old Delhi. Must have been a great vantage point in earlier times, to scan the landscape for enemy troops. Considering the number of attacks on Delhi and the easy conquest by almost anyone who cared to attack it, difficult to understand what failed then.
Anyway, our motivation for the visit was to explore the different food which gets served during Ramzaan. I must say there were a few surprises, but over all it was a disappointment. I do believe now that atleast in Delhi, the muslim community is very poor, and lacks developed culture, considering the fact that they were the ruling powers before British, you would expect better culinary culture than what we have in Old Delhi. The Haldirams and the Great Kabab Factory are anyday better than the road side food stalls. Which is kind of ironic, because even in places like Rajouri Garden and Punjabi Bagh, with substancial Punjabi community, you get better butter chicken than most five stars and better ice creams and faludas than what Baskin Robbins can hope to sell.  I read in some book that most of the educated and elite Muslims went to Pakistan, and who remained in India were from lower stratas of the society and definitely not representative of the best that the culturally evolved descendants of the erstwhile mughals. May be the case is different in Lucknow and Hyderabad, where the community is more developed i hope.
What made me happy today was the fact that i was may be the only sikh in the entire area, nobody said anything to me, or even looked at us as if we did not belong there. We had gone on a food trip and had a reasonably good time. I just hope we had more options in sweets because i dint find any good tradional sweet shop.