There is something comfortingly familiar about eating a phuchka – a crisp fried hollow ball, filled with spicy peas and potatoes, topped with tangy tamarind water, garnished with slivers of onion, cucumber, cilantro and generous helpings of shredded eggs.

To the neophytes, it may sound like culinary chaos but this gastronomic miracle is unarguably one of the greatest culinary inventions of mankind. Phuchka is so delicious that it is “that one dish” unanimously loved by all South Asians. It does go by various different names, aside from phuchka, the two most common names are pani puri and golgappa. Pani puri is the most recognized name in west and south India as well as the rest of the world, while golgappa is more popular in northern India and Pakistan. It’s called phuchka (phooch–kaa) in Bangladesh, Nepal, and eastern Indian states like Jharkhand, West Bengal and Bihar (where it most probably originated). Depending on the region, other names include, paani patashi, pani ke batashe, gup-chup, tikiya, phoolki and pakodi.

Etymology

Let me take it a step further and explain why they are named the way they are. Every name I have listed above denotes to a “watery bread” or a “crisp sphere filled with water”. It’s called “paani puri” because paani means water and puri means deep fried flatbread. People also call it golgappa because the “gol” in the name refers to the circular shape of the snack and “gappa” refers to a mouthful. My favorite which is “phuchka” and of course it has nothing to do with my personal biased judgement for being Bengali. The name “phuchka” comes from the sudden “phuch!” sound when you voraciously bite into this wholesome snack.

Is it Phuchka, Fuchka or Fuska?

It’s all of the above! It all depends on the Bengali dialect you speak and none of them are wrong.

• Phuchka – if you speak Shuddho Bangla which derives from Sadhu Bhasha, the formal version of the Bengali language used in professional, academic and legal settings, then Phuchka is the correct term.
• Fuchka – if you speak Cholito Bhasha, which is the informal and colloquial versions of Bengali that span across several dialects in Bangladesh, then Fuchka is also accurate.
• Fuska – if you speak Sylheti which is the primary language of people spoken in the Sylhet Division of Bangladesh, then Fuska is the correct way of saying it.

The Bangladeshi phuchka, fuchka or fuchka does differ from the Indian variations of pani puri or golgappa in its content and taste. Our phuchka shells are slightly bigger in size and much darker in color. Unlike the rest, which has chickpeas or white peas in it’s filling with a side of spicy green mint-coriander water or yellow mango water, phuchka specifically has to have yellow peas in the filling and a red tamarind chutney water that is both spicy and tangy. Regardless of the slight variations, at the end of the day, they are all equally delectable in taste.

How and where did this culinary gem really originate?

It is believed that phoolkis, precursor to the phuchka, first originated in Magadha, one of the sixteen mahajanapadas (great kingdoms in Sanskrit) of ancient India. The Magadhan empire was situated on the banks of River Ganga in what is now west-central Bihar. Lively accounts of Magadh and its capital, Pataliputra, are available in the travel diaries of the Greek historian Megasthenes and the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims Faxian and Xuanzang. During the 6th century BCE, this region played an important role in the development of Jainism and Buddhism and gave rise to two of India’s greatest empires, the Maurya and the Gupta. The Magadha kingdom was an ancient culinary hub from which several modern day delicacies evolved out of. If you are Bengali and you are reading this, you may know of some of them as chira, tiler naru and the most important of them all pitha.

There is another religious folklore associated with the origin of phuchka. In the epic tale Mahabharata, the newlywed bride Draupadi first enters her in-law’s home only to be given a task by her mother-in-law Kunti. I am not joking, that really was the mother-in-law’s name and she was actually a queen. Draupadi, also a princess, was one of the most important female figures in Hindu mythology and wife to the Pandavas, who were five brothers. When the Pandava brothers, Draupadi, and their mother Kunti, were in exile after losing their kingdom in a game of dice, the mother-in-law decided to challenge her daughter-in-law.

Kunti gave Draupadi some leftover potato curry and just enough wheat dough to make one puri, instructing her to make food that would satisfy the hunger of all five of her sons. The reason why she presented this challenge is unconfirmed – some accounts say it was to gauge if Draupadi would be a good housewife who could manage with scarce resources, and others say it was to see if Draupadi would favour one brother over the others. It is believed that this was when the new bride invented phoolki or phuchka in order to earn her mother-in-laws approval and win her over. Impressed with her daughter-in-law’s ingenuity, Kunti blessed the dish with immortality.

While the origins of this delicious snack is yet to be pinpointed with historical accuracy, one thing that is clear is that it travelled across South Asia and made the entire subcontinent fall head over heels in love with it. Phuchka is the most popular street food in Bangladesh and it is a fact certainly not up for debate. Served by roadside vendors all over Dhaka and all other major cities, phuchka gives the word ‘utilitarian’ a run for its money, in every sense, a material manifestation of the elusive emotion called “simple pleasures”. This wholesome street snack is also considered one of the great equalizers – at a phuchka cart, you will see besuited businessmen step out of their shiny cars to join the queue alongside the city’s poorest inhabitants.

Last but not least, actually, the most important question of all.