India, Aug. 3 -- Our night-time dependence on the AC is finally beginning to fade, meaning the worst of 2026 summer is gone. It is again possible to wander outdoors, just mind the monsoon puddles. Here's a tried and tested culinary stroll through Gurugram's Sadar Bazar, where beloved dishes have survived the town's transformation into the Millennium City. These places and people, chronicled over the years, continue to define the city's otherwise vanished small-town character.

The first halt comes beneath a neem tree, amid the ruins of an old haveli. Few buildings around it remember 1948. Sardar Jalebi does, founded that year by a partition refugee. Here generations of halwai cooks have been lowering slim coils of maida batter into hot hi...