It cost just three rupees. Squashed between a doughy naan and seasoned with a splash of green chutney of dubious provenance, the ‘samosa-naan’ was sold for three bucks a pop at my college. With the triple dose of carbs – potatoes, pastry and naan – it was obviously filling. Less obvious is how satisfying the concoction was: the naan’s rubbery dough, the crushed but still crisp samosa shell, the spicy potatoes with little bursts of flavour in the form of anardana (dried pomegranate seeds) and dhaniya (coriander) seeds, the tart chutney. Is talk of textural complexity too pretentious for what is essentially a meal of necessity? I say no.

Now there is a McDonald’s near my college, a reminder that joy and pleasure of the simple and the cheap has been sold to the corner multi-national fast food joint. Perhaps I am being crotchety and college girls will later relish memories of cardboard burgers that taste the same anywhere in the world.

But the samosa is more erratic. Its quality and flavours vary from thela to shop. Some of the best samosas I have had come in unlikely places. Somewhere betwixt Rawalpindi and Islamabad is a little housing society. On the stairs of its little plaza comprising a grand total of five shops are sold one of the most sublime specimens of a samosa I have ever had, the perfect ratio of masala, potato and pastry.

At a wayside motel just short of Jallandhar – the kind where the tables are covered in crumpled colonial-style white linen and twists of napkins in thick glasses – I discovered another variety I had not had before in Pakistan. Our legs were cramped from long hours in the friendship bus and the May heat shimmered on the road. Inside, the airconditioning rattled but it was cool. I picked up a little samosa among the other snacks and discovered, for the first time, the delights of a slightly tangy paneer filling.

I personally prefer the good ol' aloo samosa, but the variations are endless. So many people have tried to turn the samosa into something more than street food or the ancient Mcsamosa. Sausage and cheddar cheese have become staples at bakeries in Islamabad, doing particularly brisk business in Ramazan (when fasting tends to make people think even more about food than they necessarily would). Whereas mince would be the pricier alternative to potatoes, chicken has become surprisingly commonplace at roadside thelas.

There are other, posher iterations: prawn samosas, crab samosas, Mexican chilli samosas and Thai chicken samosas.

Every Ramazan, a Memon colleague of mine would give me a packet of the familiar golden triangles filled with sweetened coconut instead of a savoury filling. Other sub-cultures in South Asia too have their sweet versions:

Ambitious young chefs are making new creations like chocolate samosas — though it should be noted that kheerer shingara, filled with sweetened thickened milk, have long been known in Bengal, while another variation is labango lotika, sealed with a clove and dipped in syrup.

Chunky or delicate, stuffed with expensive seafood or vegetables, a samosa is truly an adaptable thing. No surprises then that it has literally traveled across the world in the way that cuisines overlap and cultures commingle. From Burma and Malaysia to the East, through India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, and then on to Eastern Europe, Spain, Ethiopia and even Central and South America, some form of a fried or baked pastry triangle with stuffing can be found.

The kind found in the subcontinent has supposedly come centuries ago from Central Asia. And such ancient cultural luminaries as Amir Khusro and Ibn Battuta have written about it in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. Curiously, this version of the peripatetic samosa is found – word for word – in several internet encyclopedias. Some of this is corroborated in a detailed article delving deep into the samosa:

The cumin and chili-spiked ground meat filling found in Middle Eastern samosas (first cousin to kofta, the meatballs or cigar-shaped patties) spread into India with the great Persian and Turkish empires. In conquering Persia, Alexander the Great acquired northern India, too; and many of his Greek and Turkish subjects settled in Central Asia, carrying kofta and samosas (and the tanur, or tandoor, oven) into Afghanistan, Nepal, etc. Meat was originally quite common in India; but the climate was less hospitable to beef cattle, and a reliable supply of dairy products became more valuable for protein. Eventually Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism all prohibited meat consumption.

Whatever its origins, wherever it is found, the samosa’s pleasures derive from association and guilt.  The flavour of a crispy deep-fried pastry – whatever the filling – with a cuppa doodh patti under a grey, monsoon sky. Jab tak rahey ga samosay may aaloo…it’s that simple isn’t it?

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.