Paan

You can't walk very far down a sidewalk in Mumbai without coming across a cigarette stall. Cigarettes are sold individually, and while this may reduce consumption, I would guess it has more to do with meeting the demands of its ruppee-conscious customer base.

Also available at cigarette stalls is paan, sort of an oversized Indian after-dinner mint, but absolutely nothing like a mint at the same time. On our first afternoon together in Mumbai, Farah and Andrew (Harlequinite based in Mumbai, and our tour guide/social director for the day) both campaigned fairly hard that I should try some paan. I was reluctant - I'm pretty sure it had something to do with the fact that the paan was assembled right there in the cigarette stall. In this case, seeing your mint assembled is actually a bit of a turn-off.

But around 12:30 that same evening, I surrendered to the paan. I'm incredibly paranoid about trying new foods - but usually somewhat open-minded when it doesn't involve unidentifiable meat products. A lot of stuff goes into paan, but thankfully no mystery meat. Suffering the after-effects of little sleep, my protests were feeble and ignored. My defenses were down, and I soon found myself agreeing to sample paan. So in amongst the cigarettes are the ingredients for paan. In a small bucket, spear-shaped green leaves float in water. The stall attendant, a worn-looking grandmother somewhere between the ages of 50 and 80, selected a leaf from the bucket and started opening small tupperware containers. Each container held a different substance - random mystery pastes, which I later learned were betel and ground dates, coconut, spices and those tiny crunchy candies that top short-bread cookies. Each substance was smeared or dropped into the center of the leaf, with Grannie's bare finger, which she then wiped on a rag between ingredients. As she constructed the paan I surveyed the cleanliness of her stall and hypothesized how long it would take post-paan for me to be violently ill. She then rolled up the leaf and passed the package to Zarik, who laughed as he handed it to me.

What I hadn't realized, or no one had explained, is you actually consume the entire leaf. I'd naively assumed it was sort of like a serving utensil and I'd somehow delicately eat the contents without injesting the whole leaf. I was quickly educated, and before I could obsess further, I stuffed the whole thing in my mouth. It was massive, crunchy and very juicy - sweet with an after-taste something like cough-syrup. Apparently mid-chew, locals will spit out a stream of red juice onto the sidewalk. I didn't think I was capable of pulling that off, so kept determinedly chewing on my wad of paan. I was about half way through and quite pleased with myself when Andrew began to critique the cleanliness of the rag Grannie had used during the construction of my paan. I began to gag on the remaining mass in my mouth, and proceeded to spit it into a tissue as delicately as possible. I think I pulled it off, almost.