Khai Ke Paan Benaras Vaala in Kolkata

So you see i have very recently shifted to Kolkata, and am still getting to know the city. Till now, despite a number of people telling me otherwise, i have found the place nice and beautiful. Maybe coz i did not find myself alone, having some of my closest school buddies here or joining a firm that....cross my heart is still quite people and HR freindly. and i am still exploring the city. and have not faced the monsoon, the water logging etc as people tell me.

But this post is not about the city mind you. Ill do that some other time. This is something more basic and begins with a simple question.

Have you ever faced that situation where in trying to be extra cautious you actually end up making even more sillier mistakes than possible? well heres one of them.

So two days into the city, it was my closest freinds wedding. and me and my other freind went to her place for the wedding and had an awesome time. The next day was reception at her inlaws place and we attended that too. In very short, two simply awesome days of reunion cum wedding celebration and everything.

For me now, this being the first bengali wedding i was attending, i was quite inquisitive and curious about the slightly different customs followed from the North Indian weddings that i have generally attended. at the same time, well atleast in my mind even if needlessly, I was a little conscious about not doing or behaving in any manner stupid or silly. not that i should have been worried, after all it was my bestest buddy who was getting married . But then call it a quirk of the mind.

So there i was, on the day of the reception, at her new home,. We had just finished an awesome dinner, topped it with a great kulfi and were lounging comfortably, me, my freind S, the newly weds and few others and chatting about this and that. And there comes the final thing to round off the dinner - a smoothly packed "paan". Now a paan is nothing but just that..........a paan........ as the wiki would define it - "Sweet" (meetha paan): Betel leaf with neither tobacco nor areca nuts. The filling is made up primarily of coconut, fruit preserves, and various spices. It is also often served with a maraschino cherry. "

Par nahin bhaiya hamari aisi kismat kahan. bataya to tha hum the extra observant, extra cautious and overtly careful. Somehow or the other it got into my head that this was a special paan served only in Kolkata which had to be had in a different way. for the information of the readers, this one had just been specially wrapped in another leaf and tied with a small ribbon. Frankly speaking nothing unusual about it. Nothing except of course to me.
Thence came my moment.
I tried to unwrap the upper leaf, but somehow couldnt locate the actual paan inside. so i was confused. Now please, do remember my slightly conscious state of mind ( which is more of a bad excuse for what happened :-s). So I kept sitting with the paan in hand trying to quickly think of a way to have it without looking silly. and somehow the brain was not working.
And then.......Suddenly it struck me........the right way of eating the paan that is!!!!!! and i had my eureka moment of the day...........so very comfortably i sprang up, lifted the packed paan in my right hand, looked around comfortably and with that crazy winner's look..........popped the pack straight into my mouth........after a full 5 mins of debating that is...And there i stood with that winner's look savouring that surprisingly different tangy taste of the leaf and trying to make out the gulcand and the other things in between.............

That is when i noticed S looking askance at me with a very puzzled expression. He seemed to have been observing me since i put the packet into my mouth.........and then he came upto me and asked..........." Dude, tune bahar ka patta kahan phenka"........and i was like " patta........kaunsa patta?"

And then it struck me................arre bhaiya i had been hallucinating........kolkata or delhi or mumbai ...........a paan is a paan is a paan..........and i had just had one with the outside wrapping leaf............ :( :(......boy did i make the laughing stock of the evening :(.........

My only salvation........
1. I was not the only one. My partner in crime and in fact the one whose act i actually followed ( yeah the eureka moment did not come all by itself)......was his majesty our dear groom himself..........
2. As a concession, we both got to have another delicious paan.......to humne do paan khaaye bajaaye ke ek......nice idea na. :D
3. I have become phamous in kolkata now. Next day i had gone again to meet my friends and aunty, the groom's mother came up to me and started speaking to me in bengali. now i am still a learner......the farthest i have gone is "aami bangla jaani na"........but i knew what aunty said immediately......from the twinkle in her eye...
she said " Beta, have the paan without the wrapper :-s".....

To bhaiyon aur bhaiyon ki beheno.....sun lo meri baat...paan hota hai paan.........chahe woh banarsi ya allahabadi ya kahin ka ........sab ek hai......i know the true blue connousiueers ( pardon the speeling) would disagree..........but for me its all the same......no more thinking re baba.......


adios
Chaos