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Thursday, March 24, 2005

Chp 33. Puchhka!

If I was granted just one wish on what food I’d like to eat for the last time before I die, it would be “puchhka”.

By puchhka, I do not mean the south Indian version of the paani puri. Yuck. Those are horrible. They use “patanis” (chaana) instead of aloo chaat and not only that, they even serve it hot! Eeewwww. That’s the only thing I hate about staying in Tamilnadu for the past 14 years.

By puchhka, I mean the typical Kolkata style paani puri. Aloo with lots n lots of chaat masala, kala nimak, other spices and tamarind. Maaaan, just writing about this is already making my mouth water.

I spent 3 lovely years in Calcutta before I moved down South. Almost every evening, me n my frens used to run to the chaat-wala behind the school gate before the evening “prep” classes commence. We always have puchkas, and sometimes the bhel-pooris and jhal-masalas.

I was just in 4th standard then. But never-the-less, I was always the champion puchhka eater. 16 years later and I still am the champ. Hence this is an open challenge to all of you out there. If you can eat more than me, I’ll pay for the puchhkas (and maybe a dinner treat later if you’re of the opposite sex). Otherwise, vice-versa.

Speaking of old times, man, I really miss those Cal days. For one rupee we used to get around 5-6 puchhkas. And now, each friggin puchhka is 50paise. This is when you realize the puchhka-wala understands much more about the economy and inflation better than you do. And they are shrewd at marketing too. In Cal, u’ll find a puchhka-wala in almost every street, but never two of them on the same street. Boy, dada even knows about economies of scale. And I really don’t wanna start on how well they maintain their inventories. Seriously, the IIMs should make a deep study on them. If the “dabba-walas” of Mumbai can create such a flur in the economic scene, why not my “puchhka-walas”?

If you really wanna know how crazy I was about puchhkas back then, check this out. I even named one of my G.I.Joe characters as “Puchhka Joe”! He was ofcourse, always the good guy who kill C.O.B.R.A Commander and Destro in the end. *sigh* those days….

Anyway, enough of puchhkas for the time being. I getting more and more hungry over here….

Until next time… goodbye.