Society

Betel Mania Live!

Now I know why Amitabh was going loony in that song

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Betel Mania Live!
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P
Don
Khai ke paan Banaras wala
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I do. At 9.30 in the morning, the non-descript wink-and-you-miss-it paan shop, which has been in the business for the last 40 years, is teeming with people. It's not one or two paans that customers are looking for but the supply for an entire day. Finally, I am amidst people who really care about their Banarasi patta.

It doesn't take me long to figure out why the paan shop in Banaras is more than a mere stopover to buy your favourite indulgence. It's a place to meet old friends, make new ones, end old quarrels (and maybe start new ones). It's where you discuss politics, elections and corruption, espouse causes, exchange gossip, repartee and joke, and build the community spirit. We too make an instant friend, Professor Kaushal Kishore Mishra of the department of political science at the bhu, who tells us that the paan in Banaras is no casual habit, it is a whole way of life. "It's a leaf that makes Banaras hold on to its roots and culture. It's the way guests are welcomed in Banaras, an index of etiquette and good manners. They say three things are essential in Banaras—aan, baan aur paan," he tells me.

But beneath the easy-flowing romance, there lie turbulent undercurrents. Like other North Indian temple towns, Banaras too displays its schizophrenia, caught between tradition and modernity, the local and the global, the austere and the hedonistic, the spiritual and the consumerist. Assi Ghat now belongs more to a huge commune of foreigners than to the local Brahmins. The kachoris are being crowded out by pizzas and pastas, Nutella and Marmite, and even a McDonald's in the IP3 Mall. The sari- and carpet-weavers are dying a slow death, kidnappings and mafia gangs are multiplying, bhu is in sad decline, and the Ganga stinks. But still, as Prof Mishra points out, the paan thrives. "Kashi will die the day we lose the paan. Paan Kashi ki shaan hai."

Putting together a paan, the Banarasi way, is a precisely choreographed sequence. The three brothers at the Keshav Tambool Bhandar lay out the leaves, wash and dry them, and, as they smear the many ingredients on the leaf, roll and then fold it into a triangle, their fingers move nimbly, heads bobbing to the rhythm of their hands. "See how their hands move on one leaf at least 18 times; yeh ek ada hai," a regular points out. One after another they smear the kattha, chuna, elaichi, supari, saunf, laung, and the surti and the kimam. If it's a sweet paan, there's gulukand, mint and menthol.

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I sign off the paan pilgrimage with a visit to the Paan Dariba. A shabby, stench-filled, two-storeyed retail mart, this is where paan leaves are traded in bulk. The varieties are spread out in alluring display—Magai, Jagannathi, Desi, Sanchi, Kalkatta. The best, we are told, is the spotted Magai, which arrives in late winter. "It melts in the mouth," says a trader. Small rooms with kilns process the leaves. Apparently, they're boiled at a specific temperature to give them the requisite softness and taste. Hectic trading also goes on in supari and zarda. Behind every paan, there's a thriving economy.

I am back in Delhi now, and I still can't claim to tell the Magai from the Jagannathi. But I do think I've finally understood what makes a plain betel leaf such an iconic, entrenched emblem of this ageless, yet ever-changing city.

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