A recent conversation:<\/p>\n
“The panipuri here is really<\/i> good, I must say.”<\/p>\n
“Hmm, yeah, but I still prefer the streetside ones, rather than ones like these, where I have to crack open the puri, and pour in the curry with a spoon, and ladle some of the pani into it before I get to eat it.”<\/p>\n
“So, what is it that you like there? The added taste of the vendor’s hands when he dips the puri into the concoction?”<\/p>\n
“Not really. Part of the experience of eating panipuri is the urgency, I guess. ”<\/p>\n
“Explain.”<\/p>\n
“I mean, you are there, in a queue, and the vendor is in a zen-like state of panipuri-distribution, his hands working purely on instinct. He does multiple things at the same time, juggle preferences – like one customer wants only sweetened pani, one wants more of the filling, another wants more onions , keep a count of how many of the gobblers around him have gobbled how many panipuris. You are part of the system. You lift the panipuri from your plate in one fluid motion, taking care not to spill the water on your clothes or your shoes or ( sacrilege!) the ground. You gulp it down, making sure that you do not breathe when you do so – lest you cough up the puri on your neighbour and cause all the devotees considerable distress. And you also ensure that you’re done with the panipuri that was assigned to you before the next one lands on your plate – otherwise the older one will get soggy, and the newer one will unbalance, and that causes a disturbance in the Force. And that<\/i>, my friend, is the Panipuri Experience, and not this – sitting at a table and using spoons and having to crack open the puri yourself…nossir. This is HEY, hands off my plate!!! ”<\/p>\n Unfortunately, no one can be told<\/i> about the Panipuri Experience – you have to eat it for yourself. There do exist sites<\/a> that<\/a> tell<\/a> you<\/a> how to make panipuris at home. Do I care? Not really. There is this brilliant Wikipedia entry<\/a> ( sarcasm intended) which says this of the mechanics of eating panipuri: ” You and others will be given a small plate and have to stand around the server. The server will then tart serving you all in a round-robin fashion. The servers are renouned to remember your choice of the combination of sweet or hot even when serving an entire croud(sic).”<\/p>\n This description, I am sorry to say, reminds me more of Andrew Tanenbaum’s book on Operating System fundamentals than anything else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A recent conversation: “The panipuri here is really good, I must say.” “Hmm, yeah, but I still prefer the streetside ones, rather than ones like these, where I have to crack open the puri, and pour in the curry with a spoon, and ladle some of the pani into it before I get to eat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}