The Famous Paan

This incidence took place long back, when I was in graduation but it is still fresh in my mind and I guess also in the mind of my friends (who were we me that day ). During those days me and my four other close friends were well known in the college for always being together. In our graduation days we had lots of embarrassing, wonderful, enjoyable and weird types of experiences but this one stands out among them, if not the best, but surely one of the best and memorable one.

One of my friend is a Bengali girl and as we all know for Bengalis the durga puja is the most important festivals, so every year we used to go to her place to enjoy and take part in the celebrations, mostly on ashtami (eight day of navratras) since on that day veg food was served in the pandal. Actually there was one more very important and main reason to go to her home during durga puja, her parents used to spend most of their time (including nights) in pandal so we had the full house left to us and thus had complete freedom to do whatever we wanted to without any restriction.

That day after having lunch and spending the afternoon and most of the evening at her house enjoying the old songs, playing cards and chatting, we finally thought to go out, roam around in the famous atta market, Noida, as well as have dinner in some restaurant. After empting all our pocket money for dinner, before going to my friend’s house, we went to the pandal as she had to collect the house keys from her parents.

Though the pandal was glittering inside, it was quite dark outside; even the street lights were dim and far away. While waiting for her outside the pandal, we saw a Paan Wala (person who sells paan) and my friends were tempted at the thought of having the delicious , yummy and awesome Banaras paan, I have never tried it and didn’t want to either so my friend told the vendor to make 5 paans (one of my friend’s friend , now my close friend too was also there with us), he was looking at us blankly so I thought probably he did not understand Hindi as he was sitting near Bengali puja pandal (logically correct right?) and since I don’t know how to speak Bengali so being over smart I gestured to him with my hands (showed him five fingers ) , he looked at me and stated making the paan, I felt proud of myself , and why not ,after all I was able to make him understand what we wanted through my sign language. While he was making paan we got busy in GT (girls talk) Five min latter he said, “Madam hogaya”, so soon? one of my friend wondered, anyways she took the packet and asked how much, he replied, “paanch rupayaa”, even more surprised, another friend asked him again to confirm if she had heard correctly but he again said 5 Rs, so we thought it might be a festival bonanza, thus getting paan at such a discounted rate. We paid him 5 Rs. Meanwhile one of my friend who had taken the packet from the vendor thought she will take out the paan and distribute to us. When she put her hand in the packet and took out the paan ….she had murmurra (bhelpuri) in her hand.

How? Well the “dabbaas” which in the darkness of night we mistook as having spices used in making paan was actually having ingredients for making bhelpuri and the reason he was looking blankly which I thought was because he did not know the language was actually because we were asking him to give something he did not have and when I gestured him 5 he thought we wanted murmura for 5 Rs.

Ha Ha Ha....

Well the story does not end here, after few days , since my friends still had carving for the paan , after dinner at sagar ratana (my friends birthday treat), one of my friend went to the cashier and asked him “bhaiya teen paan hain kya”, he replied, “madam teen kya ek bhi nahi hain”