 |
| A hawker girl making preparations for the "chana chat" |
 |
| Cartload of seasonal fruits |
 |
| The quintessential childhood goodies neatly arranged at roadside |
 |
| The mouth watering "kairi" (raw mango) sprinkled with salt and red chilly powder |
Last week, I was heading for some work when the
traffic stood still due to rain and all the chaos that entails the Mumbai rains ensued. Being a photographer I tend to grab even such frustrating moments to discover stories in fleeting moments and believe me, streets in India are like never ending scrolls of circus of life but more about that in some other post.
While I was trying to observe life around, I saw a triumphant street vendor trudging his cart amidst the incessant honking,
choicest of abuses and middle finger salutations barely managing to bring his cart next to my car, impatiently waiting for the signal
to go green. In his cart lay the mouth watering childhood goodies that made me
feel so nostalgic about the pleasant memories of my school days!
I went to a school that never allowed
any food carts near the premises. But somehow, a Gorkha family from Nepal had managed to have a food cart little away from our school compound. That cart served as a treasure trove for children who would run frantically to reach
and clamour around it during recess. When the decibel
levels grew too loud for the Nepali lady, she would invariably yell profane words in her native language which were sometimes translated in Hindi by
her rebellious son. :)
The rich spread at the cart next to my car; Amla (gooseberries), Kairi (raw mango), Bair (jujubes), Singada ( water chestnuts), Imli (tamrind), Karonda (Carissa, a kind of dogbane, according to Wikipediea), Kauth (wood apple), Bhuni Sing (roasted groundnuts) took me back to carefree days of priceless joy of eating copious quantity of these goodies without iota of shame or guilt or worry of calories!
Having been born and brought up in staunch Maharashtrian Brahmin family, eating street food or for that matter anywhere outside home was considered a blasphemy, hence the adventures of secretly bartering my lunch with the tidbit bought from the street cart were limited to occasional impropriety triggered by eternal rebel thriving happily inside me.
In city like Mumbai one rarely finds such street carts that cater to innocent longings of childhood. With new international food chains doing brisk business in every corner, one often sees children eating junk food and they rarely know names of the local fruits and vegetables! I am dying to see a child screwing his nose after taking bite of a tamarind pod or a raw mango sprinkled
with salt and red chilli powder! I would give anything to see children compete to finish eating sugarcane without help of knife. I am searching for children who know which fruit or vegetable their fancy gelato/sorbet is coming from. I want to meet children who have experienced life and its priceless goodies without the weight of snooty perceptions of food that we all are often subjected to.
Alas, food is no more just food. It is also reflection of one's way of life. Guess I will have to travel to some small town where simple, innocent pleasures are still part of growing up in gay abandon!
