Outside every restaurant in Mumbai, and probably India, there is a man selling 'paan'. These are 'betel' leaves with various fillings, some tobacco, some sweet, and are chewed in the side of ones mouth after a meal. They supposedly freshen the breath and aid digestion but mostly result in a lot of spitting. I chose to try a sweet paan. The paan wallah was filling betel leaves with lime paste, tobacco, nuts and spices, filling, folding and wrapping in a second leaf at a rate of about one every five seconds.
A request for a sweet one was obviously unusual and he took his time over it, taking down jars of sweets, chutney and nuts from the shellf above his head until there was much more than a mouthful on the leaf in front of him.
I managed to bite off half of it, stuck it in the side of my mouth and wondered how long I was supposed to chew it for before I could spit it out. It tasted like soap and really nasty cough syrup and was full un-chewable bits which seemed a lot like rocks. It created a lot of juice, which explained all the spitting. The paan wallah told me to "keep chewing for many hours", and just spit out the excess juice. After a couple of minutes I'd had enough and spat the whole lot out into the gutter, despite the cries of protest from the audience which had gathered. Although only 30 rupees (about 20 pence) it was not an experince I planned to repeat.
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