Aan, Baan aur Pan...

Mohit sent me this article from Outlook India. "Betel Mania" by Namrata Joshi. I love Outlook, it so refreshing a read always.

Paan is omnipresent in Banaras—as inextricably a part of the city's eternal landscape as the river, the ghats, the temples, the narrow, winding streets. "It's as much part of our daily lives as drinking water or breathing oxygen," Sanjay Srivastava of the Hindi department of Poorvanchal University tells me, as he volunteers to guide me through the maze of Banarasi galis.

On my very first day in the temple town, I pop a paan into my mouth, bought from the shop around the corner, hoping that it would do to me what Amitabh promised it would in that immortal paean to the Banarasi paan in Don. I wait, in vain. What makes it different from the paan I occasionally have at Delhi's Bengali Market or the beeda I pick up after a heavy meal at Andhra Bhawan? What makes it so special that Khai ke paan Banaras wala still belts out on FM channels across the country and is still being remixed, replayed, enjoyed and danced to?

I express my misgivings and am promptly told to savour paan the "proper Banarasi way". Which means wake up early in the morning, pray at the security-heavy Kashi Vishwanath temple, head to the Kachori Gali, eat a hearty breakfast of piping hot potato-beans subzi and kachori, sweet jalebis for dessert and thick lassi to wash it down. Only then head for the Keshav Tambool Bhandar near the Banaras Hindu University gate for a paan, and you'll understand the abiding enchantment of the humble betel leaf. I am promised that I'll find lots to chew on.

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.

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.