The Pao of Love
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I am not sure how to describe a Vada-Pav without taking the ‘it’s not food it’s an emotion’ route. I fear that making plain what a Vada-Pav is will erase its allure. Not unlike how a magic trick ceases to be amazing when you become aware of, well…the trick. A Vada-Pav is indeed greater than the sum of its parts - spiced potato, fried, and encased in fluffy bread. It’s essentially a snack. But, in essence, it’s a whole lot more than that.
In Mumbai, no matter where you live, you aren’t too far from a street Vada-Pav vendor. These unstructured pop-ups are hardly ever known by a name, just the street corner they occupy. Like the one outside Modern college, or the one opposite a traffic signal in front of a temple. The good ones then become pointers for identifying addresses. Modern College is where that couple sells the spiciest Vada-Pavs. The temple is bang opposite that Vada-pav wallah. You use them to place where people live and map out your neighborhood. They become landmarks.
My favorite Vada-Pav is from a stall not too far away from home. I know the set-up as simply the ‘Sector-6 one’. It’s run by a man with a cart that oscillates on a daily basis between being on a pavement and a slightly more interior location. In the evening, a minor crowd buzzes around his cart. There is no proper way of ordering a Vada Pav here. You simply stand with outstretched hands, a prayer on your lips, and wait for a modicum of eye contact with the owner. When your eye-lines meet, you get a Vada-Pav either plonked straight into your hand or wrapped up in a newspaper. You pay in cash. Digital payment is enabled but seems oddly inappropriate.
Of course, there is always a chance of discovering another shop in a faraway part of town. I once found a tiny box-shaped store under a bridge. It barely had space for one person. But there he was, all day, selling Vada-Pav’s so divine that I remember what they taste like even years later. Recently, I happened to mention this to my father. And, he exclaimed, much to my surprise - “Oh, it’s the one that puts bits of fried batter along with the Vada, right!” It turns out, he had been snacking on one or two on his way back from work for quite some time.
Funnily enough, my dad and I have had numerous conversations centered around Vada-Pavs over the years. This one time I was musing out loud about how it might make economic sense for some of these Vada-Pav vendors to ditch the outdoors for a safer business where they’d not have to worry about paying off authorities anymore or the Mumbai monsoons. My dad told me about a popular Vada-Pav vendor who had a spot on the street. He’d lay out a cloth and fry Vadas in a giant vat. His wife would quickly tuck them in a pav and hand them out, piping hot. The couple moved to a shop around the corner, presumably encouraged by a consistent crowd of loyalists. But, people just didn’t flock to their shop. Theirs was a brand defined by familiarity with a place and a taste. Not by a name. Soon enough, they were back to the streets.
This anecdote reminds me of an R.K Naryanan short story called The Martyr’s Corner, in which Rama, a street food vendor, is forced to displace his thriving business and move a few meters away. The new location is just away from the gaze of his regular customers, his business folds and Rama ends up as a waiter in a restaurant serving South-Indian fare. In Rama’s arc, Narayan encapsulates the fate of many street-food vendors and how inextricably their lives are linked to factors entirely out of their control. As much as Rama’s journey is emblematic of a kind of India, the Vada-Pav is a Bombay in a bite, the Vada-Pav seller is a Mumbaikar.
The Vada-Pav is a perfect snack for Mumbai. It is omnipresent, its size is manageable and its price, affordable. It’s also a cosmopolitan snack. Its two main constituents are European imports from three centuries ago. The Portuguese introduced the potato to India and called it ‘batata’, still a prevalent name for the conventional Vada. And, then there is the humble pav or the ‘pao’ which comes from the Portuguese word for bread.
In the story of the Vada-Pav, the pav has a tendency to get sidelined. But, make no mistake. There is no Vada-Pav without the Pav, literally or otherwise. ‘Batata Vada’ by itself, is passable. You need a plate to eat it and hold the accompanying chutneys. Pav makes the snack a handheld one. Its soft exterior balances the crunch of the deep-fried Vada and its slight sweetness cuts the hotness of the spiced potato filling.
Over the years, pao has become the Scottie Pippen to many a Micheal Jordan in the Mumbai food scene (Robin to Batman if you will). In the Parsi cafes of Colaba, minced mutton (kheema) is served with a sprinkling of lemon and a garnish of pickled onions. But, the dish is incomplete without pao. The heady mashup of veggies called ‘bhaji’ is elevated to dizzying heights by toasted and buttered pao. The Maharashtrian snack, Missal becomes a soupy hot mess without it. Basketball fans may remember that in 1993, Scottie Pippen had a near MVP year without Micheal Jordan. Indeed, pao can be a hero by itself too.
Consider ‘Brun’, a breakfast version of pao with a crusty hard top layer - a recipe perfected by the Iranians. Brun sliced in half and served with butter - Brun Maska is easily one of my favorite breakfasts. When I was a child, my father would drive down to one of the old bakeries in my neighborhood and get me some brun. I would then proceed to dip it in chai and that was Sunday. Even now when I am back home, I look forward to the one day in the week when he does the same. And then I come back to Canada with the memories of that breakfast as fresh as the pao that define it. Does anyone want to trade free healthcare for some Brun Maska?
Here are some recommendations -
I completed the explosive and brilliant season of Watchmen after much delay. It’s as awesome as advertised and takes the superhero genre and does something unique with it. Its grand ideas are implemented with great care and sophistication. It is both top-notch film-making and satisfyingly entertaining.
Check out a gorgeous collection of photos and appropriately gorgeous accompanying essay by Vijeta Kumar in this piece - Ponnuthai’s side. Vijeta is a brilliant essayist and I highly recommend two of her essays which were published on Huffington Post India but aren’t online anymore as the site shut down. I’ve copied them onto a Word file to share - (1): To Fall In Love (With Yourself), You Need A Plunger, Not Plumber. (2): Give A Dalit Man A Pair Of Scissors, And He’ll Show You What Freedom Is.
A couple of weeks ago Bangladesh celebrated 50 years of independence. Last year, I read a brilliant book on the 1971 Indo-Pak war that led to the creation of Bangladesh - The Colonel Who Would Not Repent by Salil Tripathi. The book is not an easy read but is rewarding in its details and the scope of Salil’s research and interviews. I’ve heard good things about Srinath Raghavan’s book - 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh too. It looks at this historical event from a different angle and granularity.
Rahul Dravid’s new monicker - The Gunda of Indiranagar is all the rage on Twitter. Ayyapa K.M who directed Dravid’s angry turn for Cred also made this rather funny advertisement with the Great Khali for Ambuja Cement that I really enjoyed. I came across two amazing artists on Instagram - Snehal P Sanathanan’s (@snehalpsanathanan) cartoons have a unique style and are biting in their sarcasm and satire. Naveen Selvanathan (@naveen.selvan) is an artist at Dreamworks whose brilliant work you are most likely to see featured in the next big animated film.
Singer extraordinaire Arijit Singh made an incredible music director debut with the Netflix film Pagglait. The movie’s jukebox is eclectic and totally deserves a listen. My favorite is the Reprise and Unplugged versions of the very breezy and hummable Thode Se Kam Ajnabi. I’ve also listened to two of Max Richer’s compositions a lot - Event Horizon from the OST of Ad Astra and On The Nature of Daylight which featured most prominently in Arrival.
Tennessee Williams says so much with so little in this poem.
We Have Not Long To Love
By Tennessee Williams
We have not long to love.
Light does not stay.
The tender things are those
we fold away.
Coarse fabrics are the ones
for common wear.
In silence I have watched you
comb your hair.
Intimate the silence,
dim and warm.
I could but did not, reach
to touch your arm.
I could, but do not, break
that which is still.
(Almost the faintest whisper
would be shrill.)
So moments pass as though
they wished to stay.
We have not long to love.
A night. A day....
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