Ponto de Vista

We went to Meerut to report for a story, and got taken for chai and then on the way, we stopped to see the banana godown (there are about 5 in Meerut, we were told.) They come in trucks from Maharashtra, still unripe, to ripen in storage. After 2 days, they are then sent out to the rest of Meerut where they’re ALL consumed! (Do we really eat that many bananas?) The photos from the godown are just uniformly green – stacks and stacks of bananas on ice – but these two characters across the alley seemed oblivious.

It’s a different thing to have “don’t walk on the grass” signs on lawns, but this one – Please do not spit on plants – is posted in the lobby of one of the poshest, best known office buildings in Nariman Point, Mumbai’s financial district. The sheer necessity of having to post such a sign is what’s boggling my mind. How many people actually spat on the plants before the management put this up!??

So there are people out there who claim to be Gujarati and never heard of dabeli – also given the nomenclature of “fun in a bun” by my foodie friend Sheetal. Dabeli is the past participle of ‘press’ – so, in a word: pressed!
Forget vada-pav, that’s done with. Dabeli is a potato thing with raw onions (crunchy), peanuts and pomegranate kernels. And right before serving it, the vendor will sprinkle sev on it… Hot, spicy, sweet, crunchy, chewy — good stuff! At a street corner near you, but only in the evenings. And the best one ever is around the corner from my house! Yay 😀