Pi ke Pat : A leaf out of my Calcutta days

I love Calcutta. The people are very nice and friendly. They are very accommodating. They treat you like God when you visit them. Feed you with the best sweets. Prepare some exotic dishes. Wow! The kindness of the Bengalis are unlimited.

I used to visit the road-side tea stall. These tea stalls were so differnet from the ones in Kerala or Madras. Only the boiling milk vessel indicated that it was a tea-stall, no shelter, no benches, no newspapers..... What I liked in the tea-stall is the cup in which they give tea. It was made up of clay. Almost everybody preferred drinking in the mud cup. The taste of the tea in mud-cup was so very different from drinking from a glass cup. You should drink it to understand. My good friend Abijith-da took me to the tea-stall and ordered for dui chai (two tea's) and told me it is called 'pi ke pat'. 'Pi ke pat' means, 'drink and throw(bang)'. You basically drink the tea and throw the cup hard so that it breaks . I laughed when I heard how they coined that word. Later I was addicted to it.

Then I started to have rasagollas in the earthen cup. Then had 'misthi doi' (sweet yoghurt). Man! that was lovely. Every thing that came in this mud cup had an extra taste. Its was like have a south-indian meal in a plantain leaf.
One day, we went to have 'Pani puri', and they loved to call it 'puchka' mmm. Me being new to Calcutta, did not know how to eat it. So the puchka walla gave me a leaf, nicely folded like a funnel head. Then he took the puri stuffed with masala, dipped it in the special water and then placed it in my leaf. I took the puri, drank the water and threw away the puri. And Abijith-da was jumping with laughter.... telling, this is not pi-ke-pat. You eat the puri too along with the water and finally when you are done, you throw away the leaf.

Wish I could go back to Calcutta and eat all those things again, those egg-rolls, those samosas (singada), those jilaybees, those milk sweets... those paan... thoose mudi (rice flakes with ground-nut, onion and chili and lemon), wish I could see the pandals during pujas, the decorated idols, the beautiful women, the friendly men, the jovial attitude, their intellectual thoughts and talks. mmmm!! Indeed a City of Joy. Man!!! Am I missing that life or what?