Adhi Potoba

Following my wedding on my last trip, I decided to take my firang wife to a city that offers a little more of the India that is promised in travel books than what Pune can offer. And after an impromptu flight to Jaipur, we settled in a generic hotel, the name of which escapes me at the moment. It was a quaint little place and by quaint I mean management had absolutely no interest in managing the it. It was the kind that makes your local lodge look like a 5 star hotel. The restaurant part of the hotel consisted of 7 tables haphazardly huddled into a room attached to a kitchen. The food however was spectacular. They had some pretty good pakoras, the likes of which I have never had before. Their cauliflower pakoras were especially memorable. My most memorable moment in said restaurant, however, was when I asked for some sugar to go with my coffee. I discovered some ants in my sugar and summoned the waiter immediately. As I referred him the ants in my sugar he gave me a look that suggest...

As a little boy growing up in Pune, I became aware of the fact that the raw green mango (kairi) and the deliciously sweet, ripe mango in spite of being the same fruit are completely different animals. I also understood that a mango stolen from someone else’s yard tastes infinitely better than a store bought mango. It is popular knowledge that the best green mangoes inevitably come from the trees that are in the yards of the meanest people in the neighbourhood. These trees are usually guarded by some of the house’s senior gentry, who will come after you with sticks—making stealing mangoes from the neighbourhood one of my favourite summer sports. After the annual examinations in April one quickly discovers that two months of summer vacation is in fact really boring. During our vacation, the area kids would gather to pass their afternoons with a game of cricket, carrom or cards. A good afternoon’s cricket is really incomplete without a good snack and the raw mangoes that were in peak sea...