The Best PaniPuri I had in India

Many people ask me, “Why don’t you write about the best pani puri you have eaten?” 

Ahhh, pani puri makes my mouth water, especially that one place where I used to eat for 4 years when I was based in Ahmedabad, India. The year was 1978 when I had just entered my teens. It was on the busy Ashram Road, which had a string of movie theaters starting from the RBI building, or the grand architectural structure called La Gajjar Chambers, right up to  the famous men's tailor Peter D'Souza's shop near Nehru Bridge. He used to be the best men's tailor; be it trousers or men's suits or safari, he was the man to go to to make you look like a movie star with his perfectly fitted clothes. Ashram Road in Ahmedabad was lined with famous movie theaters like Dipali, Ajanta, Ellora, Shiv, Shree, and Natraj. If you suddenly planned to go for a movie, you went to this street, and in one of the cinemas, you got a ticket to view a movie. This was sometime around 1978. 

There was this Pani Puri street vendor who used to stand outside Natraj Theatre, just near its entrance. You could easily notice him by the crowd around him, waiting for their turn to enjoy his Pani Puri. It was run by a man in his late thirties wearing a dhoti and a crisp, clean white kurta. He had come from a small village in Uttar Pradesh with a dream of making it big in Ahmedabad city by selling his Pani Puri. He used to start his shop around 2:30 p.m., just before the 3 p.m. afternoon movie show started. Some people would already be expectantly waiting for him before he arrived so that they would be the first to eat one plate before the movie started and then, after the movie, come back and eat some more. 

I, too, would be waiting, so I am familiar with the details of the masalas and the steps he followed for setting up his streetside eatery. The man used to come holding an X-shaped stand in his hand, with a circular basket on his head. He placed the stand, and on top of it the circular basket that was closed on the sides by cardboard, which had a huge bag of nice round fluffy puris. Then started the setting up for the next 8 hours of service of one of the tastiest pani puris I can recall. 

He first used to take a homemade secret mint-coriander-based paste from a bottle and put a spoonful of it in an earthen Matkaa, or pot, add black salt, jeeraa, red chilli, and amchoor powder, and fill the matka with water and blocks of ice. Then he opened another bottle, and from it came out a sweet khajoor and gud chutney. He then lit a small stove on which he put a circular pan that had a thick mix of yellow peas, bits of green chillies, tomatoes, and ginger pieces and created a ragda gravy, while we waited expectantly like addicts waiting for their fix. 😛. 

He then distributed one cup each to the first five customers. The cups were not plastic but made from dry leaves, so they were environmentally friendly. He then took a spoon and tasted the mint water from the matka, the sweet chutney, and the ragda. The master was trying to ensure it met the highest standards of taste. He then crushed the boiled aloo in a small steel vessel and added boiled black chanaa and green moong mixed with his special chaat masala, whose recipe also was a secret. Sometimes I wonder even to this day as to why a boiled aloo looks so tasty at the pani puri place but does not look as tasty at home. 😉. 

One by one, he would, like an artist, take a puri, tap it on top to create a hole, fill it with moong and aloo chanaa mix, dip the puri in the mint water, put the sweet chutney if you asked for medium spicy flavor, and place it on your cup made of dry leaves. The mint water in the matka was spicy, so if you only wanted spicy pani puri, you said no to the sweet chutney addition in your puri. 

 As soon as it went in your mouth, a burst of a combination of flavors—the mint, the chanaa, the aloo, the khajoor gud, and the masalas—created in your mind a joyous feeling of garba or dandia or bhangra among your taste buds, and your mind was singing YEH DIL MAAANGE MORE MORE. 

6 puris for 1.50 rupees, and customers used to complain about the high price, and the owner would smile and say, "Things are becoming so costly; I also have a family to support." I used to eat three puris without meetha to feel that I am a grown-up man and three puris with sweet chutney, as after eating the first three and realizing they were too spicy, I would feel I am still not all that mature. 😜. 

He served only two dishes; one was panee puree, and the other was the dish that was also a must-eat. 

He would take six purees, one by one create a hole in them, and place them on the serving dish again made of dry leaves, fill the purees with hot ragda and green moong, add the green and the red chutney, and top each puree with thick fresh dahee, sprinkle jeera powder, chili powder, black salt, and sev with coriander and bits of kacheee kairee or raw mango, and serve the tastiest Daheee pureee. Again, he used to put the two chutneys to get color to the dahee. 

That taste of hot ragda, in the puree the moong and the masalas, the cool daheee, and the mili juleee of the green and red chutney, is just too good. The dahi puri cost 2 rupees. After you paid, he would give one free decorated puree with the moong, chana, and sev packed in it. 

Not sure what happened to him after I left Ahmedabad, in 1982, but I am sure he would have become a big success, as the taste was too good and customers used to line up to eat there. I hope he succeeded in life, as such talent, along with humility, even the gods in heaven, will bless with prosperity. 

I never asked his name; as outstanding actor Naseer Bhai says in a famous movie, “I don’t give my name to people, as in the name they try to identify my religion and begin to judge me or have preconceived notions.”