Paan is an acquired style. I’ve seen many international guests to India, obsessed with Indian meals typically, choke and splutter after biting into one. Paan is a betel leaf wrap containing betel nuts, cardamom, fennel seeds, lime paste, and typically tobacco. It’s chewed after meals as a digestive and palate cleanser. It’s one thing Ibn Battuta and Amir Khusro wrote paeans to. Even Marco Polo talked about it after arriving on the Coromandel Coast of southern India in 1292, noting what number of locals averted alcohol however had been hooked on chewing tambur, a leaf typically combined with camphor, spices and lime. Battuta documented that palace meals within the Delhi Sultanate all the time ended with paan, and that the change of betel leaf/tambulam finalised pacts between kingdoms. In Kerala, nonetheless, dakshina — the honorarium you supply to gurus and elders throughout events — is saved in a betel leaf, together with nutmeg.
In Bengal, paan performs a special function. A Bengali bride covers her eyes with betel leaves earlier than she glimpses her groom, arguably, a royal pact of its personal. I’m going to concentrate on the Bengali paan. Many upper-class Bengali properties as soon as ready paan at residence earlier than street-side paan stalls turned ubiquitous.
Making paan was a craft: Paan leaves are sometimes saved in copper paan daans, or containers that resemble mini trunks however are fabricated from copper. While you open the clasp and carry the highest, you see compartments holding totally different components. Beneath that is one other layer holding washed inexperienced paan leaves. To make the paan, every heart-shaped paan leaf is cut up down the center and the 2 halves are positioned collectively. You’ll often dip your fingers right into a copper urn containing a thick white lime and water resolution (choon), with which the highest leaf can be coated. The alkaline on this choon is meant to guard the mouth from the sharp pungency of the paan leaf’s juice. Then, a brown liquid made by grinding the resinous substance from a tree – I’ve forgotten which – combined with water, goes over the white paste. Lastly, chopped supuri/supari (betel nuts), had been adopted by a couple of cardamom seeds and typically cardamom coated with silver foil. Saunf/fennel seeds and just a little spot of keora water accomplished the paan. This was then rolled right into a cone, held collectively by a clove. The cloves, cardamom, and saunf act as cooling brokers after a heavy Bengali meal, and paan is all the time served after lunch and dinner.
Paan is a betel leaf wrap containing betel nuts, cardamom, fennel seeds, lime paste, and typically tobacco. (Photograph by Kentaro Komada on Unsplash)
Nevertheless it’s not all kosher in Bengali paan. Many chew paan wrapped round perfumed tobacco known as jarda. The horrible follow of spitting out paan – often when wrapped round tobacco – is taken into account to have began across the sixteenth century when tobacco was launched into India by the Portuguese. The identify “betel” was additionally first used within the sixteenth century by the Portuguese, and is presumably derived from vetila—the Malay phrase for leaf. The Malayalam and Tamil names for betel leaf are additionally similar-sounding, vettila and vettilai, respectively. In Kannada, betel is taamboola, kwa in Manipuri and naagavaela in Marathi. Right now, there are 32 types of the leaf, cultivated throughout India and Bangladesh, from Benarasi to Calcutta to Magai.
If you wish to really feel virtuous, in keeping with Ayurveda, paan has medicinal properties and well being advantages. Paan leaves are excessive in carotenes, calcium and Vitamin B3, B2, B1 and C. Paan is usually given to new moms as it’s mentioned to stimulate the salivary glands and gastric juices, lowering bloating within the abdomen and boosting calcium manufacturing. Indian classical singers are recognized to eat paan to coach their voices because it helps with throat infections. For infants with colic, betel leaves coated with castor oil are heated and positioned on the newborn’s abdomen to alleviate their ache. In Sushruta Samhita, an Indian textual content on drugs and surgical procedure relationship to the sixth century, it says that meals must be chased with paan. Historical texts additionally point out how totally different elements of the betel leaf characterize totally different Hindu gods: the entrance is Lakshmi, Shiva across the edges, and Yama – the Lord of dying – residing within the stalk, which is to be lower off.
I’m not a lot of a fan of at this time’s paan stall concoctions. For those who’re not cautious, you will see that your meetha paan/ candy paan stuffed with coconut flakes and gulkand, a rose petal jam. Now that nobody has the time or curiosity to make paan for you from a copper field with freshly washed paan leaves from Bengal or Benaras, I might nonetheless suggest that you simply hotfoot it to the neighbourhood paanstall and take a look at a meetha paan and a saada paan. My tip – ask for geeli supari, that are softened betel nuts. Having paan is an expertise that everybody ought to have not less than as soon as.
Subsequent week, I’ll be writing on the whole lot you need to eat in Bombay, drawing from my early school days to now after I’m a Bombay veteran. And likewise about why Bombay was a metropolis I beloved with my tummy.
