Whose city is Bombay? Bombay is the vadapav eaters’ city, Mama of the Rajan company had said to me. It is the lunch of the chawl dwellers, the cart pullers, the street urchins; the clerks, the cops and the gangsters.
I ask people sitting around my uncle’s office where the best vadapav in Bombay is. They chorus in unison: “Borkar!” I set out into the afternoon heat of the central city in search of Borkar. I don’t have much time; they have told me Borkar conducts his trade for only three hours a day, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., or until the vadas last. I walk along narrow roads dug up in the centre, revealing gaping holes, past a vegetable market, past Kotachi Wadi, where some of the loveliest old houses are still inhabited by the original Catholic tenants, past the wedding-card market, past the Jain Clinic, until finally I get to Borkar. There is a small crowd of people, men to one side, women to the other, holding out money. Borkar sits on his stall, frying up a fresh batch. An old board says:
VADA 3 Rs.
SINGLE PAV 1 Re.
PROP: BORKAR
I wait for him to finish frying; the dozens of people around me do the same. I am tensed, with my money at the ready. As soon as the ladle emerges from the vat of boiling oil full of the vadas, beignets conjoined with wisps of yellow batter, the frenzy begins. People are thrusting their money forward, mostly ten-rupee notes; in front of the assistant is a thali full of two-rupee coins. Nobody seems to be ordering just one. Not everybody will get their vadapav from this batch; the timid will have to keep waiting. The assistant serves the women first. The stacks of pav have been sprinkled with chutney – the top half of the inside of the bun is bathed in green chutney, the bottom with red garlic chutney – and the assistant reaches out with one hand, in one continuous arc of his arm opening the pav, scooping up two of the vadas, one in each nest of pav, and delivering it to the hungry customer. I walk away from the stall and crush the vada by pressing down on it with the pav; little cracks appear in the crispy surface, and the vada oozes out its potato and pea mixture. I eat. The crispy batter, the mouthful of sweet-soft pav tempering the heat of the chutney, the spices of the vada mixture – dark with garam masala and studded with whole cloves of garlic that look like cashews – get masticated into a good mouthful, a good mouth-feel. My stomach is getting filled, and I feel like I am eating something nourishing after a long spell of sobbing. Borkar has done his dharma.
I go next to the cold drinks house at Sikkanagar, thirsty after the fire of the vadapav. There are pleasant Formica booths to sit in; the whole space has a restful, leisurely atmosphere, within which one can sip one’s cold drink and watch the bustling street in peace. There is a menu of sherbets on the wall in Marathi; each is reputed to have some salubrious property. The amla essence is good for urinary problems, night blindness and aggravation; the ginger sherbet is recommended for flatulence, bronchitis and menstrual pain. Most of them taste great and are a quiet subversion of the worldwide dominance of cola-flavoured drinks. In fact, you can launch a direct assault on Coca-Cola: you can order a masala Coke. This is the same old Coca-Cola you know, the same fizzy black liquid, but with lemon, rock salt, pepper and cumin added to it. When the Coke is poured into the glass, which has a couple of teaspoons of the masala waiting to attack the liquid from the bottom up, the American drink froths up in astonished anger. The waiter stands at your booth, waiting until the froth dies down, then puts in a little more of the Coke, then waits a moment more, then pours in the rest. And, lo! it has become a Hindu Coke. The alien invader has come into the country. It has been accepted into the pantheon of local drinks but has a little spice added to it, a little more zing. The cocaine is back in the Coke.
My nose is red raw from the pollution of the central city, but I can’t keep my eyes from the psychedelic chaos of the streetscape. Rows of small shops, each dedicated to furnishing the city with a microscopically precise commodity or service: wood-furniture polish, typing, hair oil, fireworks, roasted chapatis, coffins, handmade footwear. These shops are run now by the fourth generation of the same family. They live in the building above, paying fifteen rupees, forty-five rupees, as rent. The shops are open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and the owners know where to get the best rose sherbet, the best sabudana khichdi, in that universal intimacy small traders have with street food. When out-of-town relatives come visiting, the sightseeing doesn’t go much beyond this quarter. The evening is capped off, as mine often is, with the last show at Maratha Mandir. The shop owners can never earn enough to get out of their rented accommodation, but such a possibility is unthinkable. Their children will inherit this business, going strong since British times. Over patient decades, a high degree of comfort, of familiarity, has evolved.
