Why do ‘Starred’ hotels ruin all the fun.

Ever tried a “delicately fried, exquisitely breaded bite sized sphere, filled with perfectly shaped chickpeas picked from the plains of Harit Pradesh and complemented with handpicked and diced Malda potatoes; served with an aromatic concoction of cilantro, effervescent mint reminiscent of sun kissed fields, and tangy tamarind that explodes into a delicious admixture of tastes on one’s glossus?” All for meagre sum of Rs 1200/-?

You would have, if you had ever ordered ‘pani puri’; not at ‘Bunty’s  Golgappas’, but at a five star hotel. You would also have had it served to you in bone china, with separate bowls of mint pani (water), imli (tamarind) pani, potatoes and chickpeas. The hotel staff, never having tried assembling Ikea furniture and perhaps therefore, with the misplaced notion of DIY being good for character building, then expects you to stuff the golgappas with potatoes/chickpeas and add the various pani on your own. Resultantly, killing all joy.

Then the unnecessary stress on hygiene in our starred hotels if you ask me, robs us of the ‘flavours’ that street stalls provide, aka Bunty’s Golgappas; all at Rs 60/-. We just cannot enjoy pani puri till it is served in hindalium bowls richly encrusted with stubborn spots that indicate years of use. Now please don’t think that Bunty’s Golgappas gives a complete go bye to cleanliness. He does use a rag piece that was once a white banyan as a multipurpose utility thingy – used to wipe the counter, his face as well as his hands. His hands thus sanitised, are used to stuff the golgappas with potato/chickpeas and then they dive into the mint water pot and come out with the heavenly golgappa ready for immediate ingestion. On an aside, eating golgappas in this manner does help us in preparing for the stresses of life. What can be more stressful for example than ‘one golgappa in the mouth- one in the hindalium bowl- and Bunty urging you on impatiently with the third in his hand?’

If one is left wondering where Bunty wash his utensils, my advice would be to just let it be as one of those eternal mysteries. In any case, ‘DON’T LOOK BEHIND THE COUNTER’. Remember, ignorance, as a wise man had once said, is always bliss. But in case you are the reckless kinds and you do peek, you will be rewarded with a unique demonstration of utensil washing, consisting mainly of a two second dip/swirl of the bowl in a tub of fetid water.

Tried dosas? Many years ago, while undergoing training at one of the naval establishments during our first year in the Navy, it had become a custom amongst us course mates to order dosas from a friendly neighbourhood dosa wala. These dosas were extremely delicious and everyone agreed that they tingled and teased our taste buds. Ordinarily, one gentleman would be given the task of going to the dosa wala (these were pre mobiles, pre Swiggy days) and bringing 20 or 30 or even 40 dosas, based on the number of willing connoisseurs of his art at that moment. Fate had it that it was my turn to be this gentleman one fine day.

Off I went to the friendly neighbourhood dosa wala and ordered 26 dosas. Order given; I sat on a chair waiting for them to be packed. And then, me being of an inquisitive mind, I thought to myself, “let me see how the dosas are made.” In hindsight, a grievous error.

Now let me try and paint a picture. The ‘hotel’ was a small place, a bit run down and a bit smoky. A curtain that had seen better days during the Mughal era, was used as a partition between the ‘dining hall’ and the kitchen. I pushed the curtain to one side gingerly with the aid of a spoon and stepped into the chef’s domain. The first thing that struck me was the heat. It was not like a sauna, it was a sauna. Making one glisten with sweat being a sauna’s sole aim, this one too endeavoured to please and presented me with a glistening chef as evidence. 

The chef had before him a huge hot plate on which one could make 8-10 dosas at a time. Did I tell you that the chef was glistening? He used a broom to ‘prepare’ the hotplate before loading the batter onto the hotplate. (Now before you cringe, let me tell you that I was okay with that, as the broom was used exclusively for this purpose alone). Then he would use a large spoon to drop blobs of batter onto the hotplate, 8-10 at a time. So far so good. Then came the delicate task of spreading the batter evenly into an oval shape that us discerning dosa eaters seek. Did I tell you that the chef was glistening?

Now spreading the blob of batter into an oval was not difficult for the four to five blobs closest to him. This he accomplished with some flourish and a few deft flicks of his wrist. But there were also four to five blobs further away on the hotplate. These needed to be addressed via a slightly more complicated manoueuvre wherein he had to lean over, stretch his arm, and reach across the hotplate. Did I tell you that the chef was glistening?

Well, he was. Now glistening on the sports field, or in a boxing ring, or a gym is a good thing. It indicates calories being burnt, muscles being built, tyres being lost around the waist, etc. I, being health conscious, am all for it. But over a hotplate? Not so much.  And I’ll tell you why. For the chef to reach the slightly less accessible blobs across the hotplate, he as stated earlier, needed to lean across. Now tell me what happens when a glistening chef reaches over and across the hotplate? Well, if your answer is that gravity would force some of the glistening to transfer to the blobs of batter underneath, you would have hit the nail on the proverbial head.

To cut a long story short, one sight of this transference from the armpit to the batter blobs had me don the mantle of Flash Gordon and be among my expectant but disappointed connoisseurs in a jiffy, dosa less.  (A jiffy for the exacting reader, is the time light takes to travel one millionth of a millionth of a millimetre). Come to think of it, I had always wondered till that fateful day, that while the dosas were delicious, they always seemed to be to my sensitive papillae, a tad mysterious in taste. Was it  asafoetida? Was it black pepper? Well it was a mystery no more – it was NaCl.

Would a five star hotel serve up such mysterious adventures? Never.