Nandu, a sufi paanwalla

Nandu does chuna –Kattha coating on Paan with practised delicacy. His underarm balancing of the Pan –making ensures that the precariously perched portable TV atop a small raised wooden platform remains unbroken. The TV is barely a foot away from Nandu’s elbowroom in the small kiosk on the entrance of the Press Complex in Indore.  

Had Nandu been like many vigorous paan makers of Jabalpur, the TV set would have gone to pieces long back.

A score of Jabalpur Paan makers do the coating with their whole body shaking in an almost violent rhythm as though possessed by some evil spirit. It is quite a feast to eyes to watch them coating-rolling paan, regaling customers with jokes and pleasantries, keeping them abreast of their friends’ comings and goings and still not missing any ingredients strewn all over the shops for the finished Paan. Such deftness of the hands is indeed a treat to watch.  

Nandu, in contrast, is too cool for Jabalpur paan trade.  He is almost a Sufi saint. Even if Barrack Obama were to ask for a Paan, Nandu’s enchanted eyes would not tear off the TV set on the front, belting out Bhajans, old Hindi songs, stand- up comedies or any thing worth his watching. 

And he is quite catholic in his taste. One moment it is Discovery channel, another Aastha channel. In between his keeps switching channels from Hindi movies to songs. News channels he abhors. He needs channels he can synchronize his nervous energy with—for shaking head, humming with songs and leisurely attending to customers simultaneously.

I watch him bemusedly every time I visit his shop and his immersion is the self gives me more kick than the Zarda wala pan he sells to me at Rs 5 a piece.  

The adorable man, invariably in dirty Baniyan and crumpled pyjama, reminds me of characters from       

Shri Lal Shukla’s classic novel Raag Darbari.

He never disagrees with his customers, no matter the topics. If some one decries growing crime graph in Indore, Nandu nods like a spring doll, occasionally offering his supportive comments.

He can be biggest votary of Indore police next moment if the next customer sounded quite impressed with law and order in Indore.

For college students, he is a jolly friend. He gladly lets them flock the kiosk , unmindful of the crowd’s negative impact on his clientele.

He is too irresistible not to write about, primarily because he bears steaks of bumpkin a la Dilip Matthar of Jabalpur I have already written about.

However, Nandu, unlike Dilip Matthar, is not a small time criminal whose stupid idea of excluding a police officer’s mother from  his drunken inventory of invectives brutally boomeranged. I have written a blog on the whole episode earlier.   

Few men I have seen are so pleased with self as Nandu. He laughs rapturously when you don’t suspect any comic situation, leave alone joke, around. He hums with film songs unselfconsciously , letting impatient customers to wait. He talks what he thinks is funny and roars in laughter on it, not minding how others are reacting.

He is a little swarthy in look with swollen eyes and disheveled hair.

I have grown quite fond of Nandu due to his devil-may –care attitude. Such attitude is not easy to imbibe. It comes naturally.