Hyderabadi Panipuri

Drizzle, honking and dim lights….. ”Yogi Restaurant? Thanks”…”Orange Travels? Hyderabad?”….”Avunu” he said with a nod. It dawned on me quickly that this is how it is going to be…..suddenly I felt very gloomy……
I really did not have the faintest idea 15 days back when boss asked me for my resume to be sent to client that they would actually like it and ask me to lead the project. Mom dad being in USA for last 2.5 months didn’t help, nor being single (read as ‘No Ongoing Affairs’) did. But the wheel had been set, I had no option than to accept the project and go to Hyderabad on a 2 days’ notice.

There were 2 movies they made us watch (well you don’t have much of an option if you are travelling in a semi sleeper bus and they play 2 movies with Dolby like surround sound, do you?) some biscuits and water was offered along the way.

Woke up with aching back, shoulders and neck to discover that next stop is the only place close to my destination. So I got down at ‘Allwyn Colony X Road, Miyapur’ which the auto driver told me to be 25 KMs from Banjara Hills (which I later learned is little more than 15 KMs) and offered a drive there at Rs. 200 (almost at a loss of Rs. 50 he said) which I most certainly could not refuse.

Banjara Hills unlike its name is like a top notch area of Hyderabad with at least 2 Taj Hotels in half a kilometer radius and another Taj and Marriott in 1 KM radius. Which can be simply converted as high standard of leaving and hence more chance for Auto Drivers, roadside vendors and servants to loot me. All of them made sure I spent huge chunks of money to reach places I didn’t even wish to go to and then listen to some lecture in Telugu on …….well I never really got their point J…

The caretaker seemed to be a bit sensible and the service apartment was up to the mark. I tried various food items and the topping the list of mentionable is Pani-Puri.

You can find a Anna (Bhaiyyas, you need to work on this) behind a very congested cart with intricate designs on the sides making it very difficult for the customers to get a good view of what exactly is going on inside. I understood the reason of this arrangement once I got a glance inside(the anna was not very happy with my intruding his cart). There was a large flat pan (exact same that we see on PavBhaji Stalls in Mumbai) on which there were some small portion of the Ragdaa(Gravy) left. It was around 7 in the evening and I thought whether this is the closing time for the stalls or he had more than expected sales today. To my dismay, the Ragdaa was not all that he had, he after completing the previous order dipped his hand in what looked like a ChiniMatti ka Pot (similar to ones our ancestors used to keep Achaar into) and produced some heap full of Ragdaa and mashed it on the Pan with his hands. I could see the water dripping from the hair on his hands go sizzle sizzle on the Pan and he carefully utilizing last few drops to retain the moisture in the Ragdaa.  Then he poured some salt, chili powder and something that looked like Sambar masala and mixed the ragda into a paste till he was satisfied with the physical state of it.

Next he handed me a plate and voluntarily put some chopped onion in it (Chopped Onion is the most common accompaniment you can get on road eateries along with chutneys) and while I was contemplating about how to tell ‘Mitha/Teekha or Medium’ to him he had already started to make the panipuris for me. He first took a puri, half crushed it to create an aperture (up to this it was same as we do in Mumbai) and then dragged it on the platter to fill it with Ragda (given the dynamics of the Platter and Puri it was pretty difficult to fill it with enough ragda without burning your hands a little bit. Then he dipped the puri in the same pot (Chini Matti) from which he had magically produced the heap of ragda before and before I could realize anything, my first pani puri in Hyderabad was served to me on my plate while second was on the way in assembly line.

The taste was a cross between salty and ‘too hot to taste like anything’.

That was my first introduction with Hyderabad…..will keep writing more…