Vendors

At 7 in the evening a bell called on Murali Krishnan Theruvu in Valasarvakkam. It rang for two days, a minute or more each day calling customers. The vendor did not voice; he pulled a bell atop a cycle cart with a coal fire warming a steel tava with sand and groundnut. With a ladle he tipped and topped the mix, waited as me walked out to pick up paper cones of two and more short wooden glasses of warm groundnut. His fingers dug into the pile with the glass, came up with a finger dressing the pile; he made a paper cone and packed the warmth. Rama and me sat in sofas popping a groundnut at a time and being with it. Warm groundnuts should be eaten easy, a timeless chew going with chats of similar times in Borivili and Dombivili, now lost. For two days the young fellow came and for two days me bought packs of groundut, small in size. And then he went away probably to sell groundnuts to TN politicians waiting for power in the city. Could not get his history. And on Chintamani Vinayakar Koil Street is an automated sugar juice stand; cut sugarcanes are stacked in air conditioned compartments; Thambi, the boy from Tiruchi, inserts the cane into a hole, ons switches and the liquid drips into plastic glasses; he adds spoons of mint to make the Rs. 20 a cup tasty. For two days, Rama and me had it; on the third day, the machine broke down and it was time for us to go. In yet another street, we tagged on puffs at Iyengar Bakery; to this day Iyengars go with Puliyodarai for me even as the vegetable puffs went down well. There is nothing better than junk food; jhal mudi, chicken tikkas in Calcutta, vada pavs and bhels in Mumbai bringing me to Orhan Pamuk in A Strangeness in my Mind: 'Before we go any further, and to make sure that our story is properly understood, perhaps I should explain for foreign readers who've never heard of it before, and for future generations of Turkish readers who will, I fear, forget all about it within the next twenty to thirty years, that boza is a traditional Asian beverage made of fermented wheat, with a thick consistency, a pleasant aroma, a dark yellowish colour, and a low alcohol content........ Mevlut, who walked the poor and neglected cobblestone streets on winter evenings crying 'Bozaaa', reminding us of centuries past, and the good old days that have come and gone.'  Cities are getting gated; no space for callers, some of them with a tonal lilt. Will they be around in these cities or wind down like the famed newspapers which these cities host: The Statesman in Calcutta is nearly gone; The Hindu and The Indian Express in Mumbai are around, how long me does not know. Maybe like the groundnut seller, will go away.