Posted by Paul Wernick in indian, snack food, south asian on May 3, 2007 at 7:34 am

I bought my wife a spittoon for Christmas, a genuine antique spittoon. I considered it a unique, charming and romantic present. She certainly didn’t. Ironically enough, she tried to spit on me. Well, things eventually calmed down. I talked her out of a divorce and the spittoon makes a lovely planter for our African violets. And when she’s not looking I spit in it.

Well, tobacco spitting isn’t an activity I should have promoted within my family. It is uncouth and unhealthy. Snail spitting is not as unhealthy, but contains an element of cruelty. Yet, for some reason, the urge to masticate (hey, I said masticate) and expectorate overwhelmed me this Sunday. I walked jauntily into Little India for exotic chewing experiences well beyond the simple pleasures of Juicy Fruit or Red Man.

I am referring to paan. Paan is is a sort of digestive/breath freshener/stimulant common in Southeast Asia. It consists of various spices, herbs and pastes wrapped inside a betel pepper leaf. The ingredients differ but there are three basic types: a meetha or sweet paan, which does not contain betel nuts, a sada paan, which contains betel nuts, and a tobacco (tambaku) paan which contains both tobacco and betel nuts. There are dozens of shops that sell nothing but paan in Little India, which is bustling on Sunday evening. The tiny Lahore Paan Centre is packed with paan fiends.

At the counter I am given a sweet paan. The filling is quite complex. It’s overwhelming and beyond my expertise to enumerate all of the ingredients. They include coconut, rose preserve, lime paste, cloves, fennel, qiwan nauraton ( I don’t know what that is) lazeez, (still don’t know) and sugandhi (I think that’s sarsparilla) and coriander leaves. For the true connoisseur there is paan dressed with silver leaf.

Mine is expertly wrapped in a leaf which is in turn wrapped in paper. You can either swallow or expel this kind of paan. The fragrant condiments leave me with a freshened palate. I am ready to bestow sweet, perfumed kisses to my loved ones. But not to my family. For that I need tobacco paan.

Tobacco and sada paan are of dubious legality in our country. Health Canada placed an import alert on betel nuts which contain a significant amount of alkaloids, meaning they are somewhat intoxicating, even euphoric. They are also, like tobacco, a carcinogen. But I can’t attest to their ill effects because the proprietor refuses to sell me one.

“No. No. You won’t like it,” he says. “No. No. It’s like a drug.”

Then he points a revolving index finger at his head – the universal sign for dementia. I protest that I just want a nibble but am still refused. No matter how I whine and wheedle he denies me my gratification. This makes me all the more irritated and in need of a comforting betel nut and tobacco “hit.”

I won’t reveal the subterfuge I engaged in to obtain the tobacco paan. Suffice to say, Lahore Paan House is not the only purveyor of this forbidden delight. Ten minutes later, I am holding one in my hand. The experience begins: I’m sweating like a chunk of rancid pork and rocking back and forth, softly humming “Puff the Magic Dragon.” My skin has a sickly, fish-belly pallor. My breathing is rapid and shallow. I should make it clear that I haven’t actually eaten the paan yet. I tend to exhibit symptoms of extreme anxiety in new situations.

I suffer an acute crisis of conscience as I hold the paan and consider trying it. On the one hand I have a wife and family to think of before spiralling downward into the degradation of drug addiction; on the other hand I have wife and family and truly need the degradation of drug addiction. Besides I spent two dollars on it. I stare at the paan. It stares back at me, dark and dangerous. A verse from Tennyson’s the Lotos Eaters comes to mind.

They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
Most weary seemed the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said, "We will return no more;"
And all at once they sang, "Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam."

I bite into the paan, chew quickly, and then spit. Unfortunately, I am suffering from a mild cold that affects the viscosity of my saliva. Rather than spitting, I am a drooling out my paan. The denizens of Little India look at me in disgust as I frantically try to wipe away the dangling rope of phlegm. I fling aside the paan and run home to kiss my family as the sky spits rain.