By the Paan Stall

What is the waiting procedure at the paan stall? I was politely waiting for the paan maker to finish making a set for a customer, when some guy came wearing a helmet and ordered some for himself, delivering a spit on the wall next to the stall. I involuntarily glanced at the mountain of spit stain on the wall (and voluntarily jerked my head elsewhere). If that is the process of ordering a paan, I would never buy any. I am not a spitter.

By the way, what's with the spitting near the paan stall? Is that where one practices? And how come there's a wall next to every paan stall designated for paan-spits? Or is it a communal effort to make an abstract mural?

Some people I see on the streets are experts at it. You know the criteria of expertise, don't you:
1. to expel an aerodynamic missile of ... umm... spit... from your mouth with minimal or zero noise (that is, spray)
2. to do so without wetting your lips, and
3. to land your spit where you want it.

You think this is yucky? What about seeing people wiping their recently spitted mouth with the back of their hands? What about the 'street hawkers'? No, I didn't mean peddlers. I meant the throat clearers. And you must have seen people in bikes, micros, and tempos, most often drivers, spitting out of the window. One wouldn't want to be behind that driver, would one? And lets only mention the public nose honkers.

So nod your head. And say it isn't so.

An event that followed made me forget the gross sighting though. As the paanmaker was flipping out small tins of bright, apparently edible things, and shaking them above the betel leaves, I saw a man walking his toddling daughter. There was a reddish heart shaped 'i love you' 'hydrogenated' balloon stringed to one of the 'laces' of her bhoto. She was ecstatically tugging at the string, unaware of her awkward walk, often bumping into her father's legs. She was absolutely delighted at the bobbing wonder tied to her bhoto.