Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Tea with 'Makkhi-Choos' - errrrr... 'Makkhi-juice'!

Ever heard of a village called 'Isagarh' - it is in MP under district Guna (near Gwalior). If you have ever been to the remote villages rather small towns with narrow and dusty (very dusty) roads with small tea and bhajiya shops on the cross-roads - the state run buses just fly by or halt right there settling more dust on the sugar-soaked sweets kept at the road side stalls and the bhajiyas! People still unscathy of those which are considered as unhygienic by us, buying and eating ignoring the jeeps, indicas, scooters and the buses passing by!
Right there on chauraha of Isagarh is the bus stop and perhaps, the only place where you can find the so called good restaurants - at least our driver and guide to Isagarh thought so and they took us to one such place - though at the first glance we realized where we are but didn't show it for reasons a) simply we understand that the place was not meant for a heavy-duty decorated restaurants where even buying a samosa is expensive for the people b) didn't know where to go c) we were hungry d) this was the best - period!
Ok without looking at the surrounding much we sat down on a metal table - all the four legs were disbalanced - with metal bench and called the boy - he in his own style started rhyming the list of the food available - with paneer in everything! We settled for some vegetable, tarka daal and chappatis! The Kitchen was right there - we saw the tadka in our plate of daal and heating the vegetable - and the hot rotis from the tandoor. Well, witout commenting on the food let me move on to the story behind the title.
After finishing off with the food (with whatever I could), I decided to wait outside while they settle the bills - the next shop was a tea and sweet shop. After much thoughts and rather intrigued by the people who were having tea there, I decided to go for a cup of tea (just for the sake of it) - checked with all but surprisingly nobody agreed. I told the man behind the stove to make one for me without sugar (zero sugar). The man smiled and dipped his mug in a huge patila full of milk and added it to his tea making pan and it started boiling - just then I asked him that why didn't he add water - he grinned (showing his gutka infested teeth) and said 'ghar se hi milakar laate hain' - and just then I happened to notice his milk pan. There were numerous black particles floating and one of them was rather big - it was a 'fly' - a 'makkhi' - rather a dead makkhi. I said 'isko dhak kar kyun nahi rakhte aur yeh dekho makkhi' - he grinned again flashing his set of yellowish red teeth and plucked the makkhi out of the milk (like you pluck the flowers) and said 'lo nikal diya' - mind you, the tea was boiling - actually I was rather amused. I was in a dillemma - But I decided to go for the tea assuming - boiling kills it all!!! After all, there would have been so many people who would have already had the tea from the same milk! He can't throw the milk and I should not go back - thinking of all those and the fact that I wanted to try a 'makkhi-choos' rather 'makkhi-juice' chai to check out my immunity system - with all the juices of the dead makkhi that would have been dissolved in the milk (+water) used since morning! So I had it (though I was little skeptical) but I took it all without thinkin much and yeah I survived - at least I am still here after 6 months of having the tea!
And remember, I had asked him 'no sugar' - it was the sweetest of all the tea(s) I have had. I asked him why did he put sugar (he didn't as I was the witness to the entire process) - he grinned again and said 'patti mein hogi' ;-)))) - he was boiling the same tea leaves since morning in a literally sugar syrup (sugar + milk as people of this part has so much sugar in their tea that perhaps we can have in 5 cups) that even the tea leaves made the tea sweet - sweeter than the sweets I must say!

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