The samosa man

The traffic was noisy and the dust and fumes as eye-watering as usual. The ring road connecting the suburbs of the city was always busy. The lorries were the main polluters followed by the buses and the auto rickshaws. Thick grey clouds of smoke billowed from their rickety exhaust pipes and the noise was at the usual deafening level. I sat inside the car with the windows up and ran my eyes desultorily over the whole picture.
The kids were singing aloud to some song in the car and my husband was sitting near the opposite window looking out. This particular signal was a pain – it took too long to change lights and that meant only a few vehicles could inch along at the junction. We settled ourselves for a bit of a wait. The regular troop of vendors came out and started selling their wares. One sold guavas – ripe and unripe. I have a fondness for the strongly flavoured fruit but have never actually bought any from the on-road guys. They have a huge tray on which the fruit are piled in a half-cone with a little bowl of chilli powder and salt together with a knife that has probably never been washed even once in all the generations of its service. You can buy the fruit cut as is or cut and sprinkled with the chilli and salt. The guava guy is generally quite popular.
The next guy to walk by the car with his goods on display was the ‘car wipe cloth’ guy. I usually call him that because my driver invariably wants to buy the bright red badly dyed pieces of cloth that he sells in order to wipe the car. My precious sharkskin leather piece goes unused and fluffy cotton goes ignored in favour of the red threadbare towels. These highly-prized towels always lose colour and when my driver is feeling particularly energetic, leaves red stains on the car upholstery as well. But he cannot be moved - white is out, only red will do.
We also get a visit from the friendly neighbourhood hijdas or persons of mixed sex ( I honestly do not know the politically correct term for that) who prefer the motorcycle crowd. They rub their hands all over the poor victim and shimmy closer in their outrageously low-cut blouses teamed with filmy saris - if the guy is not forthcoming with the money, they then make lewd gestures and pronounce curses on the poor guy for the next couple of generations. Funnily enough a ten rupee note makes a quick appearance after the curse and all is well with the curse being withdrawn and effusive blessings given in their stead.
The samosa guy is a regular. He sells the south Indian style samosas which are triangular (not conical) and have a thin crisp skin and some sort of unidentifiable filling inside. He walks in between the lorries for the drivers are his best customers. He tries his hand at selling to the others as well. He walks quickly and purposefully while balancing a heavily and artfully laden tray of samosas, dodging the odd cyclist and perpetually moving scooterwallah who is always on the lookout for the smallest gap between vehicles. Suddenly I hear my husband laughing. I asked him what was so funny. He tells me to look at the samosa guy carefully. I see him wiping a sorry looking samosa on his shirt and then blowing on it before carefully replacing it on his tray. I missed the first part during which the samosa had rolled under the car in front of us and he had dived to pick it up. I couldn’t help grinning. Real street food indeed!
The light finally turned green long enough for us to pass and move on to the next signal where more slices of life awaited us. The next time you are in Bangalore and on the ring road, don’t forget to look out for the spunky samosa guy and more importantly, don’t get the urge to try one of his crisp samosas!