Don’t Peek!
January 24, 2009
In my ongoing effort to educate the world about how a white girl experiences Pakistani culture, I got to thinking about Paan the other day. Actually, it happened less because of my selflessness and more because I was going through my old pictures for the Award Winning* Staring At White Girls Series. Turns out I take a lot of pictures of paan. Who knew?
Paan is a Betel leaf with stuff wrapped in it. You chew on it. Hey, go to Wikipedia if you want more technical information. Different people like different stuff in it. Some people like some white stuff (chuna) that I think makes you high. Or maybe it’s the red stuff (kaTha) that makes you high. (Edit: M says neither the red or white stuff is the one that makes you high. Zarda is what makes you high) Some people like tobacco in it, too. The less serious paan chewers might like meetha paan – sweet paan – that had candies and sweet things in it. M likes this kind.
Here, two guys are working in a paan shop to assemble and wrap up the paan M ordered. The thing I take pictures of most, though, seem to be the grosser aspects of paan. You see, with paan, comes peek.
Peek is when people spit out the excess accumulation of saliva that’s the logical result of chewing ALL day on some big leaf with nuts and other stuff in it. People spit it all the time. Everywhere. It’s the red stuff that makes the most impact, and there are red splat! marks all over Karachi. And I take pictures of them.
This is a sign I saw in a wedding reception hall that – an effort by the management to try to keep the hall looking nice by trying to ban paan chewing (and the spitting that seems to inevitably accompany it.)
But you might not believe me when I say that peek is everywhere. It really is. Red blotches and marks on every street, on every building. (Well, probably not in the really really nice areas, like Defense, where I’ve never even been)(Except once I went to a restaurant near Defense, and there was still peek in the streets, if not on the walls of buildings…)
This picture shows the height of disgustingness that peek leads to. This is in an indoor stairwell of an apartment building, and every floor had these areas where the residents would apparently go to spit out their peek. M is only pretending to make his own contribution.
*Well, one day I’m sure my investigative journalism will win an award.
January 24, 2009 at 5:16 am
LOL! Paan is banned here in Dubai, but apparently there are secret places where people can score a hit and the proof of it is that in the areas with a dense S. Asian population there are the same paan stains on the walls and side walks everywhere!Do you like paan? I don’t, but everyonce in a while I take a taste just to remind myself of why for some silly reason.
January 25, 2009 at 1:46 am
That’s sick. My dh’s gma has been chewing paan for.. well.. ever her teeth.. well not so great looking as I’m sure you can imagine. You couldn’t pay me to eat that stuff. okay.. you could pay me but it’d have to be a lot of money.
January 25, 2009 at 9:23 am
I’ve never tried paan! In spite of the zoo my life has become, I’m actually not very adventurous…M is actually also really obsessed with any kind of chalia or supari, and I’ve never even tried that. I only tried that candy-coated saunf once or twice before. It wasn’t terrible. Eh.M’s grandmother also chews it all day long. She can barely move from room to room but if she does, her paan dan is coming with. She uses the REAL stuff in it, too.
January 26, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Aslamu alakum panna is a problem here to in london in the dencely Asian populated areas like Whitechappel. Its gross it smells and makes the mouth look horrid. The picture of the guy spitting on the wall is horrid , to imagne it as a stairwell to your home. My Bangladeshi neighbour gave up paan a few months ago and she is doing so well after lets say 45yrs of paan eating , i tasted some with her one day , i never got past the bettle nut , yuk.Although i did try sweet paan once from the Indian seller, there paans are different just not this British Desi girls cupa of tea.good post gori wife.
January 27, 2009 at 8:55 am
When I first went to India and saw all the red around I thought it was blood from shoot outs!How can they think this is a cultured way of behaving? OK, chew your damn paan, but spit it in a can or something that no one else can see.Also, ever have a dukan walla try and sell you something with paan in his mouth? Disgusting. And they can’t talk right and sound ignorant. My theory is that without the arranged marriage system in place, NONE of these guys would ever be able to attract a woman.Imagine having to come home at the end of the day and make love to someone with red gook all over his teeth who talks like half his tongue has been cut off. And knowing that his behaviour is so uncouth that he actually SPITS it out in public places. TOTAL TURN OFF. Paan is not sexy.Rainbow in the Grey Sky, I’m with you on this one. You know multi-culturalism has been taken too far when you get red paan stains in public places in LONDON for God’s sake!Those types of immigrants should show a little bit more enthusiasm to assimilate within the cultures that they have willingly migrated to. I mean, if they could show just half of the enthusiasm that I, a non-desi showed for India when I travelled and lived there, or even a fraction of the enthusiasm that non-desi wives married to desi guys seem to show for desi culture, well then, UK wouldn’t have the problems it does right now.We need to meet the places we migrate to at least half way.
February 5, 2009 at 1:11 pm
paan… aah paan !!! loli m not a huge fan but a meetha pan every few months does not do you much harm… also with a meetha paan u do not have to spit it out and there is no peek… there are places where u get awesom paans… u shud try one… hav a meetha paan… i kno it is quite a mouthful… but jus keep chewin onto it and see how it sort of absorbs into you and disappears !!!
February 23, 2009 at 4:21 am
Oh, Lordy…My boyfriend is seriously addicted to RMD brand gutka (a prepackaged, crushed blend of betel nut, catcheu and tobacco). When we first started seeing each other, I was disgusted and alarmed at the way he would spit all over the floor of the bar, or on the sidewalk. I felt it was hypocritical that he maintained such cleanliness w/r/t his own person and possessions, but didn’t seem to have any sense of civic-mindedness. Worse still were the ubiquitous tan wrappers with the circled portrait of the “RMD guy” that I would find all over my lawn the day after a date. I certainly have known other desis who do not litter, but there seems to be a cultural acceptance of littering in public that we don’t have in the States. Sure, people litter here, but I was raised to view those people as trashy (literally and figuratively) and ignorant, whereas my fairly well-educated, middle-class Guju guy has no compunction with such behavior.After a few fights (“If you hate it so much, why don’t YOU pick it up?”—I won’t even go into what THAT statement reveals about certain expectations), I decided it was one of the those things I was not going to change, and I learned to deal with it. I even tried some gutka during a less guarded moment–ugh! I don’t use tobacco, and I had already imbibed alcohol, so let’s just say it was an experience. Crazy tingling starting at the top of my head and insinuating itself through my limbs, followed by red vomit (sorry, tmi). So, I have a love/hate with gutka. On the one hand I hate the byproduct, the litter, and the fact that my bf is putting himself at risk for cancer (made worse by the fact that he does consume alcohol). On the other, I have a Pavlovian response to the smell; I’m conditioned to equate it with the presence of my beloved. And it makes me smile now because it reminds me of some of the petty differences we’ve overcome.