God/Goddess of Paan

I'm making myself a paan daan – a little box to carry all my paan fixin's. I was thinking it would be nice to have a little God or Goddess decoupaged onto the lid.

Anybody know who would be the most appropriate?

Paan daans, especially old bronze ones, are beautiful. I am lucky enough to have a couple of them in my bronze antique collection. The ones I have are simple, but I love them...however, there are elaborately carved ones in the market. So, Roth, where are you getting yours? Is it bronze, silver, or some other material ( hope it is not steel ).

Oh, and the only god that I can think of is Annapoorna -- the goddess of food. I don't know if there is a god for paan though. Come to think of it, maybe Nadreg can suggest who he invoked after he got sick from the paan after the meetup. Whoever it is, it sure helped him.

does the paans you have give the red color?

if it does, the only and only one with the red tongue!!!... badra kali..

God of mouth cancer?

Unless you only take sweet paan with no tobacco or betel.....

nick..i am sure the occassional red paan is okay...

I guess it's not really that kind of traditional paan daan. I would love to see the ones you've got.

I've seen the nasty little pressed steel ones and that isn't what I'm looking for. Besides the obvious esthetic issues, they are two small for what I really need.

I'm going to this big birthday party for two of my desi friends over the Thanksgiving weekend. The party is in Provincetown so I'll have to travel quite a bit and pre-made paan wouldn't last that long.

So I figured I'd make a little box (material yet to be determined) to carry all the ingredients in their unassembled form. Were talking enough stuff to make 50 or so paan. So I kinda need a largish box, with a couple of dividers to keep stuff from rattling around too much. For the party I went to last year I used a shoe box, but it wasn't quite the right size. And of course sticky bits get all over it. Really a one use thing.

So Nick, who would be the god of mouth cancer then? No tobacco, but occasionally a (very) little qiwam. And yes betel – most reports I've read caution against the tobacco, but I really haven't seen much negative about the betel. I've read more about the chunna toughening the tissues in the mouth. In any event I don't eat that much paan – I'm sure there are plenty of other things that will do me in before then!

greenchutney – good idea I might go with her. Should be pretty easy to find in the stores around here too.

The colour red (in this case) emanates from a mixture of choonaa [lime] and paan. Not tobacco and paan.

The original non tobacco version was eaten by Lord Krishna as a post prandial digestive and his lips were rendered a lovely luscious red as described by his bhaktas [devotees]. All Indians ate many of them every day... till tobacco spoiled the party for them. Even today the correct version of paan is given out as prasaad at Shreenaathji and Udipi temples.

Curiously, some persons get very red lips and some hardly get red after eating the traditional paan. Its some individual tendency.

There also exists a small offshoot of astrology by this redness. The prediction is based on the intensity of redness, the place it occurs on the lips [left, right, centre, l-c, r-c etc], the place the drool occurs, the direction the drool curls and so on...

Now, Nick... would you care for some politically correct paan and have your lips read ??

Are you sure ? The red is literally of the blood she has drunk from the demons she vanquished. That too in quantities which drip liberally. I might not eat paan from a kaalii maa kaa paan daan lest she consumes me as well .

No tobacco considerably reduces the risk, I guess...

It is just that I used to have this drummed into me by a [n Indian origin] girlfriend in London who was a nurse in a dermatology clinic: she saw the results, and used to say that if I ever touched the stuff she's never speak to me again .

Between that and my gutka-guzzling Indian friends who would not listen for one second...

Why is it that Indians are completely deaf to the word 'risk'?

...anyway, what with the ex-GF, and my own born-again non-smoker response to tobacco, I tend to react to the paan thing.

But the risk is there....

I really don't feel like googling all this stuff again, but there are risks associated with the lime as well...

Sweet paan is delicious, and, if the reading is free I'll give it a go

I have tried the areca nut they give in restaurants. Tasted revolting and made me feel tight-chested and short of breath, so I haven't bothered again.

Bit of a drag, eh: don't like the effects of areca, cannabis or even alcohol. Kava Kava, on the other hand....

Correctly prepared paan eaten three times a day after meals is a very good digestive and is recommended by ayurveda... On the contrary, it is a very healthy thing to have.

It is proscribed for bramhachaariis, vana-aashrammis and sanyaasiis because its a mild aphrodisiac. Grihasthiis may freely take it within prescribed limits and timings.

The kaama suutra describes an extremely arousing game of "who bites the paan but not the lip" between a couple.... [with the warning that older couples should not play it]

Taken at the wrong time and season and in too much quantity ... even rice, wheat, milk and curds are harmful... instead of promoting sattva guNa, they will promore rajas or even worse, tamas. See how many people in Chennai go to sound sleep after demolishing a mountain of rice

So maybe a Krisna paan daan would be more appropriate? I do have a nice picture where he has very red lips.

Although a kaalii maa kaa paan daan sounds really kinda hardcore…

Yeah the coloring is so individual. My friend will get orange-red all around his mouth, but the same paans will just give me a little bit of red on the tongue. He is from Pakistan and says that there they say, "The redder paan makes your mouth the more your future mother-in-law will like you."

On a related tangent…

Gulkand is okay to have non-refrigerated? I mean it is preserved by the sugar and should keep for a few days out of the fridge, right?

The difference between western and eastern ideas of food safety. My desi friends mock me quite often. My mom was crazy about food safety. So I've kind of grown up with more concerns that I probably should have.

Nick – I don't think Indians are any more risk-deaf than any other society. As you pointed out about smoking. Can any westerner (at least in the US) claim they didn't know it was bad for them? (Okay anybody who started smoking in the last 20 or 30 years.)

Seems to me most cultures have their unwise (and yet often DELICIOUS) vices. Some are obviously not good, some maybe not so much, and – like cigarettes used to be in the US and gutka is – some are purposefully obscured to turn a profit. In the end though, maybe it is easier to see the ones that are outside our own.

too much choonaa causes mouth tissue damage and fibrosis, with cancer sometimes.

too much areca is "frigidifying" as they say. Tight chested and tight throated-ness are typical symptoms that most people get some time or the other.

[typical statement from paanwalla says "aapkaa hathiyaar kaam nahin karegaa"][your instrument will not work]

too much menthol also mmakes one thandaa or "cold" [although this doesn't have ayurvedic backing, only folklore and that too paan waallaa lore]

too much paan is the opposite of "frigidi...." hence the ban for non married persons.

But the entire mixture in the correct proportions cancels each others' bad effects to give you a ..... well ... whatever.

limits and timings !....times have changed...and what if i work in a all night BPO....

details of this game please... 'old peeps dont read...''


imho keralites should have the bragging rights there...the tamils do hills compared to malayalees doing mountains..

ah, I get the picture now Roth. If you wanted something that large, the best was the one we saw at the paan shop. It had many small compartments for all the ingredients, and was convenient. The only thing was, it was also made of plastic, and boring looking. Maybe you can get that for now, and hunt for a better one later.

Also, you can always consider a larger Indian spice box/ seasoning container used in Indian kitchens.

And, yes, Gulkhand need not be refrigerated. Of course, in India they don't, but then again, a paan wallah prob. runs out of several containers a day for it to be stale. In any case, it is cold enough now, so need not worry. if you are driving, you can always keep it in the trunk.