Hubli: Perfect Puri & Comic Confrontations
Recipe: http://www.allhealthyrecipes.net/masala-puri-recipe/
En route to Mumbai, we had a five-hour stopover in Hubli. To bide the time we went for breakfast at a small, hole in the wall, Indian style diner where Shawn introduced me to his favourite type of Indian bread, Puri.
Puri is a chapatti that puffs up into a balloon like shape when you fry it. It came with a dry coconut chutney and a samba style curry. The texture of the bread was undeniably satisfying… soft and chewy with a thin crispy outer coating. It was so good I almost ordered a second one! After our delicious breakfast we went in search of an internet café to pass some time, which is where I spent an hour trying to thwart the efforts of the sole employee from reading my private emails! Here I am going to pause and let you read an excerpt from the email that I sent home from that café:
“ Shawn and I are currently biding our time in Hubli (a little city of little charm) until our next train to Mumbai. At the present moment, I am glaring at the fellow running the internet café because he keeps reading my emails over my shoulder (I hope he reads this!). Apparently my glares don’t have enough venom in them b/c he hasn’t taken the hint. I think I will turn my chair and computer towards the wall, which will both impede his stares and my writing.”
Looking back now, I find this rather amusing. Just another little quirk that makes the country and it’s people fascinating to me. The man in the café didn’t seem to have the same concept of privacy as we do in many Western cultures… and really how could you expect him to? He lives in a country with 17.5% of the World’s population and 1.2 Billion people!
Interested in learning more? A good overview of India’s Demographics can be found via the link bellow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India
