Small towns and a little bit of fish

When fellow Indians ask me where I am from, I say Nagpur and then to make things interesting I say that it is in the very centre of India and that all North-South and East-West trains pass through this city. Impressed, they ask me a little more about it and I speak about the two flyovers we have and the 3 malls and I end with ‘Nagpur is a small town with big city dreams’.

All small towns and their people have that ambition; it can be seen noticed in a variety of ways. I was in Orissa recently and observed some of the ways these places attempt to make their dreams reality.

The use of English in advertisement boards and the type of food sold are two of the most visible ways. A food stall built over a hand cart has boldly writ ‘Indian Chart’ over it. One is not sure whether the entrepreneur’s intention was to point out the engineering innovations and wanted to write ‘Indian Cart’ or was intending to advertise the cuisine served -‘Indian Chaat’ or was just showing his route to success. The presence of a food outlet serving Chinese (or what goes as Chinese) surrounded by others that serve the local cuisine is a pointer to where the town is heading. The place I saw had the necessary accoutrements that indicated the food served – a big wok, large bottles of soy sauce, chilli sauce, tomato sauce and a mound of boiled noodles.

I spent time on a fishing trawler, fishermen are known to be good cooks and I was looking forward to some good fish curry and rice. We passed a variety of fishing boats as we headed into sea. Our progress into bluer water coincided with the progress the cook was making in the kitchen. There were constant updates from the kitchen – the breeze brought us information of the oil being heated, the aroma of freshly frying onions hit us next, the addition of turmeric and red chilli powder was duly announced - we followed every addition to the evolving curry with our noses. These aromas were interspersed with offerings of freshly fried fish that the kitchen would send over.

These offerings resulted in the a paucity of fish for the curry – so the captain took matters into his hands and radioed other trawlers and asked them if they had any fresh fish – soon we had trawlers stopping for us with fish that we bought.

So at around 3 pm we finally got to eat what our noses were telling us about – it was delicious.