The Arnold Schwarzenegger of street food

This week, I found myself in an airport. As a Chennai-ite, I wondered if a trip to Bombay (Yeah, I still call it that, but I’m assuming that the folks who take offence to that aren’t the types who read this newspaper) counted as a ‘travel column’ to people in the city where this paper is headquartered. But then think of it as a foreigner (from Madras, who speaks Madrasi) visiting your town and writing about it. Surely an outsider’s perspective ought to count as a travel piece, no?

Well, to be fair, I used to live in Bombay back in the 1980s and I even studied in a school (OLPS) whose name we would never expand for fear of being giggled at (back in the day, people laughed, smirked, sniggered, giggled and tittered. They didn’t ROFL, LOL or ROFLMAO).

This time, I had a specific agenda, well, actually, more of a spiritual quest. A quest to find that most exotic of fast food, that paragon of nutrition, the uncrowned king of street fare, ragda pattice. I mean, just look at the name. Who wouldn’t want to worship and blessedly consume something named ‘ragda pattice.’ To me, it’s the Arnold Schwarzenegger of food. Would Arnie be Arnie if he was named Sprinkes Pussmeister? Of course not. Just try saying ‘ragda pattice.’ By the time you finish saying ‘ragda’, you will feel like Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom.

And then there’s the spelling of ‘pattice.’ It’s not something pusillanimously correct like ‘patties.’ People who have just said ‘ragda’ couldn’t care a rat’s posterior about correct spelling. The only kind of ‘Patties’ we know of come from the rear end of a cow. Real men eat ‘ragda pattice’ and live in Bombay, not Mumbai. Yeah.

It’s also the sort of dish that doesn’t travel very well outside of its holy origins. I have had the misfortune of eating ragda pattice in Chennai. It might as well have been called Raghuthatha Patties.

My personal theory is that the peas for the ragda come from plants that were bullied during their childhood. These are some badass peas that led their lives knowing that one day they would be boiled brutally and smashed beyond recognition to make the kind of dish that could win a Mr Universe contest.

There are variations, like ragda puri and even the world famous pani puri from Bombay uses the ragda, a fact that makes it automatically superior to the airy crap that Delhi serves as gol gappa. gol gappa + badass = pani puri, in my humble opinion. But none of these beat the original article, ragda pattice. Hip Hop Gangsta Thug Fast Food from the Underbelly of Bombay. Yeah.

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