Paanwalla

The adult in the room is never me, obviously. On our recent trip to India the students wanted to know about the innumerable paan stands (paanwallas) that they saw on every street corner.  I tried to explain the difference between regular paan and sweet paan, but in the end experience is the best teacher. Chewing paan, even the generally innocuous sweet paan, is not good for you, but the occasional one-off (as in probably once in a lifetime) isn't bad, and I can assure you that none of the students liked it enough to search it out again any time soon. Still, the experience itself was priceless.

The purveyor of paan at the paanwalla.

I knew that Sally would definitely be up for paan.

Same with Ines.