Dan Driscoll wrote: At Savoi Village we sampled nice food, and the Paan was described as 'Indian Chewing Gum'. There was no erstwhile Paan Wallah to assist us, so we helped ourself to the betal leaf and prepared our own 'PaanSupari'. I mis-judged the white paste to be something in the order of 'mayonnaise', so I helped myself to half a teaspoonful, liberally applied on the leaf and topped by other ingredients.
When I bit into it, I soon knew I could be in trouble. I managed to spit most of it out, but my tongue, roof of mouth and gums have been paining ever since, to the point that I am hardly able to take solid food, and must take a pain reliever to sleep at night. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dan, I had a somewhat similar experience many moons ago in Calgary. Someone took me to a restaurant where they specialized in wings. The wing menu had just three choices: Hot, Suicide and Chernobyl. As we were placing the order for Chernobyl, the Indonesian waiter asked if we could really stomach hot food. One loud mouth in our party replied, "We are Indians, we can take any hot $hit." I took one tiny bite of a wing and started sweating on the nape of my neck. By the time I reached for my beer, rivers were running down my back. My mouth was in flames. The ceiling fan above me appeared stationary and bellowing out hot air while the ceiling continued to spin. As I desperately reached for the next persons beer, lo and behold, the loud mouth of the party put down the bones of his first chicken wing and started reaching for his next. I gently wiped my tears on my sleeves, hoping to see at least another sensitive person in our party, one who was unashamed to display tears. Unbelievably, right next to me, was a second person reaching out for his second wing too. There was a competition going on! A dozen beers or so later, when things had calmed down and when only smoke was coming out of my nostrils, I realized that this was no ordinary supper. A few years later, I was asked if I remembered how smoothly the reception went of a wedding that took place that same weekend. I was then told that the reception went smoothly partly because the champion wing eater was not there. The roof of his mouth ended up with blisters. His apparent competitor, strangely enough, had received a very mild plate of wings. That wing restaurant meet was a set up. Perhaps you should explore the possibility of something similar..... MervynnoonehasofferedmepaanyetLobo
