One thing led to another. After a few like-minded amongst us organised a weekly market of producer-sellers of handicrafts and homemade food in a forest clearing in suburban Santiniketan, we were forced to set up a shop. The number of people who enjoyed the weekly market but could not catch the day of the week it was on, urged us to opt for a more permanent outlet.
So me with my textiles, a potter friend with her studio pottery and an organic farmer friend with his farm produce set up what we ambitiously called a 'lifestyle store'. We had a modest inauguration and started business. Our decor with mud and bamboo not only found favour with the locals but was a hit with the tourists who found it a sharp contrast to the synthetic malls they frequent.
As the days passed our visitors' book got filled with words of appreciation and encouragement for our modest endeavour. But as months went by, we did notice a recurring comment in the book. Visitors felt it would be a good idea to have an adjoining café where they could at least have coffee.
Our search for 'What kind of a café?' led to a smallish market survey in Santiniketan. Most served deep fried loochis or kochuri after wiping the table with a uniformly dirty smelly rag. To be different we had to be (a) clean and (b) a little imaginative on the food front. With the so far sleeping partner in our lifestyle store being a Tamilian, our choice was naturally to give people the idli, dosa option in Tagore land.
Everything suddenly fell into place. Our search for an authentic Tamil cook took us to the Tamil parts of Kolkata. After many enquiries with local shops and idli, dosa vendors on carts, we found our chef who agreed to relocate to the abode of peace. A few trials convinced us of his culinary skills and we were eager to start. While he listed all the cooking equipment that he needed imported from the south, we focused on the aesthetics.
Our serving style with banana leaves placed on dried sal leaf plates found favour with the environmentally conscious and the visually demanding. Since intellectuals and artists form the core of Santiniketan's social structure, we soon attracted customers who were 'happening' for our image even if the numbers didn't exactly set our cash box on fire.
While we did the idli, dosa, vada, uttapam drill on a daily basis, for 'specials' we introduced lemon rice, pongal and adais. As our restaurant began to be frequented by the foreign students who were a little tired of the loochi staple, we found interesting ethnic preferences. While the Japanese preferred the lemon rice, the Koreans liked the idli. The Europeans loved the filter coffee and learnt the southern three-yard ritual from the chef.
But the item on the menu that seemed to create the maximum stir was adai (a pure dal variation of the dosa, much like the Rajasthani chilla). Since adai translates in Bengali to two-and-a-half, people would invariably order a adai or a sare teen.
There were also many early adopters of the adai, who brought along friends. And in their explanation of what an adai was, there was an unmistakable tone of 'I am connoisseur'. The one explanation that was particularly endearing was that 'an adai is when the batter has to be ground two and a half times.'
While I have no clue where that one was picked up from, I must admit I tried to figure out whether any electronic grinders have been invented which could in effect grind two-and-a-half times!
More from rediff