If we have paan and speak with our upper jaw active while the lower jaw balances the juice, it is considered no extraordinary feat across the borders of the Subcontinent. I have always wondered why connoisseurs of paan feel the need to speak while work is in progress.
From the paan spit-marks which remain embossed on the Moenjodaro brickwork, we know that the habit goes back a long ways in history. Ram, we are told, tried to make friends with Ravan by offering him scented sweet paan. It was only when the southerner Ravan rejected this wimpy version of the delicacy that he (Ram) decided to invade Lanka. Our mythology and history would have been different if there had not been this cultural insensitivity in the offering of paan.
We know now, from a new interpretation of the Baburnama, that the great emperor liked his paan with jarda, with the leaves washed in water specifically transported in lambskin containers all the way from Samarkand. Thus, more than one source confirms the existence of paan in the Subcontinental alimentary canal long, long before the frontiers were drawn by Cyril Radcliffe. He, it is said, once tried paan and promptly had dysentery. Radcliffe's dislike for paan was one reason he was in such a hurry to finish his job and go home, which is why he botched the partitioning exercise.
