The dosa was paper-thin and perfectly blistered. The filling was buttery and spiced just right. The sambar and chutney were fresh, and they hit spots on my tongue I didn’t know existed.
A memory resurfaced.
I was seven, maybe eight, sitting on a stool outside a stall just like this one. Dadiji was beside me, laughing as I got chutney all over my face. She wiped it away with her dupatta, smiling.
A cotton ball formed in my throat.
Ananya was looking at me eagerly. ‘So?’
‘It’s good.’
She grinned. ‘Told you.’
When was the last time I had street food?
Probably when I was seven – and yet, almost twenty-two years later, the taste still lingered.
Dadiji used to pick me up from school, and we’d walk past a chaat stall on our way home. The smell alone was enough for me to pull at her dupatta. Every day, she’d say Friday, if I was good. And no matter what, at the end of the week, we’d stop there and eat one plate of sev puri and one of pani puri.
Then, Rekha Mom married Dad and put a stop to it. Said we needed to ‘act like the family we were meant to be’.
She’d been preparing us for success before it even came. The right clothes. The right manners. The right places to be seen.
When House of Advani finally took off, we were ready. Polished. Perfect.
But somewhere in that transformation, we’d stopped being a family that ate chaat on Friday afternoons. We became the Advanis – with a capital A.
I wasn’t always sure which version of us was better off.
I glanced at Ananya. She licked a drop of chutney off her fingertip, looking completely content.
I smiled.
Then we ended up at Chowpatty Beach.
One minute, I was about to text Dilip to get the car; the next, Ananya was veering towards the beach, drawn by the breeze and the thought of roasted corn.
‘I thought the dosa was the celebration?’
Our shadows were long, and the sun was about to sink into the Arabian Sea. Crowds were gathered in clusters: families laughing with kids, college kids taking selfies and couples walking hand in hand. The faint chatter of their conversations mingled with the gentle lapping of the waves against the coast.
‘It’s a two-part celebration,’ she answered, slipping out of her flats.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked as she picked them up and continued walking.
‘What’s the point of coming to the beach if you’re not going to feel the sand beneath your feet?’ She shrugged.
I looked down at my sand-dusted shoes.To hell with it. I slipped out of them, peeled off my socks, stuffed them inside the shoes and then hooked them on my fingers.
My toes sank into the warm sand. The grains shifted and moulded as I walked. It felt unfamiliar. But good.
We stopped by the cart where a woman was roastingbhuttaover open coals, and dark smoke curled in the air.
‘I’m good,’ I said when Ananya was placing an order.
‘Didi, can I have one too?’ A little boy appeared in tattered clothes and tangled hair.
She hesitated, just for a second, then quickly glanced at her purse.
