Of Vada Pav and Chai

Love doesn’t need fancy restaurants and exotic places to flourish. It will if it has too.
Case in point as always is your’s truly – Aman and me spent most of our pre dating time on this small tapri right outside the college campus.
Our College (it was a residential one) was far from the city; add to that the hectic schedule of a B – School. That left us with no time and little energy to venture into the so called cool hangouts that Pune specializes in.
Most evenings were spent hanging in and around the college campus.

On a typical evening, right after the last lecture finished and there would be exactly 30 minutes before the group sat down and brain stormed on the upcoming presentation, half the college would rush to the Tapri outside. For the uninitiated a tapri is a small, dingy looking eating joint. There is usually no place to sit and eat in these tapris. Tapri’s are also makeshift and will relocate with much ease. The tapri outside my college didn’t believe in variety. The menu was limited to “The great Maharashtrian Vada Pav and the equally great Indian Chai”. But like any other roadside eatery the best part of this tapri was that the stuff was absolutely mouth watering.

It was the lethal combination of Vada Pav and Chai, combined with the lovely Pune evenings that did the trick. Aman and I spent most evenings at this tapri, talking about everything possible while we devoured the Vada Pav and enjoyed the tea. The lady who manned the shop charged Rs3 for the Vada Pav and Rs2.50 for the tea. Rs5.50 wasn’t a bad deal at all and this kept us going till dinner time.

And not to anyone’s surprise Aman popped the crucial question at the same Tapri. There couldn’t have been a better place. After all our friendship had started, grew and had flourished at this very Tapri.