Ashes & Diamonds

I reached the cricket ground at Eden and drank some colour at the Lathmar Holi at Barsana in my search for the truth – the true Indian culture. Needless to say, it turned out to be a futile exercise. While I refuse to accept cricket (though I thought it to be one at one point of time) as a culture even though its omnipresence across the length and breadth of the country cannot be challenged, the festival of Holi, even though celebrated in many parts of the country – still failed to mark its omnipresence.

Last week while driving towards Himachal Pradesh, we pulled over near a roadside dhaba (origin of the word?) and there was more excitement in store than the food itself. I thought I had found my answer. And the dhaba became my point of departure in my search for a true Indian culture.

It doesn’t matter whether you are in Himachal or Delhi, Tamil Nadu or Mumbai, or Kolkata or Assam; no matter how the geography or the demography changes – what doesn’t change for certain are the trucks that ply on the highways (Do watch HIV: Highway in my veins, if you can get a copy of it). The witty phrases painted by local painters that don the rear of Indian trucks (Horn Please and Bure Naazar wale, Tera Muh Kala, being the most common ones) aren’t new to any Indian. On a second thought, I think it will be a rewarding exercise to trace the origin of each of these. With the trucks burning rubbers in the nooks and corners of India, the Dhaba culture has emerged as a truly national culture. The dhabas are meant for truckers to rest and eat and the essential part of a dhaba is perhaps the cot and the Punjabi food, with Punjabis forming the bulk of the truck drivers.

From being a humble resting place for truck drivers, the dhaba is now a sought after place for people traveling by road and no matter where you are, you are probably not very far from a highway. If there is a highway – there is a dhaba.

• nursing schools April 25, 2010

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• MarkSpizer May 2, 2010

  great post as usual!