The pao wallah

If the birds don't wake you here in the mornings, the pao wallahs will with the soft pom-pom-pom of their bicycle horns as they go past with laden baskets covered by a sheet of blue plastic.

It's always the horn they softly tap, sometimes with their own distinctive pom-pom tune. They never call out. They never cry: 'Pao. Garam pao. Naram pao, kadak pao' as you would expect a vendor to normally do. If you're a regular customer they might stop and tap the horn a couple of times outside your window, but that's all. When you stumble out sleepily, they will hand over the warm pao, pocket the coins and glide away softly, all without uttering a word. The whole transaction has a certain dreamlike quality to it. Maybe it's just that everyone is sleepy, including the pao wallah. Too sleepy to cry out.

The pao itself is unlike anything I've tasted elsewhere. It's not like the pao you get in Bombay, and it's not at all like the so-called pao wrapped in plastic which nowadays you get in some city stores. The one I particularly like is the kadak pao. It's a crescent shaped roll with a hard crust and a soft inside. The closest thing to it that I know of is the brun you get at Irani bakeries in Poona. There's also something called a poli, which is a small round flattish roll. It's also kind of hollow so that you can stuff it with cheese or ham or egg or even pizza toppings to make a very exotic breakfast.

Pao wallahs seem to be a phenomenon peculiar to the Konkan coast. In Alibag, where I lived for a while, I used to see them cycling miles every morning to sell pao in the many little villages around. And they almost always tend to be Muslim. I wonder why that is. Maybe because the pao itself came with the Muslims somewhere from the Arab world. Maybe because the baking of bread is not native to India and it's something the Hindus just never learnt. Whatever it is, I hope they never learn to shout like the fruit and vegetable vendors in cities.