2 reasons for such a post topic.....
- muri aka murra being available in US - well as they say, NJ IS mini India.....UK has its share of a few pockets of Indian populace and hence the linked amenities and accessories/foods/groceries etc. However, the shops are mostly owned/operated by Bangladeshis, who have settled down there. In NJ, it is nothing short of a stark contrast......roads lined with Indian shops, selling their wares which range from the mundane pani puris/paans/chaats/mithais/biriyanis to the more exotic churidars/saris/gold jeweleries. There are 2 major grocery chains that I know of - Patel Brothers and Subzi Mandi. Of the months spent here in US, I think I have logged a major part of my active hours (beside office :)) in the confines of these Indian stores. The former is gujarati chain while the latter is a punjabi chain. Layouts/format are similar and the same brands adorn the shelves more or less. Of course my better half has discerned more differences over time, however for me the shopping experience is the same in either one. Well...coming back to the bone of contention, muri is available, being offered by different companies like Swad etc in either of these shops.....Always excited by the prospect of discovering Indian food items/groceries, I was indeed amused when I saw packets of muris lying on the shelves, in various SKUs.....
- Old memories linked to it triggered during normal office banter with a friend - Jhalmuri is an almost staple diet of bengalis. I highly doubt that there could be a scenario wherein a service person doesn't consume copious amounts of muri everyday, in the evenings during the weekdays. The only other such food item would be chai and samosa. Being a bengali, I was not going to break the tradition....at least when it came to food :).....when I shifted to Kolkata, I found the post lunch hours were spent in anticipation of the evening snacks......almost all the floors in the office, different bays would smell of one or the other snack items....like samosas, egg rolls, chicken rolls etc....then there would be some efficient POC who would diligently perform the 1 item non-mentioned in his JD (explicitly) every single evening.....that being ordering and collecting to-gos for "n" no of packets of jhalmuris (n = no of resources in project), nicely put in a big polythene by the muriwala......the item would vary over the entire week.....well the taste buds of the hard working resources seem to have different inclinations over different days of the week....so the menu would vary from muri to samosas to momos to rolls et al.....coming back to the topic in hand, I became a fan of Jhalmuri in a matter of weeks.....one of the biggest advantages of this food item (the USP) is that it can be customized to order....so a health freak can avoid oil etc and vary the quantities of salt, chanas etc to suit his/her preference.....a foodie would dig into a well oiled jhalmuri. The preparation time would be 2-3 mins max, wherein the vendor would produce around 4-5 packets...well yes it works in batch mode.....1 particular vendor just outside the company premises would cater to hundreds across companies, manning the shop alone.....over the years I continued visiting his shop almost every single day, along with my friends in the evenings.....I saw him buy a small shop, get his nephew a "thela" to keep up the supply for the increasing cutomer base.....those 20 odd minutes every evening were spent with friends sipping tea and munching jhalmuri (not necessarily in the same order)....most of those friends have moved on....they have switched companies, moved to onsite etc......yet those memories linger on.....the bakwaas discussions/debates, with a jhalmuri packet in our hands.......
