Digestive troubles and tea

After a stressful short break in New Delhi, I jumped at the chance to unwind when a friend suggested we go and chill out at the Global Village.

I love fairs — maybe because they take me down memory lane to when I was growing up in a small town in south India, where the only excitement was the annual ‘exhibition' and you could gorge on ‘home-made' mango and muskmelon ice cream.

The famous kebab shops of downtown Hyderabad would set up huge shamianas, or open-air tents decorated with bright tube lights in the exhibition grounds and handwritten signs in the squiggly Urdu alphabet would advertise which delicacies awaited inside.

Boys would stand outside shouting to fair-goers to come in and enjoy the repast.

But you didn't need any further incentive after a whiff of the smoke coming from the coal-fire barbecues.

(I am biased, but while working abroad I have eaten kebabs from various countries, including the scrumptious Persian koobideh and the plump Turkish doner, but there is nothing to beat the Hyderabad kebab with its fragrant spices and soft, textured meat which melts in your mouth.)

The tables inside were usually packed with hungry people who needed nourishment after walking around the massive, dusty grounds to see the treasures at each pavilion from India's many varied and diverse states.

I don't remember this, but I believe my dad would patiently educate everyone in the family on what to do in case someone got lost in the teeming crowds. "Wait at the base of the Ferris Wheel and we will find you," he would tell us.

Finding a lost child in India's chaotic crowds is nearly impossible and I am now sure if my hand had slipped from my mother's grasp I would have been brought up by a couple in far-away Kashmir.

But the first person to be lost would usually be my dad and we would all then have to trudge down to the base of the giant Ferris Wheel, where he would be standing patiently while being buffeted around by the mass of people swirling around him.

The women in our group would quietly giggle, but I believe my dad would be proud of himself that his advice had paid off, oblivious to the fact that he was the one who was lost and not us.

When we migrated to Canada, I had insisted that we all go and visit the ‘Ex' (the Canadian National Exhibition, an annual fun fair) in Toronto, just to make up to our children for what they had missed while they were growing up in Saudi Arabia.

A major attraction of the fair was the air show put on by the CF-18 Hornets and we would all "ooh" and "aah" as the planes went through their impossible aerial acrobatic routines overhead.

But the highlight of the fair for the children would still be the coconut shies and the various games of skill where you could win a huge teddy bear or a cuddly, long woolly snake — and, of course, the cotton candy and the ride through the House of Horrors.

Since our son said he wasn't interested in coming to the Global Village, we adults went and had a nice time shopping. We really enjoyed the Turkish and South African pavilions and bought some really great handicrafts boasting a real "wow" factor.

Then we stopped at a cafeteria with a sign that said "karak tea". (A karak, or ‘stiff' tea in India is one in which you heap so much sugar that the teaspoon just stands up straight.)

A sign at this cafeteria said it sold ‘digestive troubles', ‘cellulites' and ‘born vita'. The Indian stallkeeper said he didn't know what ‘digestive troubles' were. "The sign was written by the arbaab [boss]," he explained.