Confessions of a White, Middle-Aged Paan Eater

(New York Press) ... Meeta, or sweet, paan is not to be confused with tambaku or tobacco paan, a savory and more powerful version that includes chewing tobacco. Tambaku paan chewers in India spit—they don’t swallow—defiling street corners and stairwells with an indelible red spittle from the betel nuts. The lime component is so caustic that the spit from 50,000 pedestrians crossing Kolkata’s Howra Bridge every day is corroding the 67-year-old steel girders, fomenting a serious structural crisis that Indian authorities are struggling to remedy. Continued

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