Events Reported at Tapasya Paratha Junction

Myself, Jaspal Singh Rana, and the other guy, Yatinder Singh. Picture the scene at Tapasya Paratha Junction, home of the mega-paratha. The two of us sitting on opposite sides of the table, our eyes boring into each other, our mouths open, tongues glistening, stomachs emptied out in preparation. Three enormous parathas, those mouth-wateringly flaky breads, enough for a small army, piled up next to each of us. It was time to decide who had the winning stomach, whose gastric juices could mount the greatest attack, whose intestines could take the greatest abuse.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Daddy. He was sitting at the edge of his seat. Was that a little tear of joy spilling out of his eye? That tiny sign of pride, that was enough for me. Today, I was going to make him proud.

* * *

As a boy, I wasn’t much good at anything. English, naught. Geography, zip. Maths, zero. History, zilch. Elocution, blank. Physics, void. Chemistry, diddly-squat. 

The only thing I was good at was eating. Whatever you put in front of me, I devoured. I was like the David Copperfield of gastronomy, making vast amounts of food disappear. Loaves of bread? Gone. Whole pizzas? Poof. Platters of biryani? Abracadabra. For a while I stopped getting invited to my friends’ birthday parties, after I consumed whole tables of food before the other guests arrived. Mummy started feeding me at home beforehand. 

But the best part? I knew Daddy was proud of me. At last. I heard him telling a friend, “Arrey, duffer cannot do anything right but he can eat anyone under the table. My son has a real skill, yaar. Just not the kind of skill that gets you any kind of corporate job.” And then he laughed, letting loose a deep throaty sound that reverberated through the ages.

So when I heard about the eating contest -- Hindustan ka Sabse Bada Paratha -- my gastric juices started to flow in excitement. I was going to conquer this, the biggest paratha ever made in Mother India, Hindustan. At last an opportunity for me to excel. At last a chance for me to impress my Daddy.

* * *

After that, I flung myself headlong into practicing. Not that I hadn’t already been gearing up for this, for a lifetime. It’s not like I weighed a hundred kilos when I was a mere lad of eighteen for nothing. I was a hundred kilos of pure parathas, tikkis, choley bhaturey, ghee, samosas and other Indian delights, and I’d be damned if I didn’t put away three of the mother of all parathas in record time.

For this was the contest. Each paratha was 18 inches in diameter, and if you could eat three of these lovelies in fifty minutes, you got free meals for a lifetime. Which I figured I’d need, given my lack of other marketable skills. Though really, this was what I also saw as a gateway opportunity, the first of many eating contests I could enter and make a name for myself. I could see my moniker emblazoned in bold glowing letters, up there with the Takeru “The Tsunami” Kobayashis and the Rich “The Locust” LeFevres of the world. I could be Jaspal “The Jadugar” Singh Rana, a magician. Or Jaspal Singh “The Sher” Rana, a lion. The possibilities were endless.

The fabulous thing about the contest was we weren’t actually competing with each other, Yatinder and I. If we both consumed the three parathas within fifty minutes we both won. And if neither did it, neither won. You’d think this might have taken the pressure off, but for some reason this made no difference to me at all. Not only did I want to rise to the challenge, but I wanted to beat Yatinder.

You must remember I’d lived a life of not beating anyone at anything ever, so while I appeared, to the outside eye, rather round, large and uncouth, inside, I was but a delicate flower trying to impress the paternal ogre.

* * *   

Finally, a bell rang, and we were off to the races.

From the very first minute, it was apparent that Yatinder was going to win the challenge and I was going to flunk. I could not believe it, the only skill I had, and yet, here was someone better than me. Where I was fat, he was thin. Where I was sloppy, stuffing the paratha into my gaping maw haphazardly, he was methodical. Where I was gasping and heaving, he was breathing calmly and meditatively. What was with this guy?

I looked over at Daddy and saw his face had started to fall. “C’mon Jaspal,” I said to myself, “you can do it.” 

Fifteen minutes into the contest, Yatinder had eaten his first paratha, and I was three bites behind. This was not good. This was not good at all. I knew I would have to pick up the pace to make it through the second and the third.

I sent a silent prayer up to the Lord Ganesh. My mother had a firm belief in his ability to remove all obstacles and what is a paratha, if not a very large obstacle, filled with butter and ghee and all sorts of things that cause heart attacks? Ganesh had never quite responded to my prayers before, but I guess he finally heard me. 

When I said Om and opened my eyes, I looked over at Yatinder. How much more of number two had he eaten?

Much to my amazement, Yatinder was looking decidedly grey. His lips and throat had begun to swell, ever so slightly, and he was trying to clear his throat. I’m ashamed to say that the sight of my rival in gastric distress gave me a particular boost. Immediately, I stuffed the rest of the first paratha into my mouth and began to attack the second. 

By this time, the swelling around Yatinder’s throat had increased, and he seemed to be having difficulty breathing. He was no longer putting the paratha methodically into his mouth, no longer chewing. Thirty minutes to go. 

From the small crowd of onlookers, someone from his family raised the alarm. They yelled, “Yatinder, are you okay?” 

He tried to make a sound, but nothing came out, just a sort of mnff-mnff sound. Music to my ears. I looked over at Daddy and made a thumbs up sign. This was captured by a blogger at the scene and later used against me, very inappropriately, if I may say so. I continued to eat with gusto. 

People rushed up to Yatinder, who had now fallen off his chair. Somebody yelled to call an ambulance. All his relatives crowded around him, fanning his face. It occurred to me that if someone is having an allergic reaction to a type of food, fanning may not help all that much. What was needed was one of those American EpiPens. But I was too busy shoveling food down my throat to say anything.

I looked at the clock. There were twenty minutes left, and I had one paratha to go. I knew I couldn’t be distracted by the drama that was going on. I dug into the last paratha. As I started, the ambulance arrived and they carted Yatinder off into it. 

Then the restaurant owner, Mr Khanna, came around and said they were shutting down the contest for that day. I looked him right in the eye and said, “No bloody way, you’re not.” 

* * *  

Just for the record, I’d like to say that the media coverage of the event and of my behavior that day was extremely biased. A lot was written about how I continued to consume parathas even as Yatinder had taken gravely ill. The reporters waxed eloquent about how Mr Jaspal Singh Rana “lacked a basic regard for his fellow human being,” etcetera etcetera. 

What I want to say is it’s the restaurant owner who lacked a regard for his fellow human being. Who cuts off a contest for the remaining player who’s taken the trouble to eat two very large and greasy heart-attack cakes, just because the other guy has a puffy face? Would you pull Virat Kohli out of a test match just because Babar Azam is having a bad day? This is what I ask you, and this is what I asked him. 

Besides, it was my one chance to impress my Daddy, and I was not going to let them ruin it.

I’ll tell you what I did. I sat there and ate all of the last paratha, and I finished the whole thing in nineteen minutes. That is, within the deadline. I told Mr Khanna I was going to damn well claim my prize, whether Yatinder lived or died. 

In retrospect, I can see it might have been better for me not to have spoken my mind so freely. I mean we all have thoughts, but not all of them have to be spoken out aloud. As Mummy has explained to me now, that’s why Bhagwan has given us a mind separate from our mouth. Alas, my words had been captured in technicolor. The blogger got that part too, on his phone. Lousy bastard. And instead of going on about the fact that after all that fuss, Yatinder survived, all he had was a mild case of nut allergy because the flour had contained small amounts of ground nuts, all they talked about was what I said.

I won the restaurant’s eating contest, that much I did. But I was banned from all other eating contests in India for the rest of the year. Unsportsmanlike behavior, they said. You know what, I didn’t care. At least Daddy was proud of me. “He’s not a quitter,” he told his friends, beaming. And I now have free meals for a lifetime. 

But that yen for a paratha? I’m afraid that’s gone forever. But that’s okay. There’s plenty else to choose from at Tapasya Paratha Junction.