Paani Puri 'Thhela'

Seeing a pani poori ‘thhela’ in Mahabalipuram or most popularly known as the Mahabs, I felt very elated. It was not because I was on a look out for eating those but because of its typical “street side vendor” sight in the dosaland of “Chennai”. Just then I heard the man speaking in hindi to one of his customers. And I decided about my marketing blog to be written on and went on to garner data from him.

He was a “bihari” baabu and had come here to meet his two ends meet. So he decided to open up something which had a flavour of north. And there his hectic day starts as early as 5 am in the morning. He makes puris on his own and it takes him around 5 hours everyday to make around 600 puris with its tangy mouth-watering paani. He starts selling at 4:30 in the evening till 9:30 at night. For all the time that I spent, there were atleast 3-4 customers at any point of time to savour the paani puri.  His thhela looked prim and proper, clean and hygienic so I opted to take a chance. Yes, it was a truly palatable idea of having even the second plate.

He sells 8 puris for Rs 20 per plate. After spending time and observing , I could gather few check points on the type of customers that he catered to, their responses, the time of the day when he sold his maximum chunk. His customer base was from kids to adults, ranging from 5 years old to 50 years old. They preferred to come at 6 in the evening when the sun has set down and a subtle breeze sets in. It seemed as if most of the people were his regular customers because they just stood, smiled at him and started to have a friendly  talk. There were these two ‘akkas’ who in a very pleasant tone started suggesting him to make the paani more tangy and spicy. At many different instances, I could infer that most of the customers that visited preferred eating from his ‘thhela’ not only because of the taste of his paani puri but also because of his amiable nature, decent charges, and his salubrious and dirtless ‘thhela’.