Another delight in my life

Seasonal delights. thinking of them bring smile n "raal" on my lips. my love shifts but I don't forget my old love. come the next season and I again fall in love with the same delight. my love affair with hapus aam is world famous. or at least family famous. come summers and I enjoy not only Alphonso mango, but also lovingly blushing juicy peaches, lychees giving their juice ...m simply delightful (that applies to all fruits...I love fruits that are naturally sweet n don't have that sick starchy taste that old apples get...I love apples that break with a "tac") rainy season and its time for vadapavs (whose daily indulgences continue anyways...monsoon to bas bahana hai) and of course bhutta and come winter its time for lovely nagpuri tangy sweet oranges (which got conveniently got replaced in the market with US stamped orange sweet limes...only they are worse...orange in color but taste overly sugary and smell not even remotely orange) and of course wet chana or solana or harbhara. come winter and some simple poor looking vendor at normal market (not nirmal life style) sit with these harbharas/chana/wet grams. at times with their foliage at times without. the foliage if fresh can be made into lovely liquidy green vegetable. but usually its fed to horses :)
these harbharas or solanes come with their outer waxy cover (of no use) or nicely peeled and ready. (nicely peeled are definitely more costly) my mother used to get these peeled ones at times in winters when I was small and used to make a lovely fried chana with it. but this time I tasted something extraordinaire...I had roasted wet grams.
It so happened that weary and exhausted I got down from the bus from office, and dragging already weary feet home. this person would have gone unnoticed but I saw him. nonchalant, he was roasting something which from far looked like peanuts. I am not fan of peanuts, though I like them as a snack...esp rajkot peanuts...(I am digressing from the topic again). something made me glance again as I neared the vendor. the smell was divine and what was roasting were not peanuts but wet gram, with skins on. the smell was wet and salty...the person was roasting them in salt...such a lethal combination that I came to understand later, after almost being addicted to the daily fix. for trial sake i had a packet of 5 bucks.small but felt sufficient for the amount, I paid and carrying the hot packet, trudged ahead. some grams could be eaten just like that...with skin and all. the skin and the green gram inside were just so young that a brushing of salt made them utterly delectable. roasted not till charcoal but just to cook the chana. somehow it was salt that brought more flavour to the chana. Freshly sweetish and salty, a bit warm having distinct roasted smell. The first bite had an oomph. caring a damn about what people though, I engrossed my self in eating chana and trudging ahead. The journey home never felt just so short. the last chana ended, the mouth still had the taste. a daily fix definitely till the last one is eaten :)