A colleague of mine has been
demanding a cake from me for quite some time.
The reason behind his demand is not so interesting and so I am not
discussing it. Bored with his demand, I decided to buy a few pastries for
him. Last week, on a fine morning, I went
to a bakery in our neighbourhood. Most
of the shops were still closed. The
counter at the bakery too was not open.
There were two teenagers in the bakery, who were busy attending to the
chores. While one was sweeping, another
was cooking something in a large vessel.
Out of curiosity and nothing
else to do, waiting for the counter to open, I observed what was being
cooked. I wondered, what can be cooked
in a bakery! I thought everything is
baked there. A large aluminium vessel,
which probably was never washed, was placed on an indigenously designed gas
stove in front of the bakery, on the road.
The vessel too, was not covered with any lid. The water in the vessel was very dirty. Dirty is not the appropriate word. It was muddy.
Potatoes and carrots were being boiled in that vessel. (Probably, the
root vegetables were not washed) I also saw
a thick polythene bag inside the vessel that floated partially in the boiling
water and I told the boy sweeping the floor, assuming that it was dropped into
the vessel along with the vegetables, inadvertently. While he maintained silence, another boy who
brought a tray of eggs and dropped one after the other into the boiling water replied
that, he had dropped a sealed cover containing peas into the water. The eggs were not white and bright like the
ones I have seen in the provision stores or the supermarkets, but were
off-white and dirty. Some eggs were
stained. I just could not digest the scene and it troubled me a lot. (It
continues to haunt me).
I discussed it with some of
my colleagues at office and a lady, who lived near a bakery in her childhood,
told me that, they boil eggs for making puffs (egg puffs). But why potatoes, peas and carrots was my
question? She replied; they are for the
veg-puffs. “OMG” was my reaction. “Is this the way they boil vegetables for
veg-puff?” Another colleague asked me; “can
you guess how oil is replenished in roadside eateries?” Even before I attempted to answer, she said, “oil
sachets are just dropped in to the wok and after a while, when the plastic
cover melts and the oil spills into the wok, the plastic cover is removed”. Why on earth should they do such things? Is cutting a sachet and pouring oil such a
difficult task? I discussed the same topic with several people that day. My brother, who had worked with a firm
manufacturing poultry feed and had visited several poultries during his tenure
told me that, the dirt on the eggs I had seen that morning could be bird
droppings. Yuck.
I am not satisfied
discussing this with just my family and colleagues. I want as many people as possible to know how
unhygienic the bakeries and roadside eateries are. Kindly share this information with as many
people as possible.
