Surat, before becoming infamous by the plagued disease was famous for its delicacies and the way the Suratis enjoyed life eating out in their inimitable style. During my tenure at Surat, I was keen to visit some of the historical and religious places of Gujarat like Dwaraka and Porbander. My Surati friends while speaking reverentially about the temple at Virpur also spoke nostalgically about the Paratha Houses en route thus adding variety to my interest in visiting that place.

As I traveled to Rajkot from Ahmedabad I could see on both sides of the road, restaurants christened - five star-moon light-galaxy and some others with earthly names like Highway and Fountain but all invariably suffixed with Paratha House in bold letters. I was told by my accompanying Surati friend that the Paratha Houses pickup business only by late night and continue in full swing after midnight and quite often up to the early part of early morning.

By the time we reached Rajkot, the discomfort of overnight journey by supposedly a luxury bus coupled with hunger caused more by the sight of Paratha Houses left in me a mild bout of headache. But the darshan in the temple of Jalaram Bapa and the serene atmosphere of the village of Virpur helped overcome all the fatigue. The prasad offered in the temple too, seemed to have the divine power to quench all hunger and thirst that we left the temple with a unique sense of peace of mind.

Once out of the temple the thought of paratha came back to my mind and from the special supplement on Sourashtra on the day's newspaper I took a mental note of a couple of Paratha Houses that had tastefully worded their advertisement. To spend the day we were on a visit to Gondal the small town with remarkably broad roads and palatial buildings like a metropolis. When my eyes twinkled in front of the stray Paratha House that we came across my bemused friend restrained me and asked to wait till midnight.

When we boarded the bus I skipped my dinner after personally inquiring about the dinner halt at a Paratha House. The bus scheduled to leave at 8 o'clock had only eight passengers and the conductor of the bus vanished after issuing the tickets, while the driver started the engine and kept it grunting, without moving the bus an inch. The passengers after keeping patience for about an hour lost it. I was getting late for my paratha and some others for their connecting train at Ahmedabad.

The bus moved after the conductor returned with a catch of 10 passengers, and I realized that a meal on hand is worth two parathas in a likely midnight halt. I tried to sleep, but the thundering air horns, and the swerves of the bus made sleeping a difficult exercise not to talk of the empty stomach awaiting the paratha. My shoulder was periodically butted by the tilting head of my friend who was in snores after a good dinner.

I was badly in need of some meal paratha or no paratha. I again tried to sleep but with no legroom I needed all the maneuverability of an invertebrate to keep my body in different shapes and sizes to catch a sleep and beat the cold wind. The bus halted at a railway gate and I saw fruit venders. Ah! Manna from heaven I felt and had some chicoos after storing some apples.

After two hours of continuous run the bus at last stopped at a place where a plethora of Paratha Houses were doing literally roaring business in that dead of night. After a good sleep, my friend walked briskly and having lost sleep I staggered along. We had to hop our way to avoid heaps of rubbish, slush and filth to reach the hotel. As I sat in the restaurant holding my breath, a clumsily clad adolescent holding a duster that was matchingly dirty came and flung plates in front of us over the table. Another shabby adolescent came reciting "Alu Gobi, Alu mutter, Malai kofta, Mutter masala…….

With what? I interrupted.

'Of course paratha' he yelled in Gujarathi and I waved him off to bring any vegetable of his choice. The waiter! returned with a bowl of odorous vegetable and placed it with a bang on the table. When he transferred the oily parathas with his fingers from a stained and worn out aluminum plate in to my dish, my lust for paratha disappeared, and I had only apples for dinner and purchased some bananas for the journey up to Surat.

How was the trip? My neighbour asked.

"Fruitful" I replied, even though paratha is not a fruit.