Nothing provides a greater zing than a dash of chilli and salt. Except perhaps a sprinkling of adventure. This is a lesson that every schoolchild once learnt. Not from a teacher with chalk and duster, but from an almost equally important character on the school scene. The kachhi kairi wala .

This was the fellow who stood outside the school gate with red, green and brown wares arranged on his spindly stall. Usually an aluminium thali — at most the diameter of a bicycle tyre — sat precariously on a crude cane stand. From within this battered circumference, emerged the most addictive delicacies.

The fruity pulp hidden in the tough brown pod of tamarind. A fragrant parcel of quartered guava. Glossy purple berries, unforgivingly acerbic and rumoured to be poisonous. All these forbidden fruits were dusted with a matchless pink powder — a punchy combination of chilli and salt and some mysterious ingredient. A powder that, no matter how hard I tried to replicate at home, I failed.

Most schools around the city had vendors with identical inventories. Their wares sat in frayed plastic bags with rolled down sides. All year round, there were two types of bor . The yellow-red berries were crisp and fleshy, and held little attraction. They tasted too much like the healthy, legitimate fruits that we were served at home. I definitely preferred the overripe ones with their dark red, wrinkly skins and naughty tang. One that became positively wicked when mixed with the chilli-salt mixture from an old, unwashed plastic box.

Even more tart and mouth-puckering were the pale green amlas . They were as small and translucent as marbles, and as fresh as spring. But they packed a punch that could reduce a normal, intelligent girl into a spluttering, eye-watering, nose-leaking mess.

The deceptively innocent amla apart, our vendor sold sliced star fruit, and varieties of tamarind. But despite his decision to diversify, he was invariably called the ‘ kachhi kairi wala ’ because raw mango was his bestseller. The stall stocked two types of raw mangoes. Both were thunk-thunk-thunked into paper-thin slices. The yellow, on-the-road-to-ripeness mangoes were a wimpy mixture of sweet and sour. But the firm, raw ones caused mouths to pucker, ears to buzz and brains to freeze.

It was for these killer kairis that we galloped to the gate as soon as we heard the lunch bell, and tried to squeeze through the crowd with our coin. “ Ek rupya kachhi kairi, mirchi zyada ,” we would wheedle and bellow. And after much jostling and pleading, would emerge from the fray with our soggy treasure wrapped in a square of newspaper.

Of course, the adults in our lives furiously disapproved of our break-time transactions. Mrs Saldanha threatened punishment. Mrs Uppal shrieked. The school principal ordered surprise desk checks during which orchards of berries and mangoes were confiscated. My mother warned of cholera, dysentery and bronchitis. Then she tried to work out a compromise. We brought raw mangoes home and sliced them, but the experiment flopped. The slices were too fat and crude. The chilli-salt mixture was too brash. And the tang of adventure absent.

So we continued to sneak out of school and part with coins and crumpled two-rupee notes on that most crowded and clamorous patch of pavement. And just like other schoolchildren outside other schools, we ensured that the kachhi kairi wala was the busiest vendor around. More than the man who cycled by with his pink puffs and white whorls of sugary ‘ buddhi ke baal ’. More than the fellow who sold chikki . More even than the pulled candy seller who shaped his soft, colourful confection into little birds and butterflies.

How I longed to be an adult so that I could eat mountains of amla and bor and kairi without peering over my shoulder and counting my coins. Except that when I finally grew up, I became more interested in organic sushi bars and artisanal bakeries.

Meanwhile, the city changed too. Schools became more conscious about hygiene and security. And children began to believe that all good things come in packages — even if they are topped with synthetic masalas and flavoured with evil, throat-stripping chemicals. So bor and amla and mystery masala mixes faded out of our lives.

Till I bumped into a beloved old friend, most unexpectedly, last week. We had lunch at Bombay Canteen, a buzzing new restaurant in Mumbai. I ordered a guava tan ta tan with chilli ice-cream and beamed when I saw a beautiful tart topped with the palest pink ice cream. Then I took a tentative spoonful, and gasped. The flavours of schoolgirl-hood came flooding back. The tang of drippy guava and chilli. The heavy schoolbag. The sense of freedom.

A quick check proved that I’m not the only one feeling nostalgic about the elusive kachhi kairi wala and his sour delights. A local chef has worked out a chilli and raw mango risotto. A bar in Fort offers cocktails that could have come straight from a hawker’s thela — kachhi kairi, sweet amla and imli ka nasha . Another whips up a chilli guava margarita, in which the glass is rimmed with red mirchi powder. There’s even a raw mango chilli and amla chocolate out there. But who wants these variations when you can get the real thing? I’m determinedly trawling the city for an old-fashioned kachhi kairi wala . And if he looks hepatitis-free and hygienic enough, I may even let my daughters take a bite.

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