The cult of Keshav

hat will you write about me? I’m just a pohawala.” The man who says this is Keshav Mankar. Yes, The Keshav. And that’s why, we can almost hear legions of his fans mock-booing in disagreement. For Nagpurians who have been living on may be Mars for the last 25 years, Keshav Mankar has been selling poha tarri and only poha tarri from a tiny shop at Deo Nagar. In a city where you can find a pohawallah before you can say ‘Hao’, Keshav’s Poha has earned something of a cult status, as much for its taste as for the shop’s singularly eccentric business hours. The shop opens around 6.15am. On a brisk day, as is usually the case, Mankar will turn you back if you reach at 7:30am. That’s right: In a city notorious for being on snooze mode until 11am, Keshav Mankar manages to get people out of their beds at the crack of dawn.He views the adulation with a mixture of bemusement and pride. He took over the shop in 1991 after the death of his father Jayram, who had set up the business in 1974. “He sold misal, batata wada and poha,” Keshav remembers. For many years, Keshav and his brother Ashok would sell batata vada and poha. A few years ago, they stopped selling the vada. “Fights would break out between customers over who would get it first. Tarri would be flung on shirts. It happened once too often and our landlord gave us an ultimatum,” Mankar recalls, his matter-of-fact tone banishing any comical vada war images forming in one’s mind.So, what’s the secret recipe of the tarri that’s worth fighting for? “Onions, ginger, garlic, tomato (not a lot), red chilli powder, garam masala, coriander powder,” Mankar rattles off. The most ingredient, however, seems to be oil. “For 2kg of watana, I use 2.5kg oil,” he says. The tarri is enough for 10kg of poha. Mankar does all the cooking himself ‘to ensure that the quality remains exactly the same.’ The oft-quoted factoid that he goes for his job at a school or college after closing the shop is a rumour, he says, adding that that even though he does business for less than two hours, the preps and cleaning up take up the remaining part of the day. “I go to sleep at 11pm and wake up at 4am,” he says, complaining that the younger generation is just not ready for this kind of dedication. He’s 57 and he says he can go on for 10 more years at most. “I don’t think my sons will carry on the business,” he says.Note to fans: Eat all you can while it lasts.