Paan lovers in Hyderabad are in for disappointment as supply of Calcutta Paan, favoured by the majority, has dried up due to unseasonal rain and floods in West Bengal.
Nawabi luncheons are incomplete without an exotic assortment of mouth freshers wrapped in Calcutta Paan. However, the mouth-melting luscious paans are now leaving a bitter taste as the prices have gone through the roof, says Syed Afzal Ali, a paan lover in Humayun Nagar.
Calcutta Paan flavoured with Meenakshi, gulkand, Kashmiri Qiwan and Raj Ratan Kashmiri used to be sold for ₹20-30 a few months ago, but now costs ₹35-60. Fancy shops in uptown Banjara Hills, Jubilee Hills and Madhapur charge higher given the delectable ingredients that go into the making of special paans.
M. Bala Murali, whose family has been in wholesale betel leaf business for the last three generations, says Calcutta Paan is now hard to find in Telangana as well as in other parts of the country due to a severe shortage in betel leaf supply from West Bengal.
Every day, Telangana’s largest paan mandi at Darussalam here gets only 25-30 baskets from Kolkata, down from 35-40 baskets earlier, with each consisting of at least 4,000 leaves, he points out. Later, they are supplied to other districts in the State.
According to Mr. Bala Murali, the buying price of Calcutta Paan has gone up from ₹400 for 100 leaves to anywhere between ₹1,800 and ₹2,500.
That is more than a six-fold increase, but paan makers are sure that they cannot raise the price of a ready-to-consume paan to that level, asserts Pan Shop Owners Association of India general secretary Mohammed Salahuddin Dakhni. “Some shop owners are getting only a few leaves and making paan for old, regular customers. Others are turned away since we do not want any arguments over the new pricing. We are in dire straits now but nobody cares about our plight,” he says.
Mr. Bala Murali says Assam is the largest consumer of Calcutta Paan, followed by Varanasi, Prayagraj, Lucknow, Nagpur, Mumbai and Hyderabad. He adds that Telangana is the only south Indian State which gets the paan from West Bengal.
On the other hand, the usual betel leaves have been in short supply since the recent Chennai floods, and hence, the price of all paans, especially that of speciality paans, have shot through the roof. “These days, the market is getting chewing leaves supply from Chennai, as most of the farmers in Chittoor and Kadapa districts of Andhra Pradesh are supplying the harvest there,” he said.
