He has been sitting in front of the Kamat’s restaurant nearthe Panjim church square for the last 15 years, but few know him by his name.
Nobody can miss him least of all the Indian tourists, whorelish the little goodies he dishes out from his little thela.
Chandu Yadav the ubiquitous paanwalla has been rolling paansand making a decent living out of this unconventional business.
For his customers Chandu is their paanwala bhaiya. Hailingfrom Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh, Chandu has made Goa his second home.
Magahi is the most expensive of the paans “ a pair of Magahipaan is bought for Rs 25 and sold for Rs 40. But there are very few takers forthis variety.
“Magahi is small, light green, sweetish and tasty paan thatjust melts in the mouth. But it is too delicate and needs to be preserved inthe refrigerator. So I don’t keep it,” explains Chandu when asked if he soldthe Magahi variety.
“I earn more than Rs 1000 daily during the tourist seasonand Rs 600-700 on normal days. Minus the raw material and I make a neat Rs250-300 profit per day,” he said.
Wedding season is the happiest for paan vendors as mostfive-star resorts hire their services for a day.
Yadav covers 10 to 15 such orders in a year during Novemberand pockets Rs 10,000 a day by selling 1000 paans.
Sometimes he has two or three such orders on a single daywhen hotels order 500 or 1000 paans for occasions like wedding or birthdays.
In Panjim there are around 50 paan vendors, who make a quickbuck with domestic tourists, especially Guajratis and Rajasthanis.
Tambakhu paan, paan supari, paan masala, sada paan andmeetha paan are the varieties in big demand in Goa.
November is the season when paanwallas get wedding orders andin a year cover 10-15 such orders, earning nothing less than 5-10 thousand perorder.
The paan vendors go to market around 7 o’clock every morningto buy the leaves. 100 paans costs Rs 90. Sali supari and whole supari is soldfor Rs 300 and Rs 250 a kilo.
Chandu buys raw material of Rs 400-500 daily and hisbusiness hours are 8 am to 11 pm with no holiday.
The stock comes by train at Margao and is supplied all overGoa.
