Pani Puri!

A boring friday morning, tending towards afternoon actually and I am settled in a conference room with my new team. Im trying my best to look as busy as I can meddling around on my Desktop and hoping nobody realises that what I am really doing is thinking about my previous office and all the friends I left behind there. The new team is a good mix of new people hired from all over literally so we have people from andhra, chennai, delhi, haryana, rajasthan and of course, maharashtra(yours truly). Suddenly a stray sentence from the technical people's group catches my attention. the lady goes "hum toh nahi bolte yahaan ki pani puri wahaan se acchi nahin hain.. Kitne gande ho". To which the Andhra guy goes "but the pani puri from andhra is brilliant. There are all flavours of water there. Here there is only one". And it makes me think about the golgappas of delhi, pani puri of mumbai and probably the south and the puchhkas of Kolkata. These are the three variants I have tried and though the essence remains the same the flavours vary drastically across the country with Kolkata making a sour, spicy liquid, Delhi with its sweet 'imli' and suji(semolina) puri variation and Mumbai of course with the ragda and the mint/pudina chutney or sometimes pulses but definitely not boiled potatoes as with the other two places. And then I remember how passionate each region's people are about their version of this simple dish. And its fun to see the love for their own cuisine and culture. But at the same time one wonders how is this mixture of so many different people, each thinking they are better than the other surviving as a country? Why not just accept differences and enjoy the change than be caught up in a senseless "what my ancestors have been doing is the only right thing to do and I will not evolve" attitude? This thought always leaves me confused about my fellow countrymen( is countrywomen valid?). Lets just hope that at the end of it we are a more stable team than the easily disoluble pani puri.