In India, pan has been playing an important part in social life and customs for hundreds of years. In the courts of the Mogul kings & other medieval rulers, the betel leaf or pan was offered as part of hospitality, friendship and love. In the temple of King Rama at Orcha, the pan is given out to devotees as prasad or offering from the Lord since the temple is built as the court of Lord Rama and not as his shrine. In the temple of Lord Venkatesa at Tirupati the butter from the forehead of Lord Venkatesa, wrapped inside a pan leaf, is given to devotees as a special blessing from the Lord.

In South India betel leaf and nut, turmeric and kumkum is offered to married women during 'Varalakshmi Puja' during Navaratri and on all auspicious occasions like marriages and festivals. In Rajasthan, during a marriage, the boy's party will eat only after money is offered and the elders of the girl's party put a betel leaf into the mouth of every guest. The ceremony is known as Niyona.

In olden days wives offered betel leaf to their husbands to seduce them and to wean them away from the 'Other Women' after reciting the Vashikaran mantras 108 times. The witches (if there is anything like that) are supposed to have used pan for enslaving men. The dancing girls offered pan filled with intoxicants and aphrodisiacs to their clients. The thugs, in the British period, poisoned their victims by offering a cynide filled pan after a heavy wining and dining session and an evening filled with dance and music. In the underworld, even today, the word 'supari' is used as a cue for murder. The slogans in pan shops are sometimes very attractive. A slogan on a shop near my house in old Delhi read, ' Pan Labo Ki Shan' (Betel - the glory of lips).

The good thing about pan was that it could be offered to a guest at any time - before dinner, after dinner, in between meals, so it was always kept handy. The pan is also known by different names in India. In sophisticated Lucknow you eat a pan ki gilori, while in the South you eat a beeda. Pan is prepared in a different manner with a different kind of leaf in Banaras, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Lucknow and Chennai. After the partition, pan has become a scarce commodity in Pakistan and costs a lot. The best pan in Karachi is sold outside Bandu Khan's famous restaurant and was sold for ten rupees in 1992. If you were visiting Pakistan, a bunch of pan leaf would be a perfect gift for your host especially in Karachi.

The North Indian 'saada' pan has just a filling of cardamom, betel nut and cloves whereas the South Indian beeda is filled with grated coconut and sugar. On the other hand the North Indian Sweet pan is filled with dates, gulkand (rose petal and honey) and jellied fruit. These days mint and camphor (karpooram) are also added to the pan. Around the usage of pan, a huge pan masala industry has come up in India. The oncologists do not recommend the use of pan masala. Eating pan continuously and with tobacco can cause cancer but then anything is bad in excess. Moreover, the tobacco users also need to spit it out which they do everywhere. In Delhi you see the landing of many buildings covered with the stains of pan spit making the place very ugly. In many families pan eating is a ritual. In my family in Delhi it was a practice to walk from our house in Sita Ram Bazar to the pan shop at Delite Cinema after a good meal. After my marriage, I missed the ritual in Chennai. There were not many North Indian pan shops in Madras in 1974. In fact there were only two shops - one opposite the Woodlands Hotel and another in the Shivalaya building. Whenever I passed that way I did stop for a pan. However, my South Indian husband has not been too pleased about it because he is a doctor, besides, I have spoiled many a white shirt of his by sneezing on them - with pan in my mouth.