Show Pride in Product… Print Proprietor’s Photo

Posted on July 30, 2008
Filed Under >Owais Mughal, Food, Humor
17 Comments
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Owais Mughal

One sales technique that Pakistani grocery stores have mastered is that they put saunf (fennel seeds), chaalia/supari (betel nut) and pan masala (English translation unknown) packets near the cash register. When you think you are all done, your hand invariably goes towards the jar full of these products and the result is you end up paying more than planned. I went through the same trap today. After buying grocery I put my hand in a jar full of assorted saunf/supari. After I pulled out a fist full of these products, a couple of items in my collection made me laugh out loud. Take a look below.

SupariSupariSupari

These must be the proudest owners of any product in the world because they dare to print their own photos on each and every packet of saunf supari. One product claims to be of ‘Export Quality’ while other prints their Trade Mark number to safeguard their property right; or maybe to suggest quality!

By the way the person on left photo is the same as in center photo. The difference is probably of ‘shadi se pehle’ (before marriage) and ‘shadi ke baad’ (after marriage) photos.

Another clue is the do dhaari uljhi lat (bidirectional intermingled hair) on his forehead. yaqeen aa gaya? (do you believe it now?)

Baghban(gardener) and Bombay are the two product lines of the same company called Ansa Food Products of Karachi.

suparisuparisupariSupariSupariSupariSupari

Now mazaaq bartaraf (sarcasm aside), the saunf supari product from Pakistan is a very colorful bunch. You can see from our cascaded photo collection above that they come in all sorts of eye catching designs with and without the photo of proprietors.

SupariPan Masala SupariSupari

Sometimes however, the packaging doesn’t get aligned very well with the printer which results in occasional out of focus printing. For example look at the ‘Tasty Gold Sweet Supari’ packet in center above. Moustaches of the proprietor seem to have got superimposed on his nose instead. The eye-brows also seem to align more towards than forehead than eyes. This priniting quality ultimately gives the product a supernatural touch.

SupariI have singled out two images for special mentioning because they are special. Photo to the right is Shahi Saunf/supari product which is considered as one of the best in quality. I believe it is also the most sold product in its category. This particular image is a Classic product line. The word Classic is however wrongly pronounced here by putting a ‘zer’ under ‘kaaf’ which will make its urdu pronunciation as ‘Kilasik’. Wrong. Use of ‘zer’ was unnecessary here. Owners of Shahi supari don’t know they are wasting red ink by printing extra characters on every packet. Shahi Supari also has a white and red color ‘non-classic’ package which is slighlty cheaper and sells even more than the ‘classic’ brand.

Pan Masalla Supari Photo to the left has a nostalgic value for me because this is perhaps the most eaten chaalia (betel nut) in Pakistani University class rooms. I’ve spent many a boring lectures by sharing packets of ‘rasili’ among my class mates. usually one guy used to open a packet of ‘rasili’ in the class and then it was distributed one chaalia (betel-nut) at a time to the whole bench. That single chaalia was then chewed for next 45 minutes until the lecture was over.

NOTE: Eating too much betel-nut is muzir-e-sehat (bad for your health). One should only buy it once in a while when visiting a desi grocery store.

17 responses to “Show Pride in Product… Print Proprietor’s Photo”

  1. Dr Cocopal says:

    Dear Fellow.
    A new SUPARI on the block Oil proxy war
    We all know that these super powers are using our land to fight proxy war since last 30 years.
    now the new player are china and India .
    both these countries along with USA need energy so there eyes are on oil and gas deposits of CAR stats .
    Russia too want to keep these oil wealth in her hands.
    Once Taliban were blue eyed boys of USA but as they refuse oil pipe line through there area they were punished.
    Now its our turn to face this situation .
    China want energy route from gwadar port to china through Karakorum high way .
    There are more then 3000 chines working on this rode widening project since a year now they want to start railway link with Rawalpindi.
    India want to import gas and electricity from Central Asian republic’s .
    And USA has plan to put an oil and gas pipe line through Gwadar ,Pishawar Jalalabad CAR route.
    I request readers to suggest that how should we handle this crises because there is some hidden blessing from ALLAH .
    If we survive this crises.
    We can earn lot of money by these energy corridors.

  2. Rafay Kashmiri says:

    @Paan ki yaad mein,

    Ye supari, jo wo liay bethay hein,
    hey to supari, rasili magar nehein

    Suntaiy aye the surilay ka rasila hona,
    ajooba hogaya, us supari ka rasili hona

    Rafay Kashmiri

  3. Altaf says:

    What a thoughtful topic to choose. :) … In tapori language… log Pakistan ki supari liye baithay hain (token money for icing someone) aur aap Rasili ko yad kar rahay hain…

  4. Khurram Farooqui says:

    ISI may be supporting the Taleban.
    India and Pakistan fire across the line of control.
    Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of having a hand in the Indian consulate blast.
    The Taleban control Swat and parts of the NWFP.
    The Interior ministry has authority over the ISI, and then it doesn’t.

    I have lost my appetite for supari.

  5. They are very dangerous for health….

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