IN the bylanes of Puri behind the Shri Jagannath Temple, where roadside halwais, wrestling akhadas and people�s tiny homes stand cheek-by-jowl, and where cattle feed from garbage dumps, the big high comes in making and consuming bhang every evening. It is an intoxicant, an edible that puts people in the right spirits, and which most old-timers believe is extremely good for the health. They will swear by it. And they must have their dose of it before nightfall. From wherever the bhang is being made, you will find young men with leaf pudis containing the bhang in their hands cycling off to deliver it to the elders at home every evening. This is not dinner for the night, this is nasha. What follows is a voracious appetite as the heady juices in the bhang work on the gastric juices in the stomach and create a gnawing hunger like never experienced before.

Do not attempt to wander around willy-nilly hoping to find the people making bhang in Puri by yourself. There are no specific shops where this is manufactured and sold. Seek a contact in the holy city and get him to take you around. In the narrow, congested gullys leading to and from the Shri Jagannath Temple, and in the bustling and polluted market place around it, there are always touts hanging around who will ask to be your guide to the temple and the city. Make use of one of their services. Every locality must have its own specialist. And since most of these specialists are either temple workers or wrestlers, you would be better advised not to attempt searching them out on your own. They might not approve of your curiosity and entertain you. Go through a contact, go prepared to observe the religious and sentimental sanctity of their temples and homes, and you will be all right.

One of the most famous areas is just within the shadow of the famous Puri temple itself, and in the courtyard of one of the smaller temples of the holy city. No names are taken here, and none are required. After going through a maze of tiny, twisting gullys, you duck under a gate, brush past low-sweeping trees and virtually burst upon a temple scene. Two huge stone lions, with one paw each raised, and the symbolic phallus erect, guard the entrance to this temple. By their sides, on a flat stone water tank, one group of men is engaged in making bhang and another in playing the game of dices that the Pandavas used to play in centuries gone by.

In Banaras, which is another Hindu holy city, and where bhang is also consumed as an intoxicant, the bhang is a drink. It is made from a leaf that grows wildly in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, quite like opium and marijuana, but which farmers need a government licence to cultivate and sell. This leaf is ground to make a paste and that paste is mixed with milk, ice and cream and introduced in thandai, a rich and flavoured drink, to produce a kick. This thandai, as Amitabh Bachchan showed in Silsila, can make you sing, it can make you dance, it can get you to be deliriously happy or as depressed as hell. So the people of Banaras lace their thandai with bhang rather carefully. Not the citizens of Puri, however. Their bhang is made from the leaf of the ganja plant. It grows wildly and on almost all kinds of soil in Orissa. Arid conditions, and stagnant water, are all that is needed for the ganja plant to survive. The green leaves are plucked and dried in the sunlight. Then they are soaked in warm water for two hours to make them soft for grinding. The grinding is done by hand, using either a grinding stone called sila batta or a mortar and pestle. Several men get down to the task, rhythmically rolling the grinding stone over the leaves, adding little warm water to make a smooth consistency. They add panmadhuri (saunf), golmaricha (black pepper) and almonds to the paste, to give it flavour, to create a bite and to bring out a richness. Then the paste is strained through a cotton cloth. It is then mixed through a syrup made out of crystallised sugar. And the bhang is ready!

While one set of men is busy grinding and making the bhang, the other winds up its game of dice, and then all get together to consume the bhang. There are various ways in which they do so. Some, more hardy than the rest, mix it in water and drink down the harsh liquid. Others, less tolerant of the effects of the bhang, prefer to have it with rabdi, banana or cottage cheese. That not only disguises the strong taste of the bhang, but it also make the intoxication effect better.