Nakoda Nasta House

If you spend ten minutes at Nakoda Nasta House you will hear every single bus horn in the city because we are right at the Old Bus Stand. It is a noisy place to work but you get used to the sound after a few weeks. We open up the shutters while it is still dark to catch the early travelers who need something in their stomachs before a long ride. The oil is always bubbling in the large kadhai and the smell of fried snacks fills the air until my clothes smell like it too. I spend most of my day over the steam or wrapping things in old newspaper for people to take away on their journeys. The benches are a bit wobbly and the blue paint is peeling in the corners but nobody seems to mind as long as the tea is hot. Sometimes a bus is late and the whole place gets packed with grumpy people, so we just keep moving and serving plates of poha as fast as we can. It is not a quiet job and my hands have plenty of small burns from the splashes of hot oil over the years. We do not have a printed menu on the wall because everyone who comes here already knows what we have. It is just basic food for people on the move. When the sun finally goes down and the bus stand gets a little quieter, we can finally sit down for a minute ourselves.