In Godhra, if you like to eat good non-vegetarian food, Polan Bazar near the railway station is your destination. While there are one or two restaurants in other parts of the town serving non-vegetarian food too, good and authentic non-vegetarian food is available only at the restaurants in the Polan Bazar area, where most of the lower-income group Muslims work and live. With my craving for meat reaching a crescendo after just a few weeks in Gujarat, I took an auto rickshaw to Polan Bazar later that afternoon.
Unlike at Lal Baug, kurta-pajama-skull caps are the most preferred attire among men in and around the Polan Bazar area. Like the rest of Godhra, the bazar was noisy, dusty and full of cheerful people going about their day as usual. At the central junction of the bazar, a giant, magnificent Indian tricolour waved atop a tall flagpole of about 50 feet or so.
With long, flowing beards making a resurgence as the in-thing in men’s fashion globally, hair stylists could take a trip down to Polan Bazar to draw inspiration on innovative shapes and colours for facial hair, as beards of almost every possible size, density and shade were sported there. I spotted thick, well-groomed, flowing black beards that could be used to advertise hair oils, trimmed salt-and-pepper beards shaped like an ice cream cone, free-flowing silver-white beards that almost brushed the huge paunches of older men, thin, barely visible noodle-string beards, even brownish-grey henna-dyed goatee beards and .