Yes, You Can Grow Paan (Betel Leaf) in New England

There are some plants that are more than plants. They carry memories. They carry people, places, smells, sounds and an entire childhood inside their leaves.

For me, paan is one of those plants.

The very word paan takes me back to the small towns and villages of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar where I spent my childhood. I have always considered myself one of the least-traveled people in India, but perhaps I didn't need to travel very far. The world of my childhood was already full of color, sound and stories—and much of it could be found around a little paan shop.

But when I think of paan, I don't first think of botany or history.

I think of that little shop.

Perhaps that is why paan found its way so naturally into our songs.

An entire generation of folk and Bollywood music used paan as an image of beauty, flirtation, love, longing, mischief and desire.

One of the most memorable examples is Asha Bhosle's “Paan Khaye Saiyan Hamaro,” from the 1966 film Teesri Kasam. Sung with playful affection and picturized on Waheeda Rehman, the song turns paan into part of a teasing romantic conversation. Even today, hearing it immediately brings back the world of paan shops and rural North India for me.

Then came Amitabh Bachchan and “Khai Ke Paan Banaras Wala” in the 1978 film Don. The song made Banarasi paan, already famous throughout India, part of Bollywood folklore. For many of us, the song wasn't simply about chewing paan—it was about a certain swagger, a certain earthy North Indian personality, and a whole cultural world.

Then recently, I met Alka Patel of Sudbury, MA, and she casually told me that she had paan growing in her garden.

I thought I had misunderstood her.

Paan?

Here?

In Massachusetts?

“You can grow it here,” she told me. “And it keeps coming back every year. It is like mint.”

Like mint?

Now she had my complete attention.

I have grown mint in my garden, and I know how aggressively—and happily—it grows in New England. If paan behaved anything like mint, perhaps I had just discovered something wonderful.

Alka and her husband, Praveen, must have noticed my excitement because they invited me to their home to see the plants. They even offered to give me some to try in my own garden.

When I arrived, Praveen was waiting outside and took me straight to the paan plants.

There they were.

Green. Alive. Growing in an ordinary Massachusetts garden.

I stood there for a moment almost in disbelief.

Then, without thinking twice, I picked a leaf and ate it right off the plant.

It was an oddly emotional moment.

In all my years in India, despite seeing paan everywhere—at shops, markets, weddings and celebrations—I had never eaten a paan leaf directly from the living plant.

And the first time I did it was not in India.

It was in America.

There was something almost poetic about that.

A plant so deeply connected to my childhood, growing thousands of miles away from the place where those childhood memories were formed.

A little piece of India in a Massachusetts garden
After tea, Alka picked a fresh leaf and made me a proper paan, spreading the chuna and katha and adding the other ingredients.

For a few minutes, I wasn't in Sudbury anymore.

I was back in India.

Back at that little paan shop.

Back with the radio playing an old Hindi song.

Back among the people, bicycles, cigarette smoke and conversations.

Back in those small towns of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar that seemed so ordinary when I was growing up and now seem impossibly precious.

Before I left, Alka and Praveen gave me several small paan plants to take home.

The entire drive back, I kept thinking about where I would plant them.

I couldn't wait.

Initially, I thought I would plant them the next day. It was getting late, and I figured they could wait until morning. I put the roots in water and went about my evening.

But the plants looked wilted.

I became nervous.

What if I lost them?

So I went outside.

I dug the holes.

And I planted them that very evening.

Now comes the exciting part.

Will they establish themselves before the first frost?

Will they survive the New England winter?

Will those little green vines return when spring arrives?

I don't know.

Betel vine generally prefers warm, humid, shady conditions and is much more at home in tropical and subtropical climates than in New England. It is traditionally grown in moist, fertile, well-drained soil and often under controlled shade.

So perhaps what I am attempting in my garden is a little unusual.

But that is exactly what makes it exciting.
A little piece of those paan shops, radios, friendships, songs and childhood afternoons.

And if those plants come back next spring, I suspect I will be watching them with the same excitement a child feels when something from a beloved old world suddenly appears in a new one.