Getting to the bottom of the nut

If ever you are left to choose between boiled groundnuts and roasted ones, read on. This is a compilation which is a result of days and days of waiting for BMTC buses under humongous trees and facing various kinds of weather. So it must have a certain credence to it.

Advantages of boiled groundnuts:
1. They are covered, hence their pathological associations are extremely low and you are in control of your fate.
2. Since they are groundnuts, they ought to be tasty. But boiled ones are not crunchy. It can be an advantage.
3. More time to eat - peeling them off and eating one at a time takes a longer time, hence you have more chance of eating till the bus arrives.
4. More in one. Boiled groundnuts guarantee you at an average 2 nuts in one. Sometimes they go up to 4 in a pack.
5. Some groundnuts have an amusing reserve of water. Those ones which look at the head like an eager owl consist of considerable amount of water. Try squeezing them; they'll let out a shower of salty brewage.

Drawbacks of boiled groundnuts:
1. You never know what you can get. Covered groundnuts have a tendency to attract rot and decay.
2. Bloody hot they are. If you have the luck of your life and the bus arrives just as you get your one rupee worth of maal, try boarding a stuffed bus with a burning left hand.
3. Don’t meet a friend if eating boiled ones. Advantage no. 4 will turn into a problem as you’d part with more groundnuts each time he buries his hand into the packet.
4. Advantage no. 5 will be a disadvantage if you squeeze with the nut's head at a co-passenger’s face.

Advantages of roasted groundnuts:
1. Crunchy.
2. Not many rotten nuts as the seller would have sorted them out earlier.

Disadvantages of roasted groundnuts:
1. All the Nitrous Oxide, Carbon Monoxide, formaldehyde, methanol, propanol, what and all make there way into them. They are free, you see.
2. The fun that goes with peeling a groundnut is conspicuous with its absence.
3. Less nuts for one rupee.

There is one other thing of importance. The conical packets for boiled nuts are wider while those for the roasted ones are longitudinal.