Full meals

While I indulge in activities like trekking to set my soul free from the strings of a routine life… there is one more thing, that most of us agree, will make us forget the world on the other side of the door and blissfully ponder over something important to us. I stress, “important to each of us individually”, doesn’t matter if the whole world gives a damn about it. That divine process is, taking a bath (Applause). Ok, there could also be soul crushing events we fret about but it is mostly the good things or those momentarily irrelevant to our lives that flows on to us with the water.

One morning, rather by my dad’s terms, afternoon, I stepped into this other world which in its present state, reminded me of the numerous times I have frowned while standing in the door of a rail coach, observed the filth par excellence in the slums as we enter Bangalore by train. Our docs can take a few lessons from those healthy hooligans who breed in these beehive of sweat washed yet united community.

Oops. I apologize to all those waiting for me to get under the shower. One thing before that, when I talk about thoughts under the shower or in the bath tub, out of experience, I know that it is usually one thought that leads to another, which leads to yet another until sometime when we are nowhere near the starting topic. Ok, Ok, now I am in the shower.

The generous blessing of hot water arrives after a long wait. Somewhere in between I start thinking about pickles, hot rice and spicy sambhar. Staring at me like movie stars enjoying the attention while papads, salad and sweets look like ardent fans standing around them. Then I jump again. This time into the assembly line that makes those stars, a restaurant’s kitchen.

It is 4 am and the scene beyond the closed shutters of the restaurant is busy, very busy and very contrary to the silent street outside, where even the local mongrel is taking a break from its all night howling, in the middle of an otherwise busy road.

The skimpily clad bhattas or cooks are busy working up the day’s offering. All the preparations for the breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea etc has to happen now. The organizational hierarchy here, unlike in the corporate world directly proportional to the size of each man’s paunch. The top chef has the biggest, and is in charge of finishing most of the mouthwatering dishes, thereby justifying and completing the theory of tummy relativity.

The other mice are at his mercy and devote equal parts of their nerves to him and to the knife which is using their hand to dice vegetables to acceptable sizes. Another one runs around distributing the first of the many cups of tea consumed during the day. Everything is like clockwork of a Japanese assembly line. But not without the occasional belly agitations, which is mostly a result of the day’s joke or questions to a newlywed cook or even a bad dinner.

As the sun starts warming up, things get hotter and clothes, shorter. A lungi wrap around turns into more of a towel for the cooks or putkosi (Indian underwear) for the washers. The first customers arrive. It is usually a cup of tea for early birds or the now very common night shift workers. Then the walking buzurg or old timers who decide to wrap up their days meeting with a hearty breakfast which will be a staple Idly chutney to suit their age and the heavy with ghee and sugar Kesari bath to feed their nostalgia. Whatever. Then the endless line of Bermuda clad husbands, who with those big tiffin boxes are walking signboards with a clear message which says “SUNDAY-WIFE STILL IN BED-FAMILY WANTS HOTEL FOOD-SUGAR LESS COFFEE FOR MOM- AND YEAH, HUSBAND ALWAYS WORKS” ha ha.

During commercial breakfast, the cooks also have their first meal. It is a fixed offering to each one except the veteran employees and one or two sly cats who dip their spoons in the kesari bath on the way to their idly and flash that victorious “see! Genius ain’t I?” smile to the customer who notices this epic act.

Then, after everyone working in the restaurant gets to know about the others’ life’s events during the few hours that they were away, it is time for lunch. Now the cooks have the ingredients from the morning work-outs, actually most of the one course meal ready to be served.

It is 12 o’clock and there are very few customers. These are ones for whom lunch is more of a time to relax, chat, and pursue their passion for eating. Now back to the hot rice and spicy sambhar etc on the plantain leaf served to the customers. The aroma of ghee fills up half of their stomach and they start digging at the tangible stuff to fill the rest.
From their reverence to the eating duties and concentration on the food, a few others get a feeling that the food is actually special. The color and the aroma do justice in conveying that this is one of those great Indian art of blending spices which our cook has executed to perfection. The happy stewards go round again filling up anyone who needs an extra serving. The first to lunch are now satisfied and tell everyone they meet during the rest of that day and later, about mouthwatering and generous serving of heavenly food they are likely to get in this restaurant.

By about 1 o’clock, a few curious diners at the nearby tables decide to get some of those satisfied expressions on their faces too. They are joined by babus from nearby offices, hungry passersby and more importantly the ones who would have heard about this lunch from those who ate at 12 o’clock the day before or even before that. Very importantly, all of them are those for whom lunch is a necessity.

I am still an hour away from my share of the food. The steward is laying out more plantain leaves than before. 10 times more than in the first few rounds. The serving, eating and cleaning is faster. It is a chain reaction. As I said, these are the ones here for lunch as a necessity. They want to finish it quickly and thus the waiters who were whiling away so far, suddenly find themselves short of staff. Huh? The customers, one by one, make their way to the wash basin. There are lesser number of satisfied faces. Some who seem resigned or now immune to certain things, don’t talk a lot. Some complain about the soda in the rice and also about having to comment on the same thing every day. Some try to link the water shortage issue in their houses to the abundance of that element in the sambhar.

By 2 o’clock the inflow of hungry stomachs is higher. Now it is mostly those daily wagers who were sent to have lunch by that merciful boss. Some who come running to have a bite lest they pass out in the meeting from which they escaped in the pretext of getting a few papers ready. The bus, truck, bullock cart, & hand cart drivers who find time after their first round of delivering people and goods to their destinations. Most of them are silent, tired and look like they have lost their enthusiasm in the last world war. I join them and suddenly discover the chameleon in me, by how I adapt to the mournful and observant situation so fast.
The steward is busy but a lot shabbier. Ends up spilling some water or sambhar on some one’s shirt. The tables are cleaned like as if it is the end of the world tomorrow, so why bother. The sambhar has a lot more water. The sweet is missing. The extra servings are now alien concepts. So are the papads and salad. But you cannot blame anyone. The restaurant has limited staff and resources. The cook says that today was exceptionally busy and though he tried his best, he couldn’t do anything to serve more than the restaurant limited resources can prepare. He doesn’t have enough left for his comrades too. You think it is not worth how much you pay. That’s it. end of my story.

Well, you must be trying to figure out what’s wrong with me. I wasted so much of your time sharing my weird but ordinary thoughts of a restaurant’s daily chores? Sad?

But wait. Let us see how it all began. As I entered the bathroom I started to think about a household errand I was just back from. In my trip to the nearby market, the shopkeeper asked me why I was buying only one kg of low quality wheat grains. I told him it was for the birds and squirrels near my house. He laughed and gave me some unsolicited information about cereal prices which shot up by 3-4% in a couple of days. On my way back, I saw a few people at the unusually quiet petrol bunk squabbling over the company’s decision to stock and sell only premium and costly fuel to reduce losses. I reached home, handed over the grains and change to my mom and came straight to the bathroom.

But again why am I, still, telling you all this? Now let me give the body its soul. Think about my lousy restaurant story. Replace the restaurant and its staff with our own planet and its limited resources, the forests, wildlife, freshwater, fuel etc. Unclean tables with the uncontrolled growth and its polluting effects. The time of the day as different periods of civilization and evolution, with gradually increasing population. Most importantly the customers as your own self, human beings at those times.

If you put yourself in the cooks shoes, or rather his lungi or (if you insist, shoes) the restaurant manager’s shoes, it won’t take long for you to realize that it is no one’s fault. The restaurant had worked on full steam, but just could not meet the ever increasing requirements. Do we get the big picture?

Next time you sit by a stream of crystal clear water, donate a moment to think how you can save it from being turned into a storm and sewage water drain.
Someone once said, the good earth is not inherited from our forefathers, it is loaned from our children. Makes sense, no?