Bandicoots in the Moonlight by AVIJIT GHOSH

Author:AVIJIT GHOSH [Ghosh, Avijit]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789385890352
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2015-12-09T00:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

(Food for Thought)

Where do friends hang out? In these days of Orkut and Facebook and Yaari, malls and multiplexes, coffee bars, resto-bars and discos—the answer is rather obvious. But imagine a place without all these. And without television. In Ganesh Nagar, there were no eateries. No dosas. No espresso coffee. No softy ice-creams. No kebabs. No Chinese restaurants. When we were not playing cricket or watching football or going to the movies, we hung loose near a tubewell close to our school. We would listen to Hindi film songs on Radio Nepal or Radio Pakistan. We would try not to miss the weekly broadcast of the famous regional play, Loha Singh. We visited our favourite roadside shops for that special sweet, anarsa, for lemon tea and for milk chai with an extra teaspoonful of cream. You could buy golgappa, called phuchka in those parts, and chaat, although eating sour, tangy stuff was considered a feminine pastime.

In Wilsongunj, life had been different. I missed my monthly visits to Chinese restaurants with my parents. Every month my father would repeat the same order: chicken sweet corn soup, two into three, two plates of chicken chowmein and one plate chilli chicken. And every month I would devour the dishes with the same relish, and resume counting the remaining twenty-nine days before we visited a restaurant like Waldorf again.

But then we are slaves of our environment. Forgetting isn’t as hard as it is made out to be. And slowly I forgot all that. Having grown up in Ganesh Nagar, my friends didn’t miss anything at all. What you don’t know, you don’t crave. That’s perhaps why we devoted most of our energies to playing cricket, listening to the radio, watching movies and staring at girls. And we were perfectly happy.

But paradise is never permanent. One day, Ganesh Nagar got its first proper restaurant. God might differ with the nomenclature but for many in this town with limited forms of recreation, the eatery really lived up to its name: Paradise. The restaurant was located near the bus stand and you could hear the sound of engines revving up at a small distance. Paradise wasn’t air-conditioned but it had two huge air coolers. And they made as much noise as diesel engines. The eatery had pale pink wallpaper with black polka dots. The tables and chairs were neat and polished. The cutlery was stainless steel and the waiters wore a smart brown uniform. The restaurant had special purdah cabins for families. Paradise had everything Ganesh Nagar had not seen before.

Among the city’s well-heeled, the restaurant became a talking point. Everyone knew that Collector saheb and his bob-cut, sleeveless-bloused wife had visited the restaurant one evening. People even knew what they had ordered: chicken cutlets and coffee. And that, despite the owner’s vociferous pleading, he had insisted on paying the bill. In fact, the visit also provided fodder for some paan-shop gossip. I’d thought, he being a Brahmin, he would be a vegetarian. What kind of Brahmin

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.