Since I'm from India I have written this piece with a lot of orientation towards things based and happening commonly in India. I tried explaining some of the words in brackets. Hope you enjoy. I'm not including a spoiler.
View from above.
Some people say: one can judge a man by the books he reads, by the shoes he wears, or by the friends he keeps, but my personal favorite, and what my mother always propagated, is, “A man is known by the food he eats.” After four years of faithful service, I’ve learnt the art of illuminating the false façades of the various people who come to eat at the table I serve, without revealing their true colours to others, while secretly throwing light on the evil, sometimes good-hearted or plane blank hearted bodies that support the facades.
I serve at restaurant, at the corner of East Street. I serve only one table a time, though I have served all the tables at the restaurant sometime or the other during my career. Four years ago, when I had just come into service, the owners had the said that I was very enlightening, I take great pride in that. I have also received more that enough praise from the customers who have thought that praising everything in sight was a good vanish for the their façade.
‘Fine Dining’, the sub-text written in red under the wooden board, bearing the name of the restaurant, just happens to be another ironic façade to the restaurant, because their just isn’t anything fine about the dining, in my personal point of view, except for a few who come and dine “perfectly fine. ” but that is very rare. Hilariously, the paper mats, also read advice that can be crudely paraphrased to, “Shut up, so that everyone else can eat in peace,” but this seams to be very seldomly followed by anyone.
The other day seated at my table, clad in a crisp shirt and veshti(a loin cloth) was the local, failed, fat M.L.A, officially failed, but unofficially the best in the business, their business. Two plates of crab, a pot of biryani, five dishes of different vegetables and two glasses of whisky was the order. As the food was being cooked, the white shirted man hollered his laughs and bellowed with mighty heaves of his chest in between the his conversation with the spectacled man sitting opposite him; the man had a tape recorder, he was a journalist, obviously in the process of ( and undoubtedly successfully ) being bought over by the M.L.A (Member of Legislative Assembly). The food came. The M.L.A. not used to doing anything more than just lifting a finger during any other time in the day, was now chewing, swallowing, burping, talking, laughing all at the same time, with not a care in the world. He was constantly loading his fat cheeks with the next morcel of food, even before the previous one was even swallowed. Greed. Food on the platter, money in the briefcase, meant the same thing to him,’swallow swallow swallow, take take take.’
After the fat man paid for his meal, and left with a bulge in his left cheek (courtesy of the paan), in came the couple. The couple who consisted of the rich business- man married to a model-turned-actress-cum-fashion-designer-cum-movie producer-cum-environmentalist. They spoke loudly in their London made diction, polished in America, and smoothened at all the social gatherings of the 21st century Western-Indian social circuit. Her dietician had told her she could have a pizza without the cheese, oil or the flour, and that is exactly what she had ordered. Not only was her dietician helping her reduce bodily weight but was also assisting in the reduction of the weight of her bank balances. As I take it, the poor have no to pay to eat decently, but the rich have all the money to spend in order not to eat….
Yes, many people visit the restaurant, many interesting characters, some charming, some handsome others not so much. Today, another bunch of people will eat their supper under my shining light. We have just opened for dinner today, and I have to take my leave, get back to duty and my personal study. But before I go, I would like to leave you with a word of advice. Next time you visit the restaurant at East Street, and sit at the table third from the door, I will be hanging above you, observing your every move and judging you from every dish you order you, therefore choose well and choose wisely, after all my mother had always said, I was the brightest table lamp in the family.
