It happens NOT only in India!!

[Anoushka]

Vaanga Kiruthiga, waiting for your next installment... enga Australi-la irunthu UK pakkam vandhuteengaLa?

[madhu]

enna Achu ? waiting... :P

[Hummingbird]

Shyamala : enga indha pakkamnu kekkumbodhe andha pakkathlerndhu kelambiten ... how are you? how is your kutti paapa?

Madhu : Travelling, adhu idhunu konjam busy ayten.. sorry... next chapter will be posted today

[Hummingbird]

Baker Street

We get down from the train, walk to Bakerloo line platform and wait for the next train to go to Stonebridge Park. The train arrives and off we go to Stonebridge Park

By the way, why are we going there……..? We are going there because that’s where the temple is, where we want to go first – BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, London (http://www.mandir.org) – the largest Hindu temple outside India in 2000.

As we walk to the temple, we see cute little children walking home from school , some with parents , some as a group and most of them waiting in the car. No…. these kids don’t get to see the soan papdi walas and the cotton candy walas that we saw outside our schools… nor do they get to sit on the small ferry wheels like what we did when we were like them. Their lives are comfortable and sophisticated… but devoid of the simple joys like eating a watermelon piece that has been kept in open air and still not falling sick, licking the multi-coloured ice stick made by the kuchi icewala (kuchi – stick) and still not catching cold… Were we lucky to have experienced such simple and small funs or are these kids lucky to have such comfortable lives

Before going to the temple, X-man now takes me to a much more interesting and exciting place - a large Indian store and an amazing sweet stall. After some shopping (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) at the sweet stall, we finally head to the temple.

I am not going into the details of temple visit except that it was so nice to be inside such a wonderful place. But the instant peace and calm that one can feel when inside a temple has always awed me. How can a structure, built of stone and wood soothe anyone who believes in the Lord and the Lord’s Power……

By now, it was past 4:30pm and we have not had lunch yet . The plan was to go to a famous and a good Indian restaurant where X-man would host me a lunch. He owed me lots of treats and the sweet stall shopping was for a starter.

Three things were influencing the visit to the restaurant now.
1. The hype that X-man had created about the quality of food at this restaurant
2. If you do not have lunch until 4:30 pm, you know what it means!!!!!!
3. My liking to any type of food that is vegetarian !!! – the restaurant we are heading to is a vegetarian restaurant

Back to the station, and we climb stairs to get to the platform where the underground train arrives (No!!! Am not blabbering due to hunger… at this station, the underground train platform is really overground. You do have to climb stairs)

Once we reach the platform, X-man makes an amazing discovery!!! That we have come to the opposite platform… Lucky him, there were no trains arriving in that platform at that time and he didn’t do this when we were coming back from the restaurant… Had it been the other way round ………… .

X-man makes me walk down the stairs and climb the stairs again to reach the other platform (Jumping down from the platform, crossing the tracks and climbing the platform on the other side cannot happen here! That happens definitely only in India!!!!!)

The train arrives, and we are off to Wembley where we had the experience that HAPPENS NOT ONLY IN INDIA!!!!!!!

[pavalamani pragasam]

Building up suspense!

[madhu]

Jumping down from the platform, crossing the tracks and climbing the platform on the other side cannot happen here! That happens definitely only in India!!!!!)

adhAn daily nadakkudhE ! :P

enna nadanthuchu Wembley-la ?

[Hummingbird]

Wembley

We get out of Wembley station and wait a minute…….. am I really in London ???…. I feel like I just got out of West Mambalam station and walked into Ranganathan Street . Shops extending onto pavements, cracked glass windows with brown cellulose tapes, handicapped plaster of paris models with sarees and churidhars draped over them….. and so many Indian faces. So much so that Brits start looking like foreigners here

With complete awe, I start walking alongside X-man. We head towards the much hyped up restaurant , with utter disrespect to so many other restaurants that were open on the way … Indian, North Indian, South Indian, Authentic Indian, Sri Lankan, Chinese, Multi cuisine etc. While on the way, we also see Ragini Thanga Nagai Maligai (No!!! am not joking… it was written in Senthamizh), Bank of Baroda, Chennai Dosa centre and what not!!!

We walk for about 10 mins. If we had carried a GPS with us, that’s the time when the GPS lady would have said “Arrived at the destination” Yes, we are now at the doorstep of the restaurant. As we are about to push the door open… X-man notices that the restaurant opens for dinner at 6pm only. We still had 30 mins to go and my stomach had already started rumbling

X-man looks at me … and says ‘Hey!!! I should have noticed this before. We have 30 mins now !! (as if I said we have 3 mins ). What do we do?’. After much deliberation, we decided we will walk up and down the road and enjoy the Indian side of London and in the process, burn some more calories so that we can eat more !! The only good thing was we had whiled away 5 out of the 30 mins in the deliberation .

We walk up the street and the further we go, the better it gets…. Ranganathan street transforming into Pondy Bazaar… or may be Commercial Street, Sarojini Market, Gandhi market….. stalls with sarees from Surat. Yes!!! Those synthetic sarees with block prints for Rs.150 /- oops!!! I meant £5 … and yeah!! Its on sale 1 for £5 or 3 for £10. And, there they are!!!! Cotton kurtis, salwars and even mix n match churidhars…. Lo!!! Here you go… stainless steel vessel store with pressure cookers, dabba sets, tablespoons and all odds and sods that we normally see in our home back in India. We had so much fun watching this fanfare that for a while, I even forgot that I was hungry.

5:45pm: we decided to walk back to the restaurant to be the first customer of the evening. We reached the restaurant with 3 mins to go for the board to change from “CLOSED” to “OPEN”. We probably looked so pathetic that the owner decided to change it to “OPEN” without making us wait for the full 3 mins. We walk in and the Hero offers us a seat near the window so that we can enjoy our lunch/dinner while we watch the market place.

We ordered starters with tea first. Tea arrived and we were obliviously embarking on our experience that HAPPENS NOT ONLY IN INDIA!!!!

[madhu]

I feel like I just got out of West Mambalam station and walked into Ranganathan Street

there is no west mambalam station.. Only mambalam is here

We ordered starters with tea first.

nalla muzhichirundhu ellAthaiyum sAppida plan-A ? )

[Hummingbird]

Tea was served in a nice little cup n saucer. We took a sip and the tea was very tasty but not hot . We called our Hero and said ‘chai garam nai hai!!!!’…. Mr Hero immediately responded ‘no problem sir, garam kar dhenge' and even before finishing his response, took our cups and walked inside .. into the kitchen!!!

It took us a moment to realize what Mr Hero was about to do and we started laughing!!!! Yes, he was going to heat the tea in the microwave and bring it back to us . No, its not the fact that he was reheating the tea . When the tea comes back, Mr Hero will be fully confident and not have an iota of doubt on whether he served us back our respective cups of tea . But we would definitely be unsure of whether the right cup came back to us. Despite this, we liked our Hero as he was the only person in the restaurant who was thoroughly enjoying what he was doing and was completely sure that there is only one right way of doing this job, and that’s his way.

Tea came back, and as expected, our Hero had a cheerful smile that can beat all the Colgate and Pepsodent smiles of the world. He served us the cups and we had to believe that the right cups were served. That was when we realized that IT HAPPENS NOT ONLY IN INDIA.

Its not over yet . When he brought the cups after reheating, he also brought a cup of sugar and 3 spoons. I wondered why he brought 3 spoons and X-man explained that it is to ensure that we do not take sugar with the same spoon after we used it to stir the sugar in our tea cups. And the 3rd spoon was to take sugar just in case we wanted to add more sugar in our tea (after using the first spoon!!!) . How thoughtful of our Hero to make sure we don’t have to mix our spoons when we are not sure if there is a mix up in our tea.

After we were done with our starters and tea, Mr Hero came back again to clean our table and get it ready for our main course. While cleaning the table, he made sure that he collected all the sugar that was spilt on the table in the cup in which he served sugar . We were almost sure that the sugar cup was going back into the kitchen only to come back again to some other table, with the spilt sugar collected in it . Another realization of IT HAPPENS NOT ONLY IN INDIA

[Disclaimer: The above story has no pun intended against the service in restaurants back home in India. Having been to a few overseas countries and having had the experience of eating in restaurants in each of these places, I have observed that the restaurants outside India always take care to ensure that customers do not get such doubts. But what happens inside the kitchen is still unknown to any of us. Even if the same thing were to happen in some other restaurant, the tea would have been served in a fresh set of cup n saucer, just to give you an illusion that you are being served a fresh cup of tea. The reason why I chose to share this experience was the sheer joy with which the Hero was doing his job. He was enjoying his work and was at his best when he was working. Despite what happened and despite still being not sure of who was served whose cup the second time, me and X-man would rate this service as the best service we had in any restaurant in UK]


Epilogue

We had a sumptuous dinner at the restaurant and also had good fun watching T20 match that was going on that day as well as watching the happenings inside and outside the restaurant . A final touch to end this experience - there was a shop outside the restaurant whose name board had the following words
“LAPTOP RERPAIR CENTR” This too happens NOT ONLY IN INDIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[pavalamani pragasam]

A good amount of solace has been found from this story! No need at all to feel unnecessarily inferior as most of our countrymen do!!!