Mess musings

‘Ha! Yenna venu? Sapada? Parota va?’ (What do you want? Lunch or Parota?), she asked me without looking up. She was packing orders with a speed that only comes with experience. It was a small room at the end, and there were no windows inside, just a few vents. It resembled the older homes with a linear plan, where one moves through different rooms. I recognized it from the time spent in my Ajjamaami’s house in our village. Voices travel through the rooms, but not the light. It was so dark that after I sat down and my eyes adjusted to the environment, I noticed the man sitting opposite me. I told her I’d have parotas.

‘Ey! Rend parota podunge!'(Make two parotas), she screamed to her husband who came into view in the first room, behind the man. That was the kitchen, behind the acrylic sheet divider. To see the woman managing the business and chatting with the customers, and the man in the kitchen hidden by the screen was a welcome delight. I smiled when the woman came to lay the leaf. ‘That NGO ah?’, she asked? I nodded. She gauged her customers well. When the parotas were ready, she tore them into small pieces on the banana leaf and went to get water. It was deconstructed now, I had never seen parotas being served this way. I understood the logic behind it, leave it to the customer’s pace and they will get soggy and stretchy and that doesn’t bode well for the gastronomical experience. My bewilderment was addressed when she came back with some Soya curry and drenched the torn pieces with it. Now all I had to do was eat it like I would eat rice.

People kept coming in, it seemed like everyone took away parcels. A few people came for tea and samosas. The woman chatted away with ease, addressing each of them by name. All regulars and all men. She asked about their wives and how their work was, all while instinctively measuring rice and curry and wrapping it in leaf and newspaper. I was thrilled to be there. She switched on the light midway, when she saw me squinting and looking around.

When I was done, I walked to the back to see where the wash basin was and the man motioned to the front from the kitchen. As I walked past it, I noticed how small the space was and how much was being made within that. Another striking feature is that the kitchen was the first room on entering, when normatively the kitchen is shoved right at the back in all these linearly planned houses. I suppose when it is not the woman in the kitchen, the location is no longer restricted to the rear of the dwelling.