I happen to be the only one in the department I work in to not carry a lunch box. So, I did - with all humility and subservience - try the canteen. A few weeks later, the food decided to be a little bland, but I let that pass. Another week or so later, I began to lose my appetite. And so, in the week that followed, I thought it best that I end my affair with the canteen and hunt outside.
The MIDC-SEEPZ area - as you most Mumbaiites know - is rather dismal when it comes to restaurants. There's Sudha Vihar close to the SEEPZ bus depot and it's as bland in its decors as is a wall of cement that's never painted. The food is passable, but God save you from the attitude of the waiters therein. I remember once when I had decided to have Masala Dosa, the waiter barely even looked at me as he took my order and did not even bother to acknowledge that I had indeed ordered. So I thought perhaps he may have not heard me and so, felt I must repeat myself.
"Oh you've told me alright," he snapped as he shoved his pencil behind his ear,"It'll take time." And he strutted off to the door where he began to scratch his ear.
Thereafter, I began to strut to other restaurants. I tried Tunga that's just a lane away from the company. I ate their Kashmiri Pulao and their Mysore Masala Dosa and then got pretty fed up of it all. It was then that I ran off to Sun City Residency, situated somewhere down the lane that houses the offices of TCS and Novell.
Sun City has this economic thali that comprises rice, two chapatis, two vegetable concoctions, a handful of cucumber and carrot slices, raita, and a soup - all this for just Rs. 65.
Initially, I was rather elated. I traipsed down the lane faithfully and had my fill. And soon, my satisfaction had its fill too and left me to make way for boredom to set in.
So, to dispel that, I alternated between Sun City and Tunga. Sudha-Vihar I never bothered to consider again.
It was during these alternating trips to Tunga and the Sun that I realized people let their tongues hang loose and wag them with a spirited sense of abandon as they eat whatever they have to.
They'll talk about the companies that ditched them and the companies they ditched, they'll rant about the generation that has let them down, and they'll boast about the connections that got them the position they hold right now. Of course, it's lunch time and you do expect people to talk. But I think you expect them to talk in a tone and at a volume meant to be taken in only by the ones at their table.
But no, that's not the case. Strangely, the officegoers - or let's say many officegoers in MIDC - revel in announcing and debating the story of their lives to all sitting to eat with them at the hotel.
Take for instance this man who just did not know how to stop talking about L and T. "You know,"he said,"those buggers called me and told me what the position was all about."
His colleague nodded.
"So then,"he said as he looked around to make sure people were within earshot distance,"I said okay - and this is L and T (At this point he was so loud, even the crow sitting on the fence of the hotel turned to look at him.) I am talking about haan."
"So then what happened?"
"Oh they said this is the profile. I told them I wasn't recruited for that and you know that very well. I fired the woman."
"Oh?"
"Oh yes haha! I sunaoed her."
"You did?"
"Yes and then she said she'll look into the matter."
"Then?"
"Then what she began to act smart with me."
I doubt whether this fellow gave her any other option, but then it certainly is none of my business.
"She called me,"he continued, as if he was being interviewed by Barbara Walters, "and told me I just had to say yes to work on that project."
"So then?"
"Then what? I resigned from there and joined Syntel."
And that ladies and gentlemen was said with so much triumph, it was as if the world has wished that to happen since Kingdom come and he, the Messiah, had made it happen!
After the raucous laughter that usually follows such disclosures, the party decided that they must pay their attention to the food in front of them and so, they sat quiet and let me have my lunch in peace thereafter.
Another time as I waited for my order to wind its way from the kitchen to my table, I leaned back and into a rather amusing conversation.
"Oh did you see that program on the TV?"
"I did not."
"Oh it was amazing. Seventy percent of the blah blah.." and he mentioned a few statistical facts.
"I see, but what does it help?"
I sensed a pause for no one from the group of four spoke. A few seconds later, one of them recovered and asked,"What makes you say so?"
"Well, rather than watch all of that, I am better off sitting with a book or a newspaper in my balcony. I am fed up of the stupid rubbish they pass off as TV."
It took a while to register but register it did. A minute passed by, no one dipped into any topic, and then all of a sudden, someone switched to the weather.
I smiled to myself and began to dig into my order. The grand old man - he did look old - had silenced them all. However later, as I got up to go, I realized why they all had allowed that silence. The old man had walked off to the basin and it was then that his colleague spoke.
"Oh the ass! Had he not to be my manager, I would have given him a thousand reasons why his balcony tolerates him anyway!"
"I know," said another colleague,"Woe betide the ground that lets him keep his chair."
"And woe betide us who have to his drivel bear!"
Some tidings for woe indeed!
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