After The Wall

After last night’s soiree at THE WALL where I had gone on an official yet casual gathering of work colleagues and others, I headed back home. I skipped eating dinner to head back home to have a home cooked meal with my wife. So I got home by 11 PM and as I settled down to have dinner, the power went. So we waited for a while in the hope that it would come back as it usually doesn’t go for more than half an hour in our neighborhood. But then the time was a bit odd too and I had the worst feeling that this wasn’t a regular outage but a breakdown somewhere.

Finally after a sweating it out for nearly an hour, my wife suggested we go out for a drive and hopefully by the time we came back, the power would be restored. It was close to midnight by the time we got out and suddenly my wife had a craving for Ice-cream. I was like if we were in Delhi I’d go straight to India Gate, and she was like that was exactly the thought I her head that led to the craving for Ice-cream. Well so we drove around from Highland Park till Jadavpur and back and not an Ice-cream man in sight.

All that driving around and the pitch darkness all over indicating that the blackout was still on and the whole craving from and not getting any Ice-cream had both of us now ready to settle for any food. We didn’t want to go back home and eat in that heat and darkness, so I pulled up to the roadside just opposite the Ajoy Nagar T-Point on the E. M. Bypass where there were some Dhabas witht heir Lanterns throwing light on the food.

I immediately jumped out and went to survey the delicacies on display. Believe me at that hour anything looked delicious. So I got the low-down from one of the cooks and we ordered a plate of Chicken Curry with 2 Paranthas for my wife and Plate of Egg Curry with 3 Paranthas for me. We had the Ac running and the radio on, while we saw them get to work making fresh Paranthas for us. It hardly tokk them 5-7 minutes and our food arrived at the car.

4 pieces of chicken in a thick gravy, 2 eggs in the same gravy, 5 paranthas and bottle of mineral water later, I we were licking our fingers. Roadside Food just has a taste of its own. And all this for Rs. 72/-. We even left a tip for the guy who served us and he didn’t understand why we were giving him the extra money. In fact I could have given him more for that meal it was so good. We washed our hands using a jug of water and then went back to our Colony.

Still no sign of light as we parked the car, so we stayed in there with the AC running and listen to the radio for the next hour or so, when the power finally came.

Finally back home I saw what was originally cooked for dinner, Ilish Mach, Aloo Posto, Dal and Bhaat. Well I know what I’m having for lunch tomorrow I thought to myself as I went to sleep.