Omelette ki kahani.. waiter ki zubaani
My roommate, Harsha, and I worked at an Indian restaurant on Saturdays and Sundays while we were still doing our masters. It was one of those semi-self service restaurants where you ordered food at the counter and when the food was ready, your name was called to pick it up.
One day when I was at work, a guy walked into the restaurant at around three in the afternoon. It was just after peak lunch time, so there were very few people at the restaurant. He stared at the menu for a while. Our menu was minimalistic and it had at the most fifteen dishes on it. It hung on the wall right behind the counter where I stood to take orders. I waited patiently and let him take his time. After a while he finally spoke and he said, “Aapke paas omelette nehi hai?” I shook my head and said, “Nehi sir”. He was shocked. He said, “Itna badaa restaurant hai aur aapko omelette bananaa nehi aata??” and he went on, “There are so many restaurants around here, none of them make an omelette. It is soo easy to make one!” and on he went until I stopped him and said, “Sir, you know what? Let me go in and check with my chef if it’s possible for us to make one for you.”
Our chef was chef Arka. A seasoned Indian cuisine Mexican chef who only spoke Spanish and broken English. His English was absolutely incomprehensible and it was basically just Spanish with an English accent. I went and asked him in my broken Spanish, “Amigo, Can you make Omelette, por favor? Customer Amigo wants”. Yes, I call grammatically incorrect English with a few irrelevant Spanish words as broken Spanish. He nodded his head and said, “Omelette? Si si… yeah” That obviously meant he can! So I walked out to the customer and said, “We can make it for you, please give your name and have a seat, I’ll call you as soon as it is ready.” He told me his name is Rakesh and he went and sat down.
After a couple of minutes, Arka called me into the kitchen and said something to me in Spanish. He said, “nada ham..” something something… “nada omelette” and from what I understood it meant: ‘I cannot make an omelette without ham!’ Rakesh was already waiting for his omelette which he thought was easy for ‘a huge restaurant like ours’ to make. I decided it was more peaceful to make one myself than hear him rant about it again. So I walked into the kitchen and explained to chef Arka how to make an omelette without ham and with just couple of eggs, chopped onions, tomatoes and bell pepper. As easy as it sounds, it’s practically impossible to have a productive conversation when two people spoke ‘broken English’ and ‘broken Spanish’. There was a lot of pointing and hand gestures and I said stuff like “Tomato, Onion, Bell Pepper chopify poquito poquito.”. After a super-human effort on both the chef and my part we finally made a simple omelette. I was proud and we served it to the customer. He ate it and said, “This is the best omelette I ever had! Do thank your chef on my behalf”. It also is the most effort per omelette that went into making it, I thought. I thanked him and I charged him for what I thought was appropriate for an omelette. While leaving he said, “I will definitely come back for the omelette.” I smiled and said, “Sure!” and forgot all about it.
Well for about a week that is. Harsha walked into our apartment furious after his shift at the restaurant that day. He said, “A customer came in at lunch today and asked for an Omelette!” My eyes lit up! “Rakesh??!!”, I asked with a grin on my face. He was all the more furious. He said, “You know this guy??” I told him what had happened the past weekend. He heard it and said, “So it was you! Why the hell did you have to make a freaking omelette for that guy?!” It wouldn't have helped if I told him that I did it just so that I didn't have to listen to him rant. It seemed extremely lame. So instead, I decided to ask him what had happened with him.
So on that day, Harsha was working at the restaurant as usual. Chef Arka had taken a sick day and the owner, auntyji as we typically called her, took over the kitchen. She was a short fair Indian lady in her late fifties. She was really good at making Indian food. She had owned and run the business for over ten years by then.
Rakesh walked in and he asked Harsha for an omelette. Harsha did the regular drill and told Rakesh that omelettes weren’t a part of our menu. Rakesh told Harsha about having it a week ago and all he had to do was inform the chef and he would know what to do. At this point, I thought, at least auntyji spoke the same language as us, so it should be easy.
Harsha asked auntyji if she could make an omelette for this customer. She obviously agreed and so Harsha asked him to take a seat. She made an omelette, the best she could while handling the other stuff in the kitchen and unfortunately it got a little burnt on one side. But she decided it was good enough to eat and folded it such that the burnt side was covered. She handed it to Harsha. Though he noticed that it was a little burnt, he decided to go with aunty’s discretion. He called Rakesh to pick up his food from the counter. Rakesh immediately noticed it was burnt and he pointed it out to Harsha and asked him for a different omelette. Aunty came out of the kitchen and was standing behind Harsha at this point. She told Rakesh that the omelette wasn't burnt and that it was ‘well cooked’, in a manner that only auntyji could pull off, and that is how an omelette should be. Rakesh turned to Harsha and asked him if he thought that the omelette was burnt. Harsha obviously felt that the omelette was burnt but it should not have been too difficult for him to pick a side. Auntyji who paid him or the customer who kind of was her problem anyway. Auntyji obviously! But Harsha being the nice guy, simply chose to remain silent. It is one of those moments you’d wish you were somewhere else. Rakesh then said something that hurt auntyji’s ego, “The other chef made it perfectly last weekend.” The minimum wage Mexican chef she employed couldn't have made it better than her. That was enough to drive her into giving it another shot. So she went back into the kitchen obsessed at making it just as good or better than chef Arka. She asked Harsha to find out from Rakesh if he wanted a ‘single’ or a ‘double’ omelette. Rakesh said double meaning two eggs. Aunty interpreted it as being double the regular number, four eggs.
She ended up making one big fat omelette with a couple of extra eggs and served it to Rakesh. He was furious, it was definitely not how he had wanted it. Aunty and Rakesh got into a vigorous argument. They eventually narrowed the problem down to being a mis-communication of the number of eggs in the omelette. That precisely being the only part poor Harsha played in this Omelette fiasco. Aunty and Rakesh finally agreed on it being entirely Harsha’s fault. They went into a melodramatic mode with Rakesh expressing his deep desire to have a good omelette over the weekend and aunty telling him that he was like her son. Meanwhile, Harsha stood there in the middle of it all absolutely stunned and with waves of realization hitting him slowly. Rakesh ate the omelette almost out of motherly love towards aunty and aunty decided not to charge him for the omelette at all. For the rest of the day Aunty was mad at Harsha and she lectured him on how he should try and pay more attention and not be careless.
Harsha cursed me all night but I couldn’t care less as I was busy laughing. I wanted to see Rakesh again at the restaurant but I guess he figured it was easier to make an omelette himself than to have one made at an Indian restaurant. I never saw him again for the next couple of months that I continued to work there.
