A Day at India House!

It was one of those days when you don’t want to cook so that you can eat, particularly on a Saturday afternoon. I guess there were 3 more guys like me who shared my opinion because of which we found the 4 of us on the way to one of the not-so-abundantly-found-in-salt-lake Indian restaurants – “the India House”. It was close to 3pm well past beyond lunch hour and just about time for dinner in about an hour.

The four of us, Chaman, Munnu and Pappu walked into the restaurant with yours sincerely in the lead. The entire place was deserted except for the chairs and tables, and we were shown into a 2x2 booth.
Our server was a guy from our very own Pappu’s land – Punjab. Lets call him Santa singh for now… He was sporting a turban with a beard that was trimmed almost daily I guess.
So as it happened, while we were browsing through the menu and water was being served, Pappu saw something stains on the cutlery, so he asked Santa Singh to replace the spoon. Santa Singh stopped for a moment, took the spoon in his hand and brought it near so that he can take a close look. The way he was looking at it, I swear I felt that he had a microscope hidden in one of his eyes. And then he spoke –

“Its nothing, its just a drying mark after it has been through dishwasher”.

And he returned the spoon back, spun around and was going back to the kitchen.
Pappu spoke

“Hullo! I want you to change it.. I don’t care if it’s a mark”.

Santa Singh mumbling curses under his breath exchanged the spoon from another table (he kept that spoon on the other table !!! )

And the he mumbled to us -

"I always like when Americans come here, they don’t make me work so much and neither do they crib about spoons. Its only our desis who behave like this and make me run around. "

We were all eating there, dumbstruck that he actually said that. Welcome to Salt Lake City’s Indian Restaurants.