The Snouth Indian Meal

I was on a 41 day Vegetarian diet, owing to the Sabarimala season. I had been dreaming of Phulkas, Naans and matar paneer ever since the fast had begun (because I wasn’t supposed to dream of chicken biriyani, chilly chicken, roasted prawns, fish fry and other yummy things). So when my colleague and I went to the spic and span IRCTC canteen (Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation)for lunch, opposite our office building, both of us decided it had to be the Special North Indian Meal. My friend, for your information, is a strict vegetarian.

Now, IRCTC is a self-service canteen and the staff is obsessed about cleaning, in fact they are pretty OCD about it. More about it some other time. So, we went with our bills to the North Indian Meals counter. A lady in a prim blue saree, her hair covered in a shower cap, put a couple of chapattis, a bowl of dal and a bowl of cholay on our plates.

I noticed with glee that the North Indian meal buffet counter stretched a few yards with several buckets of dishes lined one after the other, all with a lid over them. My friend and I decided we would come for the rest of the fare after finishing off what we had on our plates.

The cholay tasted good and the dal was also not bad. We went back to the counter dreaming of steaming bowls of pulao, palak paneer, matar paneer, malai koftas and ras malai for dessert. I opened the first lid. Kerala Brown rice. I opened the next. Plain white rice. Sceptically, I took some of it. I looked into the next dish. Sambar, then aviyal, pulissery, thoran, rasam, sambharam, pineapple pachadi, kichadi, pappadam. There had to be a mistake.

I asked the prim lady at the counter, ‘Er...is this the North Indian meal?’

‘Yes’ with a poker face.

‘Then what is a South Indian meal...? I saw that on the menu too...’

‘South Indian meal means, minus the chapattis, cholay and dal’ no change in dead pan tone or expression.

'I see’ and I moved on, loading one Kerala dish after the other on to my plate. We reached the end of the counter- the dessert. After this I wasn’t expecting a rasmalai or gajar halwa but a gulab jamun would have made it fair and square. That is, at least the opening and closing dishes would then have been true to the name. But no. Another neat little lady in blue handed us a bowl of ari payasam.

We went back to our seats like two souls who were promised a ride in the airplane but were briefly thrown into the air instead. We placed our plates on the table and took our seats facing each other.

‘Sham’ said I.

‘Eyewash’ said my friend.

And then we started tackling the Snouth Indian meal, in true-blue South Indian style- take-mix-shove, take-mix-shove, take-mix-shove...

What I wanted...

What I got...

Guess, life's like that!

Images: Google