Return to Bombay Café
By José Lourenço
Ordering a cup of tea to
close a snack is a delicate art. The tea arrives hot. It cools with time,
depending on many factors—the ceiling fan may be on, there may be a light
breeze blowing, it could be the monsoon season or winter. The stainless steel pelo
in which it is served is the only constant. Many regulars at Bombay Café speed
up the cooling by pouring the tea into the lower broader watti that
holds the pelo. But the consummate tea drinker drinks his tea slowly,
sipping it in kisses that don’t scald the lip.
The trick is to start eating
your batata-wada or bhaji-pav and order the tea a little while later. That way
the tea washes down the snack and is still hot enough to enjoy the last few gulps.
The last gulp of tea should be a warm finale, a joy to the throat and belly, celebrated
by a soft yet sonorous belch. If doing this at home you can even groan loudly
with pleasure as you put your cup down.
But this isn’t home, this is
Bombay Café, where only a few elderly gaunt Hindu men can get away with a
virtuoso full-bodied belch. A Catholic male doing this would be glared at by
women customers, probably muttering “Dekh naslolo!” under their breath.
It’s a cool December evening
and I am in the mood for some play. So I take my place at the second table from
the window on the far wall side. This one has a simple magical quality to it.
Only one other table in the café has the same feature, but it is presently
occupied.
I order a single cutlet and
a tea and wait. The tables at Bombay Café are narrow. If two patrons sitting on
opposite sides were to lean their heads forward, they would collide. A middle-aged
man enters and sits diagonally across me. He orders a mix-bhaji-pav. We wait. I
assess him with my peripheral vision, reserving my primary focus for the street
outside, where evening shoppers walk briskly past Margao’s cloth shops. He’s
wearing a stained shirt over a modest potbelly. His eyes roam over the breasts
of the fisherwoman at the next table. To her face and back to her breasts. Why
do they always do that? To connect the two? To check if it’s someone they know?
If it’s a known woman they can’t look at her breasts. Not directly, anyway.
I don’t like him much. He
seems like a grocer who would cheat his buyers. And his wife. If I were a woman
he would be surreptitiously looking at my chest. When he sticks his little finger
in his ear and grinds it around before inspecting its wax stained tip, I decide
he has to be punished.
Our snacks arrive at the
same time. I cut open my cutlet, with the two teaspoons that accompany every
snack at Bombay Café. Never a fork. Why would you need a fork when two
teaspoons can do, goes the reasoning of the BC management. Western culture may
have come to Goa with the Portuguese, way before the Brits came to India, but
most cafés have adapted to a cutlery etiquette of their own. Everything is
actually best eaten by hand, but teaspoons are a reluctant concession, probably
to the ‘Cristãos’.
I pour tomato ketchup liberally
onto the heart-shaped snack, now torn apart. A bloodied broken-hearted cutlet.
The Corrupt Grocer begins to
eat his bhaji too, dipping pieces of bread in it. I place my elbow on my corner
of the table and press down. The grocer’s bhaji plate rises up by a good half
an inch. He places his left elbow on his corner of the table and pushes
it down. It’s hard to get a table with uneven legs nowadays. This one is a
wonder, with almost three quarters of an inch of lift.
His corner stays down and he
relaxes. Just when he dabs his bread again, I push down again. And release. And
down again. And up.
To eat a mix-bhaji that’s
constantly bobbing up and down is very irritating. If a customer has had a bad
day it can drive him or her over the edge. They try to push the table around,
as though nudging it forward or backward a couple of inches will stabilise it.
One of my younger victims even tried to grip her table leg with her thighs to
keep it still. But how long can thighs remain closed? Another older fellow once
slammed the table in rage, spilling everyone’s snacks all over.
Mr Cheating Grocer decides
to bear his elbow down for the rest of his bhaji. With considerable pressure. I
relax. He’s not enjoying his mix-bhaji now. The other two customers at our
table are oblivious to the ongoing seesaw battle, their corners are relatively
unperturbed. By the time my adversary has finished eating and the tea has
arrived, his arm and back have tired. I jerk his tea pelo-watti up with a thud.
It nearly spills over, a few drops spattering on a passing girl, who glares at
him with disgust. In despair he rummages through his pockets for a piece of
paper, which he folds in half and then again in half, until he’s got a
reasonably thick wad that he bends over and tucks under the delinquent short
leg. He angrily finishes his tea, which I’m sure has now gone tepid. Tests the
table by rocking it slightly. And goes off with a frustrated scowl.
Ritual is important. That’s
what separates Man from beasts. Ritual is what gave us religion, art and
civilisation. I have screwed up the Adulterer Grocer’s ritual. He will probably
hit his wife today. And she may smash a chair over his head, killing him. In
self defence, of course. The courts will acquit her and she will marry the
carpenter from the neighbouring chawl, who used to come over to oil her
creaking doors.
I have eaten my bloodstained
broken heart and now perform my final swallow of tea. It’s perfect, and I sigh
gently. It’s like those Hindustani classical pieces where the vocalist goes
yammering all over the place and the tabla guy goes wandering somewhere else,
and they eventually come together at the sam, like lovers orgasming,
culminating their ululations in one resounding thump. That’s what the last gulp
of tea should be like.
Before I rise from my table
I reach out with my foot and dislodge the wad of paper the grocer had carefully
installed. The table rocks again. And all is well with the world. This is my
table and I call the shots. This is where I change the world in small
nefarious ways.
The waiter comes with his
tiny bill, places it near my empty plate, pushing it partly into some spilt tea
to wet it, so that it stays stuck to the table in the face of the whirring wall
fan. I give him a tip, pay my bill at the counter and step out of Bombay Café,
studiously avoiding the beggar at the door, who grins toothlessly at me every
day, wearing a T-shirt that says United Colours of Bonetton.
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