Dud Sea Scrawls The Writing, clearly, is not on the wall!

i guess you were too shy to call her back.
anyway for all that you know she could have called up a hyderabadi friend of her, who may have fed her chicken/veg biryani.

ananta, sorry i could not call you on saturday. it was too hectic. am back in chennai now.

btw tocs, hyd is no better. couple of years ago we were knocking on every restaurant on banjara hills (we were too sozzled to look elsewhere) to serve us a meal post 0000 hrs. until a kind soul in ‘Angeeti’ let us in after absolving our rights to order, we were served the leftovers. i am sure we would not have gone hungry as nampally area was not too far and i assume there will be some joints that remain open.

There have been times when I and my friends have roamed the streets of Bangalore looking for food during nights when we’d be working late or simply hungry while discussing some really esoteric stuff that no one understood or believed in.
One such night, a couple of years ago I was going with my friend to his house to work on some project. It was close to 0000 hrs and both of us were famished. We had taken a route which was not close to our regular late night food places like Imperial or Empire. We thought we’d find some food at Fatima’s near Johnson Market. We were so wrong… None of the lights were on in any of the food places, and the last one was switching off too. A small place where the waiter was closing a window before closing for the day. I asked the guy if there was any food. He said “sab khatm hua, bandh kar rahe hain”
Just then the owner of the place came out and he heard that. He got really angry with the waiter and said “abe ulloo, tum bandh kare ho yeh woh bhi dekh rahe hain, unhe bhook lagi hai, isiliye pooch rahe hain ki kuch hain” then he turned towards us and asked if ‘rotis and sherva’ would do. Before I could respond that it’d be more than sufficient [I’d have just eaten the rotis ], my friend said “mere liye chalega, yeh non-veg nahi khaata hai…” So the owner said he’d get some ‘daal’ done. Then he took us inside, got some hot rotis and daal made even though it was closing time and served us himself, not trusting his waiter-in-a-hurry-to-get-home… all the time talking about a lot of general stuff… And boy did we stuff overselves generously with his hospitality… It was already 0045 when we finished our dinner. He did not even calculate how much we ate, just said “40 rupees” [ I’m sure we’d gorged more food worth twice that price, afterall he’d got hot daal everytime he served us a roti and we’d eaten more than a dozen between us ] As we paid and started to leave, he asked us to wait as the ‘soolaimani’ was getting ready and launched into a short lecture about it’s good properties. As we sipped the hot soolaimani relishing it on a full stomach, we thanked him for the hospitality and said that we’d delayed the closing of the place for the night… he said it’d not have been right to turn back someone really hungry without food and that his religion forbids it… he could definitely delay his going home by a few minutes as he’d be mourning the martyrdom of Imam Hussain the next day…
I and my friend always think of this guy whenever we think of hospitality or service in restaurants…
PS: Ananth, There are a lot of places which serve food late into the night near our place these days… can tell you about them in case you already dont know.

I know your pain Ananth. I really know it.

I’ve noticed that as well that Bangalore closes really early. And I mentioned this to the person I was with, and he said well it is a “professional” city. I think he was insulting my city. Civilized people dont even eat dinner until 10. Ananth, I think it is time for you to move out of that city, or get married as Pradzie suggested.

but on the flip side, going to bed on a empty stomach wouldn’t have been fun, however heart-microwaved the good-sam-deed might have done to you

I got so fed up with the smug “Close Saar…” (meaning, whatever you had asked for has been sold out) remarks by sadistic owner/waiters, that I have consciously stopped going to many of my neighborhood eating joints. They just don’t care, because he is happy he made his money for the day and would want you to move out so that he could start cleaning the restaurant…at 9.30 p.m!!!