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It happens NOT only in India!!
| Topic started by Hummingbird on Fri May 22 14:27:45 2009. | [Full View] |
and not writing in my usual Tanglish
and wanted to know what I write and how is the response to my writing. And this friend, being a non-Tamilian, asked me to write it fully in English, so that he can also understand whats going on. So that’s the reason for this petering. 
As we go along, I will share this link with him for him to read and reflect. I thought it would only be fair to share this link as he was also a party to the excitement. 
I leave it to him to decide to join /not to join this cute community
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| From: madhu on Mon May 25 19:10:33 2009. | [Full View] |
| From: Hummingbird on Sun Jun 7 21:11:09 2009. | [Full View] |
... how are you? how is your kutti paapa?
| From: Hummingbird on Sun Jun 7 21:51:38 2009. | [Full View] |
, some with parents 
, some as a group 
and most of them waiting in the car. No…. these kids don’t get to see the soan papdi walas and the cotton candy walas 
that we saw outside our schools… nor do they get to sit on the small ferry wheels like what we did when we were like them. Their lives are comfortable and sophisticated… but devoid of the simple joys like eating a watermelon piece that has been kept in open air and still not falling sick, licking the multi-coloured ice stick made by the kuchi icewala (kuchi – stick) and still not catching cold… Were we lucky to have experienced such simple and small funs or are these kids lucky to have such comfortable lives 
at the sweet stall, we finally head to the temple.
. The plan was to go to a famous and a good Indian restaurant where X-man would host me a lunch. He owed me lots of treats and the sweet stall shopping was for a starter. 
(No!!! Am not blabbering due to hunger… at this station, the underground train platform is really overground. You do have to climb stairs)
.
| From: pavalamani pragasam on Sun Jun 7 23:28:56 2009. | [Full View] |
| From: madhu on Mon Jun 8 10:17:33 2009. | [Full View] |
| From: Hummingbird on Mon Jun 15 1:50:29 2009. | [Full View] |
???…. I feel like I just got out of West Mambalam station and walked into Ranganathan Street . Shops extending onto pavements, cracked glass windows with brown cellulose tapes, handicapped plaster of paris models with sarees and churidhars draped over them….. and so many Indian faces. So much so that Brits start looking like foreigners here 
… Indian, North Indian, South Indian, Authentic Indian, Sri Lankan, Chinese, Multi cuisine etc. While on the way, we also see Ragini Thanga Nagai Maligai (No!!! am not joking… it was written in Senthamizh), Bank of Baroda, Chennai Dosa centre and what not!!!
Yes, we are now at the doorstep of the restaurant. As we are about to push the door open… X-man notices that the restaurant opens for dinner at 6pm only. We still had 30 mins to go and my stomach had already started rumbling 
‘Hey!!! I should have noticed this before. We have 30 mins now !! (as if I said we have 3 mins ). What do we do?’. After much deliberation, we decided we will walk up and down the road and enjoy the Indian side of London and in the process, burn some more calories so that we can eat more 
!! The only good thing was we had whiled away 5 out of the 30 mins in the deliberation .
Lo!!! Here you go… stainless steel vessel store with pressure cookers, dabba sets, tablespoons and all odds and sods that we normally see in our home back in India. We had so much fun watching this fanfare that for a while, I even forgot that I was hungry.
that the owner decided to change it to “OPEN” without making us wait for the full 3 mins. We walk in and the Hero offers us a seat near the window so that we can enjoy our lunch/dinner while we watch the market place.
| From: madhu on Mon Jun 15 9:32:57 2009. | [Full View] |
| hummingbird wrote: |
|
I feel like I just got out of West Mambalam station and walked into Ranganathan Street |
there is no west mambalam station.. Only mambalam is here
| hummingbird wrote: |
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We ordered starters with tea first. |
)| From: Hummingbird on Fri Jun 26 0:41:49 2009. | [Full View] |
but not hot . We called our Hero and said ‘chai garam nai hai!!!!’…. Mr Hero immediately responded ‘no problem sir, garam kar dhenge' and even before finishing his response, took our cups and walked inside .. into the kitchen!!! 
and we started laughing!!!! Yes, he was going to heat the tea in the microwave and bring it back to us . No, its not the fact that he was reheating the tea . When the tea comes back, Mr Hero will be fully confident and not have an iota of doubt on whether he served us back our respective cups of tea 
. But we would definitely be unsure 
of whether the right cup came back to us. Despite this, we liked our Hero as he was the only person in the restaurant who was thoroughly enjoying what he was doing and was completely sure that there is only one right way of doing this job, and that’s his way.
that can beat all the Colgate and Pepsodent smiles of the world. He served us the cups and we had to believe that the right cups were served. That was when we realized that IT HAPPENS NOT ONLY IN INDIA. 
. When he brought the cups after reheating, he also brought a cup of sugar and 3 spoons. I wondered why he brought 3 spoons 
and X-man explained that it is to ensure that we do not take sugar with the same spoon after we used it to stir the sugar in our tea cups. And the 3rd spoon was to take sugar just in case we wanted to add more sugar in our tea (after using the first spoon!!!) 
. How thoughtful of our Hero to make sure we don’t have to mix our spoons when we are not sure if there is a mix up in our tea. 
. We were almost sure that the sugar cup was going back into the kitchen only to come back again to some other table, with the spilt sugar collected in it . Another realization of IT HAPPENS NOT ONLY IN INDIA
at the restaurant and also had good fun watching T20 match that was going on that day as well as watching the happenings inside and outside the restaurant . A final touch to end this experience - there was a shop outside the restaurant whose name board had the following words
| From: pavalamani pragasam on Fri Jun 26 3:08:19 2009. | [Full View] |
| From: madhu on Fri Jun 26 19:50:37 2009. | [Full View] |
) and just coz of the cleanliness and the behaviour my friends were overwhelmed and congratulated the staff. But they just smiled and said "Is it not our duty sir ? "
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