Pick up your plates!

"Don't forget to pick up your tray and trash the stuff", said my dear husband when we had gone to a nearby small Indian restaurant. I retorted saying, "Even after coming to a restaurant, I need to do this work and end up tipping them as well!"

This sentence made my "Indian-mentality" to kick in and realize how much a customer is pampered in India. Right from serving, getting the bill or clearing the plates after you are done, there is always someone to do all this stuff for you (be it small restaurants or fast food joints). I wonder if we have all these extra labours because of our population or because they want the customers to feel like a king/queen or, plainly put across, we feel it's demeaning to clear our plates?

And tip? I don't remember tipping any waiter in India with more than Rs. 10! But here in US, one needs to clear or sometimes clean their table and still pay 10-15% of your bill as a tip. SIGH!

However, what I really like about the restaurants/fast food joints here is that you are always greeted with a warm smile and a good old greeting: "Hello, how are you doing today? And what can I get you?". They go out-of-their-way to be friendly and warm towards you, as your tip is their income. And the best part is that you get to exchange any drink or food if you are not satisfied with it!

The same cannot be said in an Indian restaurant here. You walk in expecting to experience the "Indianess" and it kind of matches the expectations. The same old poker straight face and the unfriendly communication. The food barely matches the taste of authentic Indian food but you should be happy that you are seeing them in this country.

Well, one thing I learnt today is that you can take an Indian out of India, but not India out of the Indian ;)

The transition

After the short stint of my US vacation in 2011, I am back to this country for good. Karma, fate or destiny... whatever does one want to call it. My shifting to US is a glaring irony in my life. I was the type of a desi who always dreamed of marrying a guy at 23 and living forever in Bangalore. But life made sure none of these happened.

Enter Harish, my spoilt brat husband. Like most of today's youth, he always dreamed of shifting to US and getting a handsome pay. Though his dream was achieved, mine was lost in transition. Hence, i decided to treat my shifting to US as a break from everything. Again, fate had other things stored for me.

As I donned the role of a "homemaker", I realised I am turning into what I always teased my mother with - The money-pinching-stuck-in-the-house-high-class-maid!!! Thankfully, US does not have vegetable vendors who come outside our houses. If that would have happened, then I am pretty sure that I would have fought with the vendors for that extra bhendi or that extra green chilly too. However, my under-achievements did not stop at this.

One day I decided to take up the ambitious project of making the bhendi subzi (Bendekai Palya in Kannada) for my dear husband and my Indian-food-deprived stomach. Little did I know that I would end up being a mad scientist in her lab, who is adding different types of chemicals, which will eventually blow up on her face. I always knew that I was a good food critic, but a chef... NEVER! I cannot differentiate between the dals used for cooking subzi  to the dals used for making sambar or idly.

After I got the recipe from my mom (which involved me stressing her into giving me measurements in tablespoons and teaspoons), I started my quest to find my dals and vegetables. Thankfully Dallas has many Indian supermarkets and restaurants. So you don't have to go to an extent of shipping your monthly grocery from India. So I bought the dals which matched the description given by my mom and I was all set to kick start my culinary conquests (read: disasters).

After heating the oil, when I added the mustard seeds, it felt like someone is shooting towards me from inside the pan! Those damn mustard seeds, which are so dismissively tiny, acted like bullets aimed towards me. And when I added Onions and Green Chilies, they behaved like those teenage children who throw a tantrum when you give them some work. In the end, I somehow managed to dodge the mustard seeds' bullets and cranky onions, to complete my bhendi subzi and save our dinner.

Finally I am appreciating the all the hard work which my mother put in to conjure up a meal for us back in Bangalore and I am hoping that someday I will be a cook who can make edible dishes!