When side dish became the main course…..

I live in a duplex house located on a desolate piece of the Madras – Bangalore Trunk road (MBT road) once the artery connecting the erstwhile Madras with the erstwhile Bangalore. That duty has now been handed over to the NH4 bypass road that now joins the cities of Chennai and Bengaluru.

Being bachelors who have this innate dislike of self cooking a dinner, my friends and I are always on the lookout for eateries to satiate our stomachs in the fag end of the day. One such discovery was the “Madurai sri Pandi Muniyandi Vilas” strategically located at the thiruvalam junction catering to the needs of hungry officers returning from work, long distance trailer drivers and a collection of other exotic people.

Today, we went to Muniyandi as usual at about 8.30 pm and were waiting for the usual “anna” to place the customary plaintain leaf that signaled the fact that you have been noticed and that you shall be attended to in a few minutes. However, things went the other way on the adjacent table.

Apparently, the man (for convenience “thambi”) who served the side dish for the dosas and other items (main dishes were the sole jurisdiction of “anna”) had poured the sambar ON the dosa on a customer’s plate. This, for some reason irritated the man who was being served. A war of words followed, slowly giving way to a slew of tamil expletives.

The people in the 15 seater hotel stopped eating. Nobody cared whether he got his “brota” or “sutny” or “chalna”. All eyes (and ears) were on the fighting pair (and the unparliamentary words being exchanged). The “anna” launched himself into the battlefield and tried to pacify the pair. Unfortunately, today was not his day. The words gave way to action…

People in India have a bad habit of tacitly encouraging duels, more so if they are third parties. This is not to say that they add fuel to the fire (which sometimes does happen), but they start enjoying the fight after it exceeds a certain level. This in fact encourages the fighters to save their grace in a big gathering and this takes the ordinary altercation to guerilla warfare levels.  

The customer, extremely furious by now (truth being that he had exhausted his foul vocabulary), had turned violent. Armed with his plate in one hand, he rose as if to annihilate the “thambi”. The sambar splattered everwhere partly because of the violent jerk and mainly because of the infinite dilution (it would have followed Ostwald’s law perfectly). The roast fell to the ground. It would have been glucose by now had the man eaten it. Now, since half his weaponry had been wasted, the man raised his hand and dealt a blow to the “thambi”. All hell broke loose. Everyone started shouting his own views about who was wrong in the first place. The “thambi” gave a counter blow and “anna” was desperately trying to prevent a murder.

This pandemonium had caught the attention of the highway patrol who swiftly jumped into action. What else could have been more interesting to those poor souls who keep looking for other state vehicles without national permits and in state vehicles with improper number plates.

The police took the side of the hotel walla (they can’t get free biriyani if they had done otherwise) and soon the customer was outnumbered 5 to 1. The police took the man outside and were shocked to hear that all this was because of pouring sambhar on the dosa. 

The place slowly returned to normal. Anna was now advising thambi on how to avoid conflicts while simultaneously serving people with kal-dosas that were as good as stone and half-boils that would have been chickens had they been left untended to in the heat. I was surprised to find my plate clean though I was served two dosas initially. Obviously my hand and mouth had entered auto-pilot mode during the melee. I left the place paying the 25 bucks and feeling the satisfaction of having watched a full length action sequence. 

I have read that “A lot can happen over coffee” in Café Coffee Day outlets. However, today I realized that “a lot more can happen over dosa” @ 1/10 th the price. Courtesy – sri pandi muniyandi.