| ashu |
Posted
on 30-Dec-00 06:56 AM
What follows is originally taken from www.salon.com
Since Indian restaurants are not too far from our
experiences in Boston, this is reproduced here
for your collective amusement/entertainment.
Enjoy,
oohi
ashu
********************
From: Sagun Karmacharya
> Slinging curry
>
> Waitressing nirvana went to hell in a sari.
> - - - - - - - - - - - -
> By Debra Ginsberg
>
> Oct. 31, 2000 | When I was 26 years old, I moved to
> Southern California and almost immediately took a job
> as a waitress in a beautiful Indian restaurant. Of my
> many waitressing jobs, this one would have the
> shortest life. I had forgotten one of the most
> important waitress caveats: Never take a job in a
> restaurant merely because you like the kind of food
> served there or have preconceptions about the culture
> from which the cuisine originates. Unfortunately, I
> made this rookie mistake about 10 years into my
> waitressing career when, clearly, I should have known
> better.
>
> One reason for my hasty and ill-considered decision
> was that I grew up in a family with an affinity for
> all things Indian. My parents lit incense and listened
> to Indian ragas. My mother wore a lot of Indian
> clothing and provided me, when I was little, with a
> series of Indian comic books detailing the legends of
> Krishna and Shiva. Later, there were plenty of books
> on Indian philosophies lying around the house for me
> to read.
>
> My parents also were great believers in karma. When I
> was in my teens, my entire family became vegetarian --
> a virtually unheard-of phenomenon in 1970s New York.
> For my parents, and for me, India was appealing on
> many levels. There was the exoticism, the elusive
> scent of enlightenment and, of course, the food.
> Curries, chapati and, especially, Indian tea ranked
> very high in my house, although they always seemed
> hard to find and cooking them properly posed some
> problems. Without the proper ingredients and recipes,
> Indian cooking was merely guesswork. We were,
> therefore, always searching for a good Indian
> restaurant in which to dine.
>
> Thus, when I was offered the chance to work in an
> Indian restaurant, I leapt. What luck, I thought, as I
> surveyed the restaurant's dark interior. There was an
> elephant head over the bar, keeping watch over the
> inventory of Indian beers. The kitchen had an
> authentic tandoor oven and, in the dining room, there
> was bamboo as far as the eye could see. Instead of the
> usual swinging doors leading from dining room to
> kitchen, there were several thick strands of brightly
> colored beads separating the rooms. The scents of
> saffron, cardamom and turmeric permeated the air. I
> was in heaven -- until my first shift.
>
> Within a couple of days of starting my new job, I had
> a long list of reasons to leave it as soon as
> possible. To begin with, the restaurant was owned and
> managed by an extremely ill-tempered trio of brothers
> from northern India. There was a long-standing family
> dispute between these three that seemed to have its
> roots in their respective childhoods and threatened,
> every day, to escalate into a full-fledged feud.
> Whenever more than one of the brothers were in the
> restaurant at any given time, they quarreled loudly
> and incessantly in Hindi. When only one brother was
> present, he would complain, in English, about one or
> both of the others.
>
> Ironically, all three brothers had an identical
> management style, which was to tell the non-Indian
> staff (which consisted of me, a couple of other
> waitresses and the kitchen crew) absolutely nothing
> about how the restaurant was to be run and then
> complain later that the rules weren't being followed.
> When directed at the waitresses, these complaints were
> delivered with cool and haughty disdain. The brothers,
> it turned out, were on the misogynistic side. They
> tended to keep a frowning distance between themselves
> and the waitresses.
>
> The all-male kitchen staff did not receive the same
> treatment. Every day, there was a shouting match among
> the brothers, the cooks and the dishwashers. What made
> these daily altercations most interesting was that the
> entire kitchen staff was Mexican. The brothers would
> stand and scream at the cooks in Hindi and the cooks
> would fire back in lively Spanish. Nobody really had a
> clue what anybody was going on about most of the time.
>
>
> (After listening to my complaints about the brothers,
> my mother weighed in with the opinion that there was
> an obvious reason for the brothers' splenetic
> behavior. All three were rabid meat eaters, which was,
> she claimed, "out of the normal order" for Indians.
> The ensuing repressed guilt over their meat
> consumption was no doubt the reason for their
> querulous natures, she said.)
>
> My second complaint was with the uniform. All the
> waitresses were required to wear saris. At first, I
> thought the dress code was both innovative and
> romantic. When the wife of one brother came in with a
> selection of saris for me to choose from, I felt like
> I was shopping in a Bombay bazaar, fingering elegant
> cottons and silks. And, actually, the sari would have
> been fine if, in fact, I'd been visiting Bombay or
> touring the Taj Mahal. Unfortunately, it was more or
> less impossible for me to serve curry and tandoori
> chicken in a California restaurant with the sari
> catching under my feet, trailing into the dishes and
> falling off my shoulder. And the beaded entrance to
> the kitchen that I'd thought so charming became an
> absolute nightmare when I tried to maneuver the sari
> and the dishes through it, tangling up the food and
> cloth with the least provocation. It turned out that
> wrapping a sari was a skill in and of itself, one I
> clearly did not possess. I looked ridiculous, I
> thought, and felt extremely uncomfortable.
>
> And then there was the food. I'd envisioned myself
> eating sumptuously and sampling all my favorite Indian
> foods. This was not to be. The brothers advocated
> rather a heavy hand with all manner of cleaning fluids
> in the kitchen. As a result, most items had a
> frightening chemical undertaste that more or less
> ruined the delicate spicing of the dishes and inspired
> a fear of poisoning. The brothers also were frugal.
> Let's just say that certain curries and puddings stuck
> around much longer than they should have.
>
> The sole saving grace was the Indian tea, or chai,
> which was hot, fragrant and intoxicating. There was
> always plenty (the brothers drank it heartily) and I
> imbibed to my heart's content.
>
> In the end, it wasn't the hostility, the sari or the
> food that really signaled the end of the job. Rather,
> it was the slowness of business, the annoying
> customers and, that inevitable death knell of a
> waitressing job, bad tips.
>
> After a few days on the job, I realized that the
> restaurant was surrounded by several of the kinds of
> institutions that have made SoCal famous. There were a
> few yoga rooms, a transcendental meditation house or
> two and some other amorphous "centers" that touted
> enlightenment in a few easy steps. Many of the patrons
> would convene at the restaurant for lunch, clasping
> their hands in the Indian style and murmuring
> "namaste" to each other. They were all, it seemed, on
> some sort of restrictive, cleansing diet -- one that
> didn't involve being civil to the waitress. Serving
> curry in my sari, I was clearly not as evolved as
> these enlightened practitioners. And, apparently,
> tipping was not a part of nirvana.
>
> After a month, I found myself not only disillusioned
> but cash poor, and decided that my passage to India
> was officially over.
>
> On my last, particularly slow, shift, the youngest
> brother, "Jim" (he never went by his Indian name),
> suddenly warmed to me and decided, after I extolled
> its virtues, to show me how to properly prepare Indian
> tea. The tea was the one item that the brothers always
> prepared themselves and it sat, in a giant pot,
> warming on the stove all day. While I watched, Jim
> threw handfuls of loose tea, cardamom pods and cloves
> into boiling water, then measured out milk and sugar
> from memory. It was easy, he told me. Tea was the
> easiest thing to make in the world. It required no
> thought at all.
>
> The next week, I started my next job at a diner
> serving tuna melts, omelets and cappuccinos to patrons
> who were avowedly unenlightened and generous with
> their tips. I couldn't even think about eating Indian
> food for at least six months.
>
> My illusions of India had been bruised during my brief
> stint in the restaurant, but not dashed. I had, after
> all, come away with a wonderful recipe for the tea I
> consider nothing short of an elixir. The stuff
> masquerading these days as chai in local coffeehouses
> doesn't even come close.
>
> When I make it now, I remember Jim telling me that it
> takes no thought at all and the tea comes out
> perfectly every time. And, I have to admit, there is a
> little bit of enlightenment in this act. Just a
> little.
> - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
> About the writer
> Debra Ginsberg is the author of "Waiting: The True
> Confessions of a Waitress" (HarperCollins). She lives
> in San Diego.
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