Well if you've ever lived in
Pune, am sure that you'll agree (to varying extents) with what I am about to
proclaim - I love the city! And honestly, I really can't put a finger on any
particular reason to which I can attribute this aforementioned affection. Well it’s
definitely not the huge drain (which they claim to be a river...no wait two
rivers) which flows through the heart of the city. Nor is it the abysmal state of
the public transport system or the fleecing autowallas (both of which could give
Chennai some serious competition). Maybe it has something to do with the
old-world charm that the city exudes despite being a bustling metropolis. Or
maybe it’s the girls-with-higher-than-the-Indian-average-beauty-but-lower-than-the-South-Bombay-average-beauty
who populate Pune courtesy the numerous colleges that dot the city. Hmmm…can't
really say. So if you are still skeptical, you should definitely go and check…err
Pune out. Or you could take my word for it – I’ve worked there for two years,
and despite not living there for the last year or so, I still yearn to go back.
And it should suffice when I say that I’ve been to Pune as many times as I’ve
been home during the last yearabouts!
This magical experience which I shall
duly narrate, and which is now encapsulated and mummified in the annals of my
blog for our posterity to read and witness for themselves, happened to me the
last time that I had gone to this enchanting city. Pune was home to this famous
hangout place known as the German Bakery, housed just next to the more famous
Bottoms Up Wines on one side and the ‘O’ Hotel on the other (The O is short for
Oh No!). Most of you must have heard about the now infamous German Bakery,
which was the target of a terrorist bombing, that resulted in the death of many
innocent civilians (and which was duly condoned by our MMS (No no…am not
talking about the DPS MMS. I meant our PM yaar, who am sure, has spoken less
no. of words during his entire tenure than what was said in the 1 minute and 42
seconds long MMS clip)). Anyways…during the two years that I was in Pune, I had
been a silent witness of the bare shell that German Bakery had been reduced to
after the heinous crime. And despite several newspaper reports claiming that it
would be up and running very soon (as is claimed for all infrastructure
projects in India), German Bakery was still not functional the last time that I’d
been to Pune in January this year. But this time around I was in for a surprise,
and when I landed there at 7 AM on a Saturday morning, and woke up my groggy-from-five-days-in-the-office
friend, he suggested that we should go have breakfast at German Bakery.
So the four of us got dressed and
headed out for breakfast which, after spending an entire year on campus
sleeping at 3:00 AM and barely managing to wake up for an 8:45 AM class, had
become a rarity of sorts for me. As we entered the Bakery, I couldn’t help
notice the two not-so-heavily-armed security personnel standing at the entrance
or the metal detector that they had installed to scan the unsuspecting early
morning breakfast goers. The fact that the Bakery had been highly frequented by
the Pune dwellers was reflected by the fact that most of the tables were full
even at 9 o clock in the morning. We managed to find an empty table and settled
down. Menus arrived. And as promised to me, quite an elaborate fare was on offer,
ranging from English breakfasts with sunny sides up to something closer home
such as Upma and Parathas.
Arun, being a frequent connoisseur
of Breakfasts at GB, suggested that I should definitely try their
ham-sausage-omlette and went ahead and order one for himself as well. Next up
on the menu were beverages. Now, as mentioned earlier, with a schedule that
included less than six hours of sleep on a regular basis, I needed certain
intoxicants to keep me going through the day and had, much to the delight of my
regular-tea-drinking parents, become addicted to the stimulating brew. However,
prior to this, I knew only three varieties of tea – Nescafe Tea, Taj Mahal Tea
and Rambhai Tea (well technically four if you also count Long Island Ice Tea as
one variant). And when I glanced through menu, I was rendered speechless. They
had an entire page dedicated to just tea – Darjeeling Tea, Masala Tea, Nilgiri
Tea, Earl Grey Tea, Great Britain Tea, Prince Harry Tea and what not…all I’ll
say is that the list was practically endless. Faced with this overwhelming list
of unheard of beverage varieties to choose from, I ended up ordering a cup of
Indian sounding Darjeeling Tea to go with my English breakfast.
As we waited for our breakfasts
to arrive, my attention was drawn to this ketchup bottle that was kept on the
table. A common household fly seemed to have apparated above it, as though out
of thin air, and was now trying desperately to suck out the last remaining
drops of tomato sauce that were within its nimble reach. In doing so, the fly
had turned almost upside down (vertically 90 degrees!) into the nozzle of the
ketchup bottle. One false step and what awaited it was an untimely death by
drowning in the reservoir of molten tomato puree that it seemed to love so much,
at the depths of Mt. Ketchup! I shuddered at the plight of those unsuspecting
patrons who would have unknowingly used the bottle after that.
Anyway, in the meantime, our chow
had arrived and we started gorging on it like a pack of hungry hyenas. The
ham-sausage-omlette was delicious (my apologies to the PETA activists out
there) and I was soon almost finished with my breakfast. Meanwhile, the
housefly seemed to have called some of its friends to savor the delectable red
puree on offer and they seemed to have started a La Tomatina of sorts by themselves at the mouth of the ketchup
bottle.
I, due to the lack of my early
morning stimulus, had started to get cranky, and began pestering the waiter to
get my morning cuppa. And soon enough he was back, carrying – much to my
surprise – an entire tray instead of the single cup that I had ordered. As he
set down the tray on the table, I stared at it in open-mouthed disbelief (poor
waiter must have thought that I am still hungry). Instead of the muddy brown
concoction that I had expected, what the tray contained were four separate
items. An empty cup of tea. A kettle, which I later discovered was full of
boiling water. A small flask of milk. And one tea bag. He unloaded the contents
of the tray and turned around and disappeared back into the kitchen. Gauging by
the astounded look on my face as I gazed at the retreating back of the waiter,
my friends told me that I would have to prepare the tea myself (apparently that’s
how it’s done in up-market restaurants).
Highly inept at activities pertaining
to the kitchen, I took a deep breath and set about preparing the do-it-yourself
tea (all this while thinking that it should rather have been called IKEA Tea). I
placed the tea bag in the empty cup, poured in some of the contents of the
kettle and added some milk. Some cubes of sugar to taste. The concoction turned
white! My friends then instructed me to shake the tea bag a little, and as I
did so, the color of the solution slowly started to the familiar muddy brown
that I was used to. I took a sip. Ah! It was perfect. Just the right blend of
milkiness and tea-ness. I passed the cup around the table so that my friends
too could admire my handiwork. As I sat there savoring my do-it-yourself tea, I
started envisioning opening my own tea kiosk and giving Rambhai a run for his
money. The cup was soon empty, but my brain was not satisfied. I began
contemplating ordering another cup of the highly priced Darjeeling tea when
Supriya suggested that I should try making another cup from the teabag and the
remaining contents of the tray (clearly showing who was paying for the
breakfast). I added some water to the cup, at the bottom of which the teabag
lay, and to my surprise, the water started turning brown again! Quickly I added
some milk and sugar and took a sip. Perfection! It was as good, if not better
than the last cup. I quickly gulped it down and added some more water, milk and
sugar and voila! A third cup of tea appeared out of the magical teabag! I
seemed to have found an unending source of the exotic elixir. Each time that I
kept adding more water and milk to the cup, it seemed to be producing that
perfect cup of tea! My dreams of that tea stall seemed even closer to reality
now! I could now make a thousand cups, or maybe even more, of tea from this one
single teabag! As I raised my cup to drink to my future success – PLOP! The fly
had finally found its swimming pool…
