*Burp*

This evening, I thought I'd go off to dinner to this north Indian joint that we have here in Trivandrum. I don't think it would look very North Indian next to the real Mccoy, but hey, this is Trivandrum we are talking about. You gotta be damn lucky if you find something not cooked in coconut oil and that's not an idli.

Ramji's Bhojanalay is not your average Punjabi dhaba. For starters, it serves only vegetarian food. But that was what I was looking for tonight. So, the minute it was eight PM and the lights went out (no, it wasn't timed by me, I got the government in Kerala to do it for us - we have half hour power cuts now!) I walked out towards my destination. The place was more or less empty when I got there. They had a pretty big blackboard with the menu scrawled over it -it pretty much mentioned every usual veggie dish you could think of. And that had me confused. I can never choose when presented with a choice. Yes, I know that sounds pretty odd. But that's me.

It took me all of a minute to tell him:"Two parattas and one aloo mutter". He repeated the order, I nodded and he walked off. Five minutes later, and that was fast, he places a dish of aloo mutter in front of me. And then he placed one paratta on my empty plate. There was something wrong there. It wasnt that I had ordered for two and that he had got only one. The paratta didn't look all right. The size and shape were different from what I had last remembered it as. And as I bit into it, I realized what was wrong. This was aloo paratta - stuffed with potatoes! And just as soon as epiphany struck me, me slowly pushing down the paratta down my throat, came the next blow - a second aloo paratta.

I don't know where I went wrong. I spoke right, he heard right, but I ate wrong. I walked out half an hour later. That's how it took me to wade through two parattas stuffed with potatoes, and a plate of curry -again full of potatoes.

And I don't for the life of me, want to see another potato again.

*BURP*