A few months ago, Father's second book was released into the market. This one, which he wrote with a friend and physicist colleague, is on the history of nuclear power in India. It comes at a time when the who issue of power is front-of-mind, since this country has serious energy shortages to deal with and the Indo-US nuclear deal has just been signed. And it has been received well, with lots of feedback from those who matter. And the royalties are coming in, too! All that apart, it was the reason for a small celebration yesterday. The two authors got together for a lunch party, with the guests being Father's daughter (Me!) and his friend's wife. We ate at Kamling, a well-known Chinese restaurant in South Mumbai, the meal spiced with lots of laughter, many idiosyncracies and good food.
We started with a drink - beer for the men, Chinese tea for us women, the gender divide being completely coincidental. The wife had to go back to work after lunch, I do not drink alcohol and like my green tea, so there we were, our choices clear. We waited a while for the wife to appear - she was up to something, we found, standing outside the eatery even as we could see her head bobbing about on the other side of the glass door. Finally, she came in, and we found that she had been busy ordering flowers for the two guests of honour. A sweet thing to do, and funny, since both bouquets had to travel all the way across town to get home and one of them would be sitting on her own side table in her apartment! But the flowers arrived, along with cards to congratulate the authors and the wife was happiest of all, beaming fondly at us as she relished her lunch.
The meal began with an unreasonably spicy kimchee to accompany the beverages. While I normally like the pickled cabbage, I watched it from a distance and with great caution after the first taste, having burned the tip of my tongue and dowsed the flame with too-hot tea and then sitting there with eyes watering, lips on fire and all nerve endings on high alert. But then it all settled into something bordering on joy. Father dipped into asparagus and crab soup, our friends happily slurped wonton soup and I nibbled tofu, lettuce and prawns in clear broth. Yummy. From there, we progressed into a whole fish deep fried with garlic; the wife licked her lips over the fish, which she seemed to whole heartedly enjoy, while I sneaked spoonfuls of the garlic 0 deliciously fragrant and salty-sweet, crisp and sinfully oily. It was a superb relish for the vegetable noodles and fried rice, adding that perfect touch of zing to the bland chicken, mushroom and bamboo shoot dish that we shared. But just when I had worked out how to grab that last bit of garlic, the waiter took the platter away - it seemed rather crass to demand it back!
From that point, we all took a restroom break. Much needed, especially considering all the tea we had drunk, but not exactly the most pleasant experience. The toilets were smelly and grubby at the edges, the doors did not fit and you had to do some very elaborate calisthenics to get into the right position in the stall. But, as I always believe, when you gotta go, you gotta go, so you may as well make the best of it!
Dessert was a must, I insisted, since it was a celebration that we had met for. Knowing that the litchis would be canned and that anything typical of a Chinese restaurant in India would be more heavy than we were willing to deal with, the three of us dug into malai kulfi, a disc of frozen cream and sugar, while the wife had the more mundane chocolate ice cream. Finally done licking the last smear off the spoons, we were done and ready to take a nap. But there was another very important ritual to go through. We stood outside taking pictures, the proud authors with the book and the even more proud families with the authors with the book. I was in giggles, since the whole thing seemed vaguely filmi to me, but it was a fun afternoon and different from our usual more private celebrations. We drove home in a wonderfully soporific state, feeling like anacondas after a particularly satisfying meal.
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