Sunday Snippets
By Venkatesh Raghavan
Just on the eve of second wave of lockdown setting in, I decided to walk into Koolar Irani restaurant for tea and biscuits. It was a good ten minutes before the order was taken. The owner Amir walked in and spotted me.
He joined me at the table and said, it’s time to have a selfie as we have no certainty on when exactly our restaurants will be allowed to reopen. He took two snaps of us being seated together with his mobile camera as the waiter walked towards us with cups of tea.
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It soon dawned on me that my routine of having breakfast at the Irani will again get disrupted. Still worse, the garden opposite will stay shut to all public, implying I had nothing to look forward to when ambling out for my morning break.
I thought about it for quite sometime, when it struck me that the tea stall will be open in the early hours. I however, will have to be seated on the footsteps of any nearby closed shop. It irked me to realize that there will be little to expect from my morning outings.
On the following morning, when I walked past the closed laundry, my beedi vendor, Binny greeted me. As we kept chatting on the likely poll results in the four states and the union territory, Binny disclosed that stocking up for the lean period was getting tougher. A tea vendor on cycle caught my eye. We continued chatting and sipping from our cups. Needless to say, this turned out to be my new routine.
Similarly, my evening outings too got greeted by a biscuit vendor who stayed parked a stone’s throw from a partially closed liquor joint catering to people who tucked in the bottles hurriedly inside their paper bags.
Eventually, there was the corner restaurant to be visited for collecting parcels, Idli, medu vada or dosa to name a few. I saved my visit to the restaurant for the last, to ensure that the parcel stayed steaming hot, well after I reached home.
As I reflected on how my life has changed with lockdown restrictions in place, the sight of children playing cricket and at times badminton in my building compound felt heartening, albeit proving to be the single swallow amidst an advanced summer.
