The Other Half

The thatched restaurant on the village road had a board hung outside saying ‘Limited Lunch Rs.10.’

The man at the counter who was the owner wore a white shirt open at the neck showing a gold chain. He split duty at the counter collecting cash and helping out the server with the dishes to the diners sitting scattered at wooden desks. The lunch was served on plantain leaves.

They served steaming rice measured and served cake-fashion in a white lump from a brass measure, the cake breaking at the touch sending up more steam and the aroma of steaming rice. Two vegetable dishes ‘aviyal’ and ‘thoran’ and a splash of hot ‘sambar’ to wet the rice and a little mango pickle.

The diners squared their shoulders and got to work, rolling the rice and ‘sambar’ with their fingers and throwing large morsels into their mouths. ‘Limited Lunch Rs.10’ meant no second helpings, unlike the usual lunch where you can have a second or third helping till the most capacious had had his fill. The usual lunch cost you Rs.15 a head.

A young couple sat in the back row, the man a wiry labourer with his dhoti tucked up showing his hairy legs below the desk and shirt collar pulled back because of the heat and the sweat and the woman looking tired and withered because she was pregnant.

They had come a long way walking. She had a cloth bag on the floor by her side and both were barefooted, the dust of the road brown on their feet.

She sat blankly propping herself up with her left hand on the seat to balance the bulk of the belly and keeping her right hand bent at the desk with no plantain leaf with rice before her. She had dark sweat stains in the armpits of her faded green blouse. She drank a third of the tumbler of hot drinking water before her and waited blankly as the man helped himself to the ‘Limited Lunch.'

He finished half the measured lump of rice, drank his tumbler of water dry, sat up and licked each finger clean.

He looked at his wife. She shifted in gentle swaying motions and sat forward, her elbows on the desk, the blank expression gone from her face. The husband pushed the half-finished lunch on the plantain leaf to position before her, got up and walked to the washbasin outside.

He lit a beedi, took a deep drag, produced a folded handkerchief from the waist of his dhoti and counted coins on to the counter. He waited smoking at the door and watched her slowly finish the other half of the ‘Limited Lunch.’

It was a delicious lunch all right. Great that they had chosen this place. He smiled as he watched her make each morsel linger that way in her mouth in a sort of loving dialogue with her taste buds. He could taste the full rapture of the rice-and-sambar-and-pickle mix in her mouth.

They had a long way to go, but he was in no hurry. He wanted her to take all the time in the world.

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