“Excuse me… Can we sit here?” asked a lady in her early 50s as I was feasting on Sambar Vada in Saravana Bhavan on a sunny morning.
I said, “Yes, M’am.” She smiled back and said, “Thank you,” then held the hands of her husband and cautiously made him sit right opposite to me.
Age had shadowed this tall man’s listening and speaking abilities; his hands had a mild shiver, and his eyes popped out with a dead man’s stare. He seemed to have lost his basic mental balance and required his wife around him always.
As the lady sat next to the old man, he gazed across people munching the breakfast delicacies being served at Saravana Bhavan until he locked his eyes onto a table.
He stooped a bit towards his wife and murmured something to which his wife replied in a raised tone into his ear, “You cannot have Puri Bhaji; hasn’t the doctor advised you not to have it?”
Realizing her husband was not happy with the denial, she leaned closer to his ear and said, “Okay, will you have Tayir Vada (Dahi Vada) or Sambar Vada?”
The man murmured back something, and his wife confirmed, “Okay, so I will order Tayir Vada for you… I will have Pongal Vada.”
After placing the order, she realized something was wrong and lowered her shoulder to reach his ear. In a mildly frustrated tone, she said, “I had kept that white shirt on the bed for you to wear today; why did you wear this dirty shirt?”
Looking at his blue checked half shirt, he pinched it out, stared at it, gently rubbed his hand over it, and then looked at her. “It’s okay now; let it be!” she said, and the man got back to his dazed look.
The waiter served Tayir Vada, and the old man picked up the spoon and started to have his prized breakfast. A few morsels down, he had curd dripping down his mouth onto his shirt, to which his alert wife pulled out a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and cleaned it off, saying, “There’s a handkerchief in your pocket; use it.”
The man acknowledged it by tapping his now empty shirt pocket. A few minutes later, the waiter arrived with Pongal Vada, and the lady started to have it.
The man now had too many things to get distracted by on the table… Tayir Vada, Pongal Vada, and a Ghee Roast Dosa which I ordered that occupied the width of the table. The man was almost done with his meal when he started looking on and off into his wife’s plate.
The wife asked him, “Do you want to have Pongal Vada?” He shook his head in denial. “Do you want to have only Pongal?”
He again shook his head in denial, this time with his eyes shut.
“Okay… then will you have the Vada?” The man did not say anything. Knowing her husband’s reply, she broke a piece of the Vada and placed it in his bowl, saying, “Have it; it’s hot and crispy… They have made it very well.”
The man then minced that piece into small bits and started having it. When both their breakfast portions were done, a waiter stood next to the man and asked him, “Sir, do you want anything more—tea, coffee, juice…?”
The man, not aware of the waiter’s existence, kept gazing. “Sir, will you…” Cutting through the waiter’s question, the lady said, “Oh no! He will not have anything more; he has had his share already.
Get the bill.” She then gently rubbed his wrinkled hand and said, “Wasn’t the breakfast good…?”
The man looked at his wife almost as a reply and continued to stare at a small kid who was riding a musical horse.
I was moved by this small sweet story that was weaving before me. Countless stories like these and many more are brewing in this city of Chennai, which is my rabbit hole to nostalgia, love, life, and music.