per diem

There was a time when I used to worry about how much I owe to other people and how much other people owe me. I really hated going out for a Dutch treat and having to pay and make collections later. How is one to approach another for an amount of fifty rupees? How is one to remember to pay a small amount of fifty rupees? So it usually happened that one wrote it off or felt rather indignant thinking about ungrateful people who do not remember to pay back. But there is another side to this too.

El Camino is a long, really long road which, I suspect, due to the sheer lack of imagination in the people who named it, bears the same name throughout. On a certain section of this road, lined on either side are quite a few Indian restaurants. And as providence would have it, Indians abroad assume that visitors from India are starved for Indian food. So they insist on taking you out, and in spite of yourself, you relent thinking woefully of the last evening when you had been to the same street with some other friends who had insisted on taking you out.

But really amusing these meetings are, though. The food comes to your table, brought by a particularly grumpy and cold looking Indian or worse still, Mexican who murmurs something, flashes half a smile and disappears. I much prefer to go to a buffet because, though the food is bad, at least one is spared the difficulty of choosing what to eat without appearing rude. After all, when one suggests a particular dish is good, you are expected to nod, appear excited and definitely try it. I do it all the time, and that will explain why I am wary of being taken out to dinner by doting desis.

“You should try the Dal Makhani. It’s superb. Better than in India.”

“I see.”

“And it goes really well with butter naans.”

“Butter naans with dal makhani then.” (I resign! I actually wanted plain rice with chicken curry. That is by far the most palatable. Seriously!)

And after a really long evening, wherein I have to run(once more) my hosts through the latest developments in Bangalore, of the real estate situation and of the terrible traffic and of course of the fact that I am really not interested to shift to the USA (much to the consternation of everyone). The pay hikes, the jobs shifting there, the sad state of infrastructure; it continues till late into the night, over ice cream, one of my hosts calls for the ‘cheque’ (I think they do not even spell it that way!). The next part must be captured in slow motion. At least three different people reach out for their wallets as if they might be in a Clint Eastwood western. I can hear the gun shots in the distance; I can smell the smoke; I much anticipate that all three would take out guns at each other, but as always, only wallets emerge.

Finally, one pays. I offer, meekly, with cash because my credit card would bear huge conversion charges, and not having the panache of Clint Eastwood, I reach out for my wallet without effect. Some absolutely do not allow me to pay. Others ask me if my company pays me a per diem. Mostly, I do not have to pay but I do pay the premium, in the car, where the wallets are out again when on a cold winter night, in the parking lot of a morose looking Indian restaurant with gaudy ‘desi’ captions, my friends argue about the five dollars that one would not pay the second because the third guy owed him six from before.