tiffen ready

I try not to be in awe. I struggle against becoming the stereotype ‘gazing-in-wonder’er of something that has been raved about in websites, newspapers, food guides, and has even been given a thumbs-up sign at the Mommy Quality Testing Department. But I’m suckered in.
I tell my roomie I’ll buy dinner on my way home from work, and try to plan my route so I can stop over at a food-joint on the left side of the road. Then I see Shanti theatre and vaguely remember someone telling me that there was a Saravana Bhavan in the building. "Oh God, I’ll be buying from a brand," I think, the word shaping into an index finger wagging itself at me accusingly. Oh god, even newcomers to Chennai look into their places-to-visit list and ask directions to "Sa. zha. va. nah. Bha. waan".
It is… (shudder)… even recommended in travel books that describe sambar as "a mixture akin to lentil soup" and chutney as "pureed cilantro condiment".
But one impatient roar from my stomach and my bike turns into the Saravanas parking lot. The next thing I know, I’m looking at the menu. But I promise I chanted "Shame on me" 100 times before sleeping that night. I’ll walk on hot coals next, as atonement. Or drink toxic cola.
So many choices on the menu make me nervous. So I scan the column on the right — the one with the rates. For a tiffin room, they definitely don’t believe in being too wallet-friendly. "These brands… pha!" I crib. After I’m billed for one of my most uncreative dinners in ages, I take my token to the counter that says ‘Parcel’.
This moment on, what I witness is pure industry.
Non-sweaty boys in blue uniforms crinkle their brows, toss this, and mix that in the open kitchen. Shiny steel, and white rags flash through idli-smelling steam. A man standing in the far corner near an expanse of square, black, sizzling slate straightens his tall white chef hat with SaravanaaS printed across his forehead, and says, "Masala", softly, and cleeeaarly. He’s hardly closed his mouth after speaking, and a boy zips invisibly to the man and places a steel bucket of yellow potato masala to be smeared on the insides of a masala dosa.
Everyone has a no-nonsense expression as they go about dipping washed dishes in piping hot water; cutting freshly bathed onions to sprinkle in a circular fashion on the sambar vada just so it lazes about in the droplets of glistening ghee. :)
I’ve always expected those kneading parotta dough to conjure up enough anger to slap that damn flour into suppleness; but the tall sprightly teenager’s shockingly chubby hands play about in the flour, the thumb carrying the dryness of the flour into the dampness of the lukewarm water, all the while looking like he was strategising on how to beat the damn rival team in morning beach cricket.
Waiters and stewards in white, wearing name badges, walk in and out of the kitchen… no ones gets jostled, no one does a pehle-aap routine, no one even realises how the white brigade weaves through the blue troupe in perfect sync.
Fluorescent green banana leaves lie upon a platform, to be whisked away by the whitemen and placed on the plates before the food is dropped on it ("For preventing grease from clinging on to the plates, and for the little south Indian touch," explains the coffee-making expert who stands by the counter marked ‘Coffee’, where the rare order of tea gets prepared too.) Whatever the size of the plate, there is a neat leaf cut in that very shape, so it sits like it belongs.
The quiet of the kitchen is numbing. Especially because a few steps from there will take me to the unbroken buzz of the dining hall, where a father urges a little girl to choose a flavour of ice-cream for the fruit salad while he himself unthinkingly orders coffee, and a family of four that dismounted from a Bajaj scooter decides to have soup, naan and gobi manchurian, "for a change".
It thrills me that one of these whitemen may one day be an investor in another SB outlet. SB is one of the few non-corporate dos that encourage its employees to set up their own outlet, and even provide half the capital to do this. But otherwise, the place runs like a factory, and each bowl of pulao and and raita is weighed and a few grains of rice thrown in to make the standard weight.
All the cogs in the machine are unfaltering, largely expressionless men, who only collectively snort, guffaw and hold their stomachs and the closest walls for support when they realise that the idli-man has switched the steam machine thingie on without placing the batter dumplings in. He was too busy gaping at the pink foreign women who’ve walked in to check out if Lonely Planet is right about Sa. zha. va. Naah. Bha. waan.
It is my roomie who said the biryani was "soooo yummm" when I prefunctorily sulked about the price and brand association. "But it’s a home-grown brand, no?" she said, to ease my pain a little bit. But by then, my tastebuds were too happy to care.