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The Seven-Fold Path to Waiting for Take-Out

by Elaine Tassy | 2009

1. On my first morning in Mamallapuram, a touristy village in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, I notice the Blue Elephant, a sidewalk restaurant that's half-outdoors and half-indoors, with large wicker chairs, an ashtray at every table, whirring ceiling fans.

I'm spending the last five days of a solo four-week trip to India here, relaxing after a challenging venture from The Bahamas, my temporary home while working a contract teaching job at the local college. I sit down at an indoor table at the Blue Elephant and order a cup of coffee with Nutella on toast, thinking it will take someone a few minutes to toast the bread, and a few more to spread the Nutella, pour the coffee and bring it all to my table.

After thirty minutes of waiting — long enough to read the entire local daily newspaper — I notice a man of about sixty looking at me from his table a few feet away. "Didn't I see you at the train station?" he asks. Then he tells me that I look like a Canadian woman he'd met the day before, on a long line buying tickets at the train station.

I'm tired of sitting in this restaurant alone waiting for breakfast. "Would you like to join me?" I ask. Usually when I go to a restaurant alone, it stays that way, but this seaside village of 12,000 has a certain anything-goes undertone that makes this unprecedented invite the first of a handful in Mamallapuram, best-known for its rock sculptures and fresh seafood.

He sits down opposite me and explains that while he was buying train tickets a few days earlier, he'd struck up a conversation with a woman traveling alone from Canada who relayed an experience she'd had earlier in her trip: she'd decided to share the overnight sleeping quarters of a train with an Indian family — a mom, a dad, their two children, and the father of one of the parents. Thinking she'd be safer with a family group, she fell asleep, only to wake up during the ride and discover the grandfather masturbating while watching her.

Sitting opposite this older gentleman still waiting for my coffee, I try to imagine what it must have been like for the Canadian woman to find herself opening her eyes on a train in a foreign country to that, and I wonder how the grandfather would have patched things up with his family if he'd gotten caught.

A few months after I get back from India, I'm at my desk at the College of the Bahamas, grading papers on a Saturday afternoon. I've propped my door open for a breeze in the public external corridor, and am focused on my computer screen when I turn my head and notice a young man at the door on the public breezeway, staring at me with his penis in hand, masturbating in a trance. I scream. The guy dashes from the door. I call security, stepping away from his view. He's back, at it again. I scream again and advance toward him, yelling. The guy runs away.

I describe the guy to the guards who show up to walk me to my car. They say the masturbator, a tall, dark-skinned, lanky guy who looked no older than 22, in low-slung shorts, sneakers and a striped polo and baseball cap, fits the description of a man recently released from the island's one mental hospital; they suspected him of having done this on campus recently, they say. But it's knowing that this has happened to a woman from Canada I've heard about but don't know, that cushions the shock of this experience.

A painter
India © Digital color by Elaine Tassy

2. After my breakfast at the Blue Elephant, I amble around the village, looking at wall-hangings of Indian designs sold in dozens of shops. I see batiks of elephants and Hindu gods, brightly colored print cotton dresses mostly in tiny sizes, handbags with round mirrored disks sewn into the cloth. When it's time for lunch, I select a second-floor restaurant across the street from the Blue Elephant. It's called New Galaxy, and it has plastic tablecloths and lots of sparkly reds on the walls. I sit near a window overlooking the street and order vegetable curry with white rice and naan. After twenty minutes, I ask my waiter, a cheerful elfin man, how much longer it will take for the food to arrive. I am extremely hungry and the place is almost empty.

"It's coming!" Reassuringly, he bobs his head from side to side as some Indians do, the way Americans nod in affirmative agreement. He leads me to believe that right behind him another server could be at his heels, carrying my lunch on a tray. We have the same exchange about three times in the next hour; each time he gives me the same level of conviction when he says it's coming. I'm rattled by hunger, but I've already invested so much time at New Galaxy that I can't stand the idea of starting at the back of the line somewhere else. Periodically, the waiter pops up to ask my name and where I'm from, and he bobs his head at each answer.

I look out the window to the sidewalk below. The street is filled with shops that sell intricate chess sets hand-carved from rocks. I can see inexpensive restaurants I'll visit during the week, a well-stocked used international book store where I'll pick up Chang-rae Lee's Aloft, massage and yoga studios I'll experiment with, and jewelry shops where I'll try on earrings. Outside, I also see a man in his late twenties or early thirties, with loose curly hair in a ponytail. He's attractive in a rugged way, with a scraping, barking voice. Rumored to be homeless, he's said to have gotten the voice from sniffing some fluid that gets him high. With beaded necklaces looped around his forearm, he approaches a pink-faced female tourist with a lid of thin mousy brown hair.

Meanwhile, another vendor, a woman, fixes her gaze on the same tourist. She has mismatched eyes–one looks piercingly at its target, while the other wanders off on its own. The tourist looks ready to close a deal with the man, until the woman with the lazy eye somehow intrigues her more. The vendors argue, and the tourist decides not to buy anything. The woman lashes out at the man, with fire beaming from her good eye. When the food comes, it's too hot to eat, but I'm so hungry and impatient that I take a bite anyway, and singe the roof of my mouth with vegetable curry. "You must be careful," the waiter says, confident he's breaking new ground with me on how to cool down my food: I have to lift it up by the forkful and expose it to air first. He sweeps grains of rice from the tablecloth with a delicate hand-held food broom and dustpan.

A rock cutter
India © Digital color by Elaine Tassy

3. A day or two later, I'm looking for someplace to eat when I see a red-faced barrel-chested Australian man named Dave. He has graying hair in a military-style cut and is wearing a red Hawaiian shirt. I've seen him around almost every day, because our guest houses are on the same street, and we've chatted a few times. He's sitting alone in the outdoor dining area of Nautilus, at a table for four. I think the wait will be easier and the service faster with another person, so I ask to join him. Nautilus is trendy-looking with yellow, mango and cobalt blue walls. Ten minutes after joining him, I get the attention of the server, who brings a menu ten minutes after that. After nearly twenty minutes of my sitting across from him and running out of things to say, I point out that no one has taken my order.

"What control do you have over how anything works itself out?" Dave asks mildly and philosophically. He sounds like he presents this question to lots of people to see how they'll respond. His matter-of-fact tone of voice knocks me from my pedestal of impatience and his questions – "What have you learned here?" "Why do you need for people to be on time?" — remind me that whenever I've hurried to meet people in India, they're generally not around and unconcerned I've been waiting when they do show up.

We're chatting about the juices the restaurant owner makes from local fruits, as if we're on a park bench and the acquisition of food is not on the agenda, when a woman in a white sundress strolls over. It's the mousy-haired haired tourist I'd seen from the New Galaxy window, who two vendors had almost fought over. She's Dave's wife, and speaks with the same Australian accent. She shows me a red and white beaded necklace she's just bought. It looks plastic, like beads thrown from floats at Mardi Gras. She seems crazy about it, proud.

The waiter is a few feet away, but he ignores my effort to get his attention. The calming effect of Dave's questions wears off, and I become so overwhelmed by impatience and hunger that I give up on Nautilus and excuse myself. I stop at a roadside stall for a few bananas and a pack of chocolate chip cookies and go up the stairs of the restaurant across the street.

4. Knowing I probably won't be served for about an hour makes this more of an activity, and with snacks on hand it's no longer a food emergency. In the near-empty dining area of the sunny upstairs restaurant across the street from Nautilus, I see a woman at a table alone smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and wearing John Lennon sunglasses. Her long hair is in a messy bun, and she's wearing a lot of silver jewelry. I find myself striking up a conversation with her, and in a few moments I ask if I can join her — something I don't remember ever asking a stranger at a restaurant, except Dave an hour before. "Please!" She points to the empty chair across from her and waves me to sit down.

Thirty-nine year-old Sunny is from Cambodia and lives with her Sri Lankan boyfriend Mahinde, in France. He's a 28 year-old competitive swimmer who's stepped away from the table for a moment. When he returns, he asks me what I've ordered for lunch. Cauliflower and potatoes in coconut sauce with white rice, I tell him. He says he'd ordered the same meal.

Abbas
India © Digital color by Elaine Tassy

From behind a puff of smoke, Sunny, who isn't planning on eating, suggests Mahinde and I share his lunch, then mine, since mine won't be around for another thirty minutes at least. We share his bowl of vegetables in coconut sauce over white rice; we share mine later. Meanwhile, Sunny and I are confiding in each other on topics usually discussed among close friends, our current relationships with younger guys among them. I've met a Kashmiri man named Abbas on my trip — the eleven-year age difference between him and me is the same as the age difference between Mahinde and Sunny. She says it's no coincidence we've met. "I'm on a whole different trip with you."

When Abbas, who's taken a bus from another town to hang out with me in Mamallapuram, arrives after lunch, the four of us ride in an auto-rickshaw to a beautiful secluded beach and spend the afternoon swimming and taking pictures. Abbas takes a picture of Sunny and me on Sunny's digital camera; when he hands it to her we both look at the shot: we're sitting cross-legged in the sand, our heads close together, her touching my arm. "I really appreciate this picture," she says.

The auto-rickshaw driver who took us to the beach returns to pick us up a few hours later. Abbas and I are ready to go back; Sunny and Mahinde decide to stay. I e-mail her a month later, hoping she'll reply with attachments of the photo that Abbas took on her camera, and pictures she was taking of Abbas and me. The e-mail bounces back–her mailbox is full–and I never hear from her again.

At the orphanage
India © Digital color by Elaine Tassy

5. One day during my week in Mamallapuram, I order lunch to go from another restaurant, Tina Blue View. It has a giant chalkboard sign on the sidewalk outside its corner door, with more entrees listed than any other restaurant in town. Without some activity while waiting, I'll go nuts, so I decide to order my food, then go to a nearby orphanage that the proprietor of my guest house has suggested I visit.

The orphanage, a ten-minute walk from the restaurant, is easy to miss down a narrow alley. I imagine that someone at the door will ask me what I'm doing there, but there are no adults around, and inside I see almost no furniture or supplies. The children are irresistibly cute, with missing baby teeth, neat haircuts, frilly dresses. There are few toys or games, so I sit on a bench in a stark room and the children gather around me. "Aunty," one girl says, and throws her arms up in the air so I will pick her up. The other kids follow her lead. They line up in front of me and I hold them. Even though they speak Tamil, I tell them they are beautiful. My eyes fill with tears. I hang out with them for about a half hour — easily the most emotional thirty minutes of the week.

When I leave, I run into a Tina Blue View waiter who lives across the street from the orphanage; he's on the way in for his shift. I tell him I'm about to pick up my take-out lunch, and we walk together. When we arrive, my meal is not only not ready, but it's not in the works either, as if I hadn't even been in and ordered it almost an hour before. The waiter, completely disinterested in this, tells me that I must dine in, at the table of a South African filmmaker who's sitting alone. She's welcoming but clearly comfortable in her own company, and nearly done with her meal. I'm equally comfortable alone. The waiter stays at our table for about 15 minutes. Neither of us has the heart to deprive him of feeling he's made our meals more enjoyable.

6. I become friends with a gift boutique co-owner named Shakeel, who also knows Abbas. Shakeel's shop is next door to the guest house where I'm staying, so I see him several times a day. He looks like a darker-skinned Antonio Banderas, but floppy, unconceited and puppy-dog cute. His shop sells patterned rugs, wall-hangings, pashminas and pillow covers, and racks of silver and turquoise jewelry. I buy several pairs of earrings and a prayer rug from Shakeel, who one night uses a small baton to gong a brass bowl around my head, ears and temple until I wanted to fall asleep. I get his advice on visiting restaurants and the rock sculptures, and he suggests I hang out in his shop while waiting for my take-out dinners and that I return to eat them there. Few customers show up in the evenings, because there are so many shops his competes with.

So for the forty minutes between ordering my food and waiting for it, I usually hang out at Shakeel's shop while he tells me about his meditation practice, so intense he was laughing when he saw a customer try to steal a ring from him. He tells me about the Ayurvedic medicine he's taking to cure a cold. One night we make a bet: if my food is ready when I go pick it up from Tina Blue View, he wins; if it's not ready, I win. We bet five rupees, the equivalent of a few cents. Forty minutes after ordering it, I walk five minutes down the street to pick it up.

The waiter I'd walked from the orphanage with tells me that the food itself is ready– it just hasn't yet been packaged for take-out. The time it takes for the food to go from the pan it was cooked in to the blue plastic bag used for take-out, and get tied with white string, is another twenty minutes at least. Shakeel and I haven't accounted for that variable, and we cancel the bet.

7. On one of my last nights, I'm at Shakeel's store trying on rings and earrings. I leave to place my take-out order at Moonraker's, a restaurant where a waiter who's always chatty with tourists has an angled haircut not often seen in this town. I've ordered from Moonraker's before and loved their prawn curry. I order that and go back to Shakeel's shop to wait.

When I go pick it up it's ready, and Shakeel gives me some newspaper to put my carton on while I sit across the counter from him and unwrap my food. He won't have any; he prefers to eat after he closes, at home with his roommates at 10 p.m. I open the bag of food to find two half-eaten meals–the doggy bag of leftovers for other customers given to me by mistake. When I go back, the staff is very sorry, and I pick up a fresh container of curried prawn, hot and red and steaming with a few bay leaves and a neat block of white rice.

The next night, my last in town, I order from Moonraker's again. The man who felt responsible doesn't want me to place my order and leave. He suggests instead that I stick around to avoid the chance of taking food intended for someone else. I anticipate an interminable wait, and I have no book with me, no one to talk to. I promise to come back shortly, that I won't be far away.

"No, no, we'll make it right away!" they promise. I wonder what they'd otherwise do.

I agree to stick around. Before I have a chance to get irritable, the waiter is back in about ten minutes to hand me a white plastic bag with my food. This is the first time in five days in Mamallapuram that my meal is ready so fast. When I get back to his shop, Shakeel looks at me as if to say, "What happened? Did you change your mind?"

The next night I depart on an overnight flight from Chennai–the largest city close to Mamallapuram. My bags are all packed with the prayer rug, earrings and other souvenirs I've picked up. The slow moments between ordering food and leaving a restaurant with it are now over as well — their meaning and worth bagged and stored along with my luggage for when I get home.