Luncheon..

Around noon today, one of my design manager (yeah, working in a functional consulting role is catering to different managers) asked me for luncheon and ignorant of my chicken-packed dabba, I oblige. And I felt my dabba was yelling “makkaar, dhokebaaz” in a typical agitated female voice from my laptop bag.

In Aus work culture, having an individual luncheons with team is more a PR thingy.

My manager asked me for any preference on cuisine and since he being an American, mentioned Pizza!! (impression jamaana padtha hai babu). And, he agreed *Pakku lets out a victorious grin*

Surprisingly, he orders for a Veg Pizza and I follow route. Going on with the informal conversation, we converge to India. Yep, bangalore. And he was quite disappointed at the way blore is. Just when I started to defend it, he spelt out a comment, “basically, I was staying away from downtown and I felt nothing much todo. If I were to be in MG Road, it would have been different”.

Awestruck!! he remembers the place even after 3 odd years having stayed there for barely 3 months. Great!! As, I went on chewing the cheesy(crappy) pizza, I was cursing myself for proposing pizza. Thy policy when it comes to luncheons away from India, is to choose the best Indian restaurant and have a blast. And, here I was in a self-inflicted punishment.

Just as the conversation went on…

“So you know India quite well”, me askind him just when he started talking about pubs in Bangalore and the enthu in Mumbai.

“Yeah… I stayed in Mumbai for an year”, he quipped

“ohh yeah…”

“Actually, my wife is an indian from mumbai” exclaimed my manager with a expression trying to make me feel comfy.

“that’s nice”, me with a dry smile on my face started thinking, hamaare des mein khabil-honhaar-smaart ladkon kaa kamii hai kya, ki usne tujhse shaadi kii….

On the contrary, he looks awesome with an american skin and almost my height.

Me further dragging the India-convo..”How do you like Indian food?”

“It’s the BEST”.. in a typical american accent with a thumping voice

“All these(indicating at the pizza) are crap after having indian food” he further explains…

I could imagine myself as a specimen with stranded spikey hairs, eyeballs popped out with enlarged mouth to let a shark in and industrial fumes out of my ears...