One muggy Sunday morning, my wife and I decided to go for breakfast to Bengaluru’s iconic breakfast spot to lap up the restaurant’s signature ‘dosas’, South Indian savouries and filter coffee in their buzzy, informal atmosphere. Although we needed to change two metro lines, we consoled ourselves with thoughts of celebrities including Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma who had once chosen the same venue for breakfast.
At the entrance to the restaurant, as expected there was a long meandering queue of early morning ‘dosa’ enthusiasts patiently waiting their turn. There are similar restaurants that are bustling and very busy as they are frequented by locals and tourists for their unique food and ambiance in Shillong too. Try to get a place to sit at the City Hut Family Dhaba or the Lamee restaurant or at the Madras Cafe in Khyndailad (Police Bazaar) during meal times and you will know what I mean. For no particular reason, instead of joining the long queue, I began another, standing at the opposite end of the restaurant’s main door gesturing to the usher to give us seats. Moments later, another gray haired gentleman sporting a gray beard, asked me what my queue was about and why I was standing there? Seeming like a rhetorical question, I mumbled grumpily “This is a queue for senior citizens”, only to find he and his companion promptly stood behind us! Even as the queue at the opposite side of the door grew endlessly, it wasn’t long before we got a table for four.
Here we were, the four of us, never having seen each other before,bonding over breakfast on a table as a foursome, the only thing we had in common was that we were ‘senior citizens’, bent upon combating isolation and fostering a sense of community. They had driven from miles afar, they told us from the outskirts of Bengaluru, having heard of the eatery’s legendary breakfast. Very soon it became obvious that this was their first visit. We were only too happy and eagerly started advising them. You must start off with one of the assortment of scrumptious South Indian staples, even as you order the iconic ‘dosa’ we told them because ‘dosas’ takes a long time to cook and didn’t it make sense to order a readily available item on the menu rather than hungrily look at others eating, even as we waited for our own dosa?
It turned out that he was a retired tea company executive having spent several years in tea gardens deep in the south of India. Even as he told me this, I told him that I write articles for newspapers. He immediately suggested I write about our experience that day and how we were bonding as senior citizens. I told him I would be very happy to write, but my editor has to accept the piece, usually the toughest part of writing for a newspaper. He found this response incredibly funny and laughed uproariously!
We agreed that we were very lucky to have met each other, the meeting becoming the highlight of the breakfast instead of the eatery’s ghee-laden legendary ‘dosas’. If it hadn’t been for them, our time would have been spent observing what people on other tables were having for breakfast, invariably speculating that their choice of dishes was tastier and more appetising than our own. Most of the time would be spent grumbling about how the other tables got their food served to them faster than us, at our table!
Very soon our breakfast experience came to an end. We shook hands and reluctantly said our goodbyes. This impromptu senior citizen bonding had brought joy to all of us and had fostered a connection. I felt like writing about our senior citizen breakfast after all!
(The author is a regular contributor at The Shillong Times)
