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...Pygmalion...Bernard Shaw
Well, that's typical of women made to wait.
Sita waited for all of a year or more for the arrival of Hanuman in the Ashok Vatika. Our folklore says that she whiled her long wait away sitting under the Ashok tree playing a home-made version of Solitaire with seashells shuffled in a wooden box with holes called Vamana Guntalu (Dastam):
Penelope waited 20 years for the arrival of her hubby, Ulysses, from his weird voyages. I don't know how she spent her waiting time except trying to ward off the advances of hundreds of her suitors. But, back home, Ulysses was not happy. He had this wanderlust in his veins and was trying to escape from his wife all the time and go forth on further expeditions. In our B Sc (Hons) English we had this poem, Ulysses (by Tennyson), about his boredom at home with his 'aged wife' (he was no teenager though):
http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/tennyson/section4.rhtml
Rip Van Winkle was luckier. His termagant wife died peacefully much before he returned home after sleeping 20 years in the Catskill mountains. Maybe she died missing him...she was bugging and nagging him all the time when he was awake.
Argos, the dog of Ulysses, become old and decrepit waiting for him, did recognize him when he returned home at the dead of the night in disguise and wagged his tail (Argos's). But Ulysses couldn't return his affection since he was incognito and Argos died of heartbreak at once.
Wolf, the skeletal dog of Rip van Winkle, couldn't care less for his master whom he abandoned and ran back home 20 years ago...he simply snarled and growled at him and his long beard.
I don't recall waiting impatiently for anything during my schooling at our seaside village, Muthukur, in the early 1950s. Where was the time for waiting?...There were always enough playmates to hang around with.
But as soon as I arrived at Vizagh for my university education in 1958, I knew what waiting meant. Often enough I was hungry and had to grab and eat something and rush to catch the university bus before it left me stranded.
So I used to run to the Ajanta Hotel near our bus stop to take my seat with 40 other hungrier folks, each standing and waiting for a seat to be vacated. There were about 20 tables with 4 chairs by each of them. The drill was to look for a chap who was sipping his after-tiffin coffee and stand by him feeling like a passenger standing in a bus.
And rush and occupy his seat before others outsmarted me in the game of musical chairs.
There were only 4 waiters serving all their customers sharing the 20 tables among themselves in a strict division of labor.
And wait for one of them to arrive...which he does at his leisure and pleasure ignoring all my hand-signs and whispers.
When finally Appa Rao materializes with a mini-book in his pocket and a pencil tucked by his ear, I ask him what is hot and quick. He rolls out aloud:
"idly, plain dosa, masala dosa, onion dosa, ravva dosa, pesarat, upma, uttappam, poori, chapati..."
which he knows by heart. Then I ask him to fetch a ravva dosa instanter. And he says:
"Sorry, ravva dosa is over...take onion dosa"
"Ok, fried in ghee, with an upma as a side-dish"
And he vanishes. And I wait and wait and fume and look at my watch. Taking his own sweet time, he reappears with half a dozen dancing plates of dosas, idlis, poories, upmas and so on for as many of his customers, stacked precariously one over the other (plates, I mean).
And my neighbor on our table shouts at him:
"This whole table is dirty and filthy with remnants of bygone eaters. Call the cleaner!"
And Appa Rao shouts:
"Table Clean!"
and vanishes to the next table. And I wait, although I don't find the table as dirty as my neighbor did...it all depends...
After another long wait, a boy appears holding a clanging steel bucket in which there are dozens of dirty plates immersed in stinking water. And he lifts the dirtier plates on our table and trashes them into his bucket where they join their companions happily. The Table Clean then dips his dirty towel into the bucket and wipes our table with it...and disappears.
Another wait for our waiter who by then would have delivered our orders to other tables that are not too fastidious.
Ultimately Appa Rao arrives with another load of stacked plates, and dishes out his delicacies to our hungry souls in a hurry. I find that he gives me a plain dosa instead of the ravva dosa I wanted or the onion dosa he promised but I don't make a fuss and finish it off and wait for him to return and hand me my bill scribbled on his pocket book.
He arrives finally and writes:
"Rs 0.5"
and I don't have the energy or time to tell him that he billed me for my original sin, the ravva dosa.
And I run to the only Cash Counter manned by the Owner and find a dozen well-fed customers craning over each other to pay their bills.
Another long wait to squeeze through the crowd and get to the Owner...no queues then in Vizagh.
And then run to the bus stop to find the back of my receding bus.
Another wait for the next bus...20 minutes later. By the time I reach my class room, half the first period would be happily over...it is a boring lecture on Viscosity...no loss no gain.
By the way:
Q: Why are waiters called Waiters?
A: Because they make you wait
...Posted by Ishani
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umr-e-daraaz maang kar laaye they chaar din
do arzoo mein kaT gaye do intezaar mein
I had asked for a long life, a life of four days
Two passed in wishing, two in waiting
...Bahadur Shah Zafar
| Covent Garden at 11.15 p.m. Torrents of heavy summer rain. Cab |
| whistles blowing frantically in all directions. Pedestrians |
| running for shelter into the market and under the portico of St. |
| Paul's Church, where there are already several people, among them |
| a lady and her daughter in evening dress. They are all peering |
| out gloomily at the rain, except one man with his back turned to |
| the rest, who seems wholly preoccupied with a notebook in which |
| he is writing busily. |
| The church clock strikes the first quarter. |
| THE DAUGHTER [in the space between the central pillars, close to |
| the one on her left] I'm getting chilled to the bone. What can |
| Freddy be doing all this time? He's been gone twenty minutes. |
| THE MOTHER [on her daughter's right] Not so long. But he ought to |
| have got us a cab by this. |
| A BYSTANDER [on the lady's right] He won't get no cab not until |
| half-past eleven, missus, when they come back after dropping |
| their theatre fares. |
| THE MOTHER. But we must have a cab. We can't stand here until |
| half-past eleven. It's too bad. |
| THE BYSTANDER. Well, it ain't my fault, missus. |
| THE DAUGHTER. If Freddy had a bit of gumption, he would have got |
| one at the theatre door. |
Well, that's typical of women made to wait.
Sita waited for all of a year or more for the arrival of Hanuman in the Ashok Vatika. Our folklore says that she whiled her long wait away sitting under the Ashok tree playing a home-made version of Solitaire with seashells shuffled in a wooden box with holes called Vamana Guntalu (Dastam):
Penelope waited 20 years for the arrival of her hubby, Ulysses, from his weird voyages. I don't know how she spent her waiting time except trying to ward off the advances of hundreds of her suitors. But, back home, Ulysses was not happy. He had this wanderlust in his veins and was trying to escape from his wife all the time and go forth on further expeditions. In our B Sc (Hons) English we had this poem, Ulysses (by Tennyson), about his boredom at home with his 'aged wife' (he was no teenager though):
http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/tennyson/section4.rhtml
Rip Van Winkle was luckier. His termagant wife died peacefully much before he returned home after sleeping 20 years in the Catskill mountains. Maybe she died missing him...she was bugging and nagging him all the time when he was awake.
Argos, the dog of Ulysses, become old and decrepit waiting for him, did recognize him when he returned home at the dead of the night in disguise and wagged his tail (Argos's). But Ulysses couldn't return his affection since he was incognito and Argos died of heartbreak at once.
Wolf, the skeletal dog of Rip van Winkle, couldn't care less for his master whom he abandoned and ran back home 20 years ago...he simply snarled and growled at him and his long beard.
I don't recall waiting impatiently for anything during my schooling at our seaside village, Muthukur, in the early 1950s. Where was the time for waiting?...There were always enough playmates to hang around with.
But as soon as I arrived at Vizagh for my university education in 1958, I knew what waiting meant. Often enough I was hungry and had to grab and eat something and rush to catch the university bus before it left me stranded.
So I used to run to the Ajanta Hotel near our bus stop to take my seat with 40 other hungrier folks, each standing and waiting for a seat to be vacated. There were about 20 tables with 4 chairs by each of them. The drill was to look for a chap who was sipping his after-tiffin coffee and stand by him feeling like a passenger standing in a bus.
And rush and occupy his seat before others outsmarted me in the game of musical chairs.
There were only 4 waiters serving all their customers sharing the 20 tables among themselves in a strict division of labor.
And wait for one of them to arrive...which he does at his leisure and pleasure ignoring all my hand-signs and whispers.
When finally Appa Rao materializes with a mini-book in his pocket and a pencil tucked by his ear, I ask him what is hot and quick. He rolls out aloud:
"idly, plain dosa, masala dosa, onion dosa, ravva dosa, pesarat, upma, uttappam, poori, chapati..."
which he knows by heart. Then I ask him to fetch a ravva dosa instanter. And he says:
"Sorry, ravva dosa is over...take onion dosa"
"Ok, fried in ghee, with an upma as a side-dish"
And he vanishes. And I wait and wait and fume and look at my watch. Taking his own sweet time, he reappears with half a dozen dancing plates of dosas, idlis, poories, upmas and so on for as many of his customers, stacked precariously one over the other (plates, I mean).
And my neighbor on our table shouts at him:
"This whole table is dirty and filthy with remnants of bygone eaters. Call the cleaner!"
And Appa Rao shouts:
"Table Clean!"
and vanishes to the next table. And I wait, although I don't find the table as dirty as my neighbor did...it all depends...
After another long wait, a boy appears holding a clanging steel bucket in which there are dozens of dirty plates immersed in stinking water. And he lifts the dirtier plates on our table and trashes them into his bucket where they join their companions happily. The Table Clean then dips his dirty towel into the bucket and wipes our table with it...and disappears.
Another wait for our waiter who by then would have delivered our orders to other tables that are not too fastidious.
Ultimately Appa Rao arrives with another load of stacked plates, and dishes out his delicacies to our hungry souls in a hurry. I find that he gives me a plain dosa instead of the ravva dosa I wanted or the onion dosa he promised but I don't make a fuss and finish it off and wait for him to return and hand me my bill scribbled on his pocket book.
He arrives finally and writes:
"Rs 0.5"
and I don't have the energy or time to tell him that he billed me for my original sin, the ravva dosa.
And I run to the only Cash Counter manned by the Owner and find a dozen well-fed customers craning over each other to pay their bills.
Another long wait to squeeze through the crowd and get to the Owner...no queues then in Vizagh.
And then run to the bus stop to find the back of my receding bus.
Another wait for the next bus...20 minutes later. By the time I reach my class room, half the first period would be happily over...it is a boring lecture on Viscosity...no loss no gain.
By the way:
Q: Why are waiters called Waiters?
A: Because they make you wait
...Posted by Ishani
**************************************************************************************************************************
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