“I have been waiting here for twenty minutes. If you didn’t have a table, you should have told us earlier,” Swami shouted at the concierge host.
Jigneshbhai tapped him on his shoulder to cool down. “But what’s the point of taking an appointment if they can’t give us the table on time?” Swami howled. Jigneshbhai smiled and signalled him to lower his voice.
Earlier today morning, Swami had called me and Jigneshbhai. “Let us meet at this new place near my house. Some change from our regular café,” he said.
Always open to new ideas, Jigneshbhai nodded at the prospect of meeting at this microbrewery though he didn’t drink, and neither did Swami.
“I will book a table for us,” Swami had said and disconnected.
But when we reached there, the place was brimming with activity. Swarms of people thronged its gate to get their vehicles parked and rush to a seat. It was not the kind of calm, quite café that we were used to, but what was done was done.
“Shall we go back to our café?” Jigneshbhai had asked in the car before alighting.
“No, I have booked a table,” Swami insisted.
So there we were, at the appointed time twenty minutes back. But they were overbooked, and we had to wait.
“Sorry Sir, just another five minutes,” the lady came back and told Swami. He was fuming by now.
“You have been saying that for the last twenty minutes,” Swami yelped. He seemed to turn into a tiger when he was a customer.
The sweat on his brow took a brief pause when he looked at Jigneshbhai. After five minutes, we took our seats at the table.
“We don’t want this table. This is too noisy,” Swami remarked.
“Sorry Sir, this is the only one available,” she said.
“This is too much. I didn’t expect this,” Swami fumed at us.
“It’s alright. We have no problem,” Jigneshbhai said.
“What will you have?” he tried to divert attention.
Jigneshbhai and I perused the menu and quickly decided.
“One Virgin Mojito for me,” I said.
“And one Summer Citrus Cooler for me,” Jigneshbhai said.
“Order anything for me, I don’t care,” Swami scowled.
“Make it two,” Jigneshbhai said, getting the orders out of the way. I heaved a sigh of relief when the waitress went away.
Jigneshbhai and I sat in silence waiting for things to cool down. Swami looked around unhappy that things hadn’t quite turned up to his expectations. I felt relieved that he had cooled down after a few minutes. But that relief was short-lived.
“I am sorry Sir, Summer Citrus is not available,” the waitress came back. Swami’s eyebrows jumped through his forehead.
“Why does the menu have it then…?” Swami started.
But he was cut short by Jigneshbhai who quickly asked her, “What do you have? Any recommendations??”
“We have Virgin Mary, Mango Freeze, Berry…,” she started.
“Ok, make it two Mango Freeze,” he interjected.
“Alright Sir. Sorry for the inconvenience, Sir,” she said.
“It’s alright. Thanks,” Jigneshbhai felt that should settle it.
Well, if the start wasn’t good, even the middle wasn’t great.
The order seemed to have gone into a black hole never to return. We waited for twenty minutes that felt more like forty minutes waiting for the drinks to arrive.
“Here Sir, your two Virgin Mojitos and one Mango Freeze,” she came after forty minutes.
Jigneshbhai looked at me with a twisted mouth shaking his head. He pulled one Virgin Mojito towards himself.
“But we ordered two Mang.…?” Swami started.
“Here is your Mango Freeze…” Jigneshbhai pushed a glass towards Swami and turned to the waitress. “Ok, thank you.”
“Anything to eat, Sir?” she asked.
“Not at the moment, thanks,” Jigneshbhai replied and with a open palm signalled to her that we had had enough.
They say when things go wrong, they go wrong in a heap.
“Why did you not let me take her apart? They delivered the wrong order. This place is the ultimate pits,” Swami yelled again. “They have no idea how to run such a place.”
“Yes, true,” Jigneshbhai said.
“How can you say just true? I can’t stand it,” Swami had a big scowl on his face. “They are going to land up with a bunch of angry customers,” he added.
“True. I can see one right in front of me,” Jigneshbhai teased.
“How can I not get angry?” Swami asked.
“You have every right to be,” Jigneshbhai replied.
“I am not going to pay the bill,” Swami decided after finishing his Mango Freeze.
“That will be taking things too far,” Jigneshbhai warned.
“They don’t deserve to be paid,” Swami argued. “ And I will leave such bad reviews that no one will turn up here.. Actually, I am going to talk to… let me see,” Swami’s voice kept rising. He stood up in a flash and started walking.
“Hang on,” Jigneshbhai intervened. “Wait..”
But Swami walked out of his chair and went to the nearest waiter. “Who is the manager here?” he asked.
“Sorry, sir?” he asked, rattled by the question.
“Who is the manager? Who is in charge? Who runs this place?” Swami’s pitch rose with every question he asked. Jigneshbhai and I chased him. We could see that his face had turned red.
“There, sir,” the waiter quivered.
What happened thereafter is best left unsaid. After around twenty minutes, we left the place. We had to.
It was only the next day when we met at the café that Swami spoke at length about the episode.
“Why didn’t you stop me? Granted I had every reason to be angry – the guys were pathetic. But people like us don’t go around creating a scene like that? What a jerk I was!” he said.
In the melee that followed after he met the manager, Swami had refused to pay the bill, which led to further raising of voices.
One thing led to another, leading to the impression that Swami was drunk. Jigneshbhai quickly paid the bill to settle things.
But we must have been the first bunch to have been removed from the microbrewery after just a bunch of mocktails.
Jigneshbhai and I looked at each other and stayed silent.
“I think the Mango Freeze gave me a brain freeze,” he said.
“Well, it was more like a short circuit than a freeze,” Jigneshbhai remarked. “A short circuit is only triggered, but it is not caused by anything outside,” he added.
“But there were lots of triggers,” Swami protested.
“Of course, there were, but there were lots of extinguishers as well. Nothing justifies the fire that happened,” Jigneshbhai said.
Swami and I pondered over what our wise friend had said.
That’s when I saw that the wealthy old man had walked across to our table. He left us with more food for thought when he said, “Anger is never without a reason, but seldom a good one. One can be rightfully angry but still wrong.”
***