Return to Bombay Café

Return to Bombay Café

By José Lourenço

Ordering a cup of tea to close a snack is a delicate art. The tea arrives hot. It cools with time, depending on many factors—the ceiling fan may be on, there may be a light breeze blowing, it could be the monsoon season or winter. The stainless steel pelo in which it is served is the only constant. Many regulars at Bombay Café speed up the cooling by pouring the tea into the lower broader watti that holds the pelo. But the consummate tea drinker drinks his tea slowly, sipping it in kisses that don’t scald the lip.    

The trick is to start eating your batata-wada or bhaji-pav and order the tea a little while later. That way the tea washes down the snack and is still hot enough to enjoy the last few gulps. The last gulp of tea should be a warm finale, a joy to the throat and belly, celebrated by a soft yet sonorous belch. If doing this at home you can even groan loudly with pleasure as you put your cup down.

But this isn’t home, this is Bombay Café, where only a few elderly gaunt Hindu men can get away with a virtuoso full-bodied belch. A Catholic male doing this would be glared at by women customers, probably muttering “Dekh naslolo!” under their breath.

It’s a cool December evening and I am in the mood for some play. So I take my place at the second table from the window on the far wall side. This one has a simple magical quality to it. Only one other table in the café has the same feature, but it is presently occupied.

I order a single cutlet and a tea and wait. The tables at Bombay Café are narrow. If two patrons sitting on opposite sides were to lean their heads forward, they would collide. A middle-aged man enters and sits diagonally across me. He orders a mix-bhaji-pav. We wait. I assess him with my peripheral vision, reserving my primary focus for the street outside, where evening shoppers walk briskly past Margao’s cloth shops. He’s wearing a stained shirt over a modest potbelly. His eyes roam over the breasts of the fisherwoman at the next table. To her face and back to her breasts. Why do they always do that? To connect the two? To check if it’s someone they know? If it’s a known woman they can’t look at her breasts. Not directly, anyway.

I don’t like him much. He seems like a grocer who would cheat his buyers. And his wife. If I were a woman he would be surreptitiously looking at my chest. When he sticks his little finger in his ear and grinds it around before inspecting its wax stained tip, I decide he has to be punished.

Our snacks arrive at the same time. I cut open my cutlet, with the two teaspoons that accompany every snack at Bombay Café. Never a fork. Why would you need a fork when two teaspoons can do, goes the reasoning of the BC management. Western culture may have come to Goa with the Portuguese, way before the Brits came to India, but most cafés have adapted to a cutlery etiquette of their own. Everything is actually best eaten by hand, but teaspoons are a reluctant concession, probably to the ‘Cristãos’.        

I pour tomato ketchup liberally onto the heart-shaped snack, now torn apart. A bloodied broken-hearted cutlet.  

The Corrupt Grocer begins to eat his bhaji too, dipping pieces of bread in it. I place my elbow on my corner of the table and press down. The grocer’s bhaji plate rises up by a good half an inch. He places his left elbow on his corner of the table and pushes it down. It’s hard to get a table with uneven legs nowadays. This one is a wonder, with almost three quarters of an inch of lift.

His corner stays down and he relaxes. Just when he dabs his bread again, I push down again. And release. And down again. And up.

To eat a mix-bhaji that’s constantly bobbing up and down is very irritating. If a customer has had a bad day it can drive him or her over the edge. They try to push the table around, as though nudging it forward or backward a couple of inches will stabilise it. One of my younger victims even tried to grip her table leg with her thighs to keep it still. But how long can thighs remain closed? Another older fellow once slammed the table in rage, spilling everyone’s snacks all over.

Mr Cheating Grocer decides to bear his elbow down for the rest of his bhaji. With considerable pressure. I relax. He’s not enjoying his mix-bhaji now. The other two customers at our table are oblivious to the ongoing seesaw battle, their corners are relatively unperturbed. By the time my adversary has finished eating and the tea has arrived, his arm and back have tired. I jerk his tea pelo-watti up with a thud. It nearly spills over, a few drops spattering on a passing girl, who glares at him with disgust. In despair he rummages through his pockets for a piece of paper, which he folds in half and then again in half, until he’s got a reasonably thick wad that he bends over and tucks under the delinquent short leg. He angrily finishes his tea, which I’m sure has now gone tepid. Tests the table by rocking it slightly. And goes off with a frustrated scowl.

Ritual is important. That’s what separates Man from beasts. Ritual is what gave us religion, art and civilisation. I have screwed up the Adulterer Grocer’s ritual. He will probably hit his wife today. And she may smash a chair over his head, killing him. In self defence, of course. The courts will acquit her and she will marry the carpenter from the neighbouring chawl, who used to come over to oil her creaking doors.

I have eaten my bloodstained broken heart and now perform my final swallow of tea. It’s perfect, and I sigh gently. It’s like those Hindustani classical pieces where the vocalist goes yammering all over the place and the tabla guy goes wandering somewhere else, and they eventually come together at the sam, like lovers orgasming, culminating their ululations in one resounding thump. That’s what the last gulp of tea should be like.

Before I rise from my table I reach out with my foot and dislodge the wad of paper the grocer had carefully installed. The table rocks again. And all is well with the world. This is my table and I call the shots. This is where I change the world in small nefarious ways.

The waiter comes with his tiny bill, places it near my empty plate, pushing it partly into some spilt tea to wet it, so that it stays stuck to the table in the face of the whirring wall fan. I give him a tip, pay my bill at the counter and step out of Bombay Café, studiously avoiding the beggar at the door, who grins toothlessly at me every day, wearing a T-shirt that says United Colours of Bonetton. 

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