A different hospitality experience

April 25, 2009.

A lousy saturday full of boredom. Nothing much to do except browse the net, eat and just while our time away.
Was turning out into one of those boring wasted weekends till we experienced 2 diametrically opposite dining incidents that night.

We headed to Pafos, to dine in a south-indian restaurant Keralam. After 8 months being outside india, we were quite excited to taste south-indian food for the first time in cyprus. And so we 7 guys headed out in 2 cars to Pafos, a beautiful coastal city about 70 kms away from our home.

We reached there in about an hour. It looked a nice restaurant. Bollywood songs were playing and it created a good ambience. Then we glanced at the menu, though we had pretty much an idea of what we would be having.
But surprisingly there were very few south-indian dishes on the platter. Just 2 types of dosas and that would be it atleast for the veggies. There was only 1 guy in the restaurant. He was the owner and he himself would be taking the orders. So we called him and first ordered drinks. But when we asked for dosas, we were disappointed when he said that there was none that day. So we basically drove all the way down there to again have north-indian food which we could very well have just a km away from our home.

Anyways, so we ordered starters and were chit-chatting when accidentally, my friend broke the glass of lassi.
We did'nt bother about it much since we thought would settle the cost in the bill. But what came next was a rude shock. The owner who was also the waiter, came and swiped the broken glass, but he gave us a mouthful of words which we least expected. He said that we guys didnt have the manners to say sorry and where was our indian mannerisms. This coming from an indian himself was all the more pinching. We accidentally broke the glass and we unintentionally forgot to apologise. I dont say it's not our fault, but he was too quick to judge us.

This didnt go down well and so we cancelled the rest of the order and settled the bill. Even while leaving, we again tried to reason ourselve and explain that we didnt mean intentionally not to apologize and be brats and that he should be a little less judgemental. But then, neither did he listen, nor did we want to create a ruckus and actually be disrespecful and so we left.

We went on to satiate our hunger at another nearby indian restaurant Pappadam. The experience we had there was amazing. We were seated comfortably, had good food, with amazing hospitality shown by the staff there. And some of them were non-indians. We had a great time there. We had indian chutneys, moraba, and a plateful of papads on the table to start with. Then good north-indian stuff, nice ambience, nice music, all lightened our bad mood which were in. While leaving, they also gave us pan-pasand chocolates which was a very good surprise getting them in cyprus. All in all we had a great time there.

On that night, we had 2 diametrically opposite dining experiences. We returned home with a full stomach and a good happy mood.