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Published
in Gulf News, September 12, 2006
Beetle dressing
As
I
dutifully ate my salad, a tiny brown beetle crawled out of it, heading
quickly for the side of my plate. It seemed unfazed by the balsamic
vinaigrette and kept up a good pace, almost escaping over the edge.
We were at a fairly nice restaurant, so instead of flicking it off
and continuing eating as I normally might have done, I herded it
in gently with my fork and called the waitress over.
"I
was eating my salad and this came crawling out of it," I told
her off-handedly. I didn't need to say any more, because her eyes
widened and she said, "Oh gross!" and took the plate away.
She came back a little while later, saying the manager was on his
way. The manager was, as expected, extremely apologetic. Since I'd
already ordered and downed one oyster shooter (a large oyster served
in a shot glass with cocktail sauce), he offered to bring me two
more. Who was I to refuse?
The
waitress came back and asked what he'd done to make it up to us.
She clearly wasn't impressed by the two free shooters. "I don't
know what I would have done," she said, referring to finding
an insect in her salad. So to commiserate, she offered us free cheesecake
for afters. My wife embarrassedly shook her head, saying there was
no need. But I, after a token show of reluctance, brightly said
that I loved cheesecake and agreed graciously. A little while later,
the manager, obviously still worried that we hadn't been appeased
enough (though we had shown no signs of distress), came back, apologised
again and told me my dinner would be on the house. He even presented
us with our ready subtracted check as proof.
So
I downed my extra oyster shooters and tucked into my fish with a
light heart. Food is a lovely thing; free food is even better.
Ironically
though, it was probably because the restaurant was fairly good that
the insect was there in the first place. It's unlikely that supermarket-style
lettuce would have had anything alive in it since the average supermarket's
demand for uniformity and a complete lack of blemishes usually results
in the use of far more pesticides than is usual. So in spite of
the salad washer clearly having had a bad day (and it was going
to get even worse) it was actually heartening to have that little
show of life in my meal.
In
India, we are used to having much of our life dictated by insects.
We open and shut windows, not on our whim, but on the whims of the
mosquitoes in the neighbourhood. Sugar left open on a counter quickly
gets lines of black ants making off with it grain by grain. Rice
or flour left too long is soon inhabited by little beetles, not
unlike the one in my salad. Overripe bananas grow large clouds of
fruit flies. A door left open on a summer's day admits swarms of
house flies. And living off this bounty are the spiders in the corners
and the geckoes on the ceilings. It's a constant battle even in
the cleanest homes to keep these flourishing eco-systems under control.
Which
could have been why our waitress seemed more perturbed by the beetle
than we were… though we weren't entirely sure whether she was
merely gunning for a large tip. She got one anyway; even with a
30 per cent gratuity, our dinner was a bargain. All thanks to a
little six-legged friend who I'd love to meet again over dinner
some time soon.
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