The Thirteen Minute Date
“Hey, I have reached. Where are you?”
Piya clicked on the send button as she stepped out of the yellow taxi. She took out a crisp hundred rupees note from her purse and handed it over to driver, waiting for him to pass on the change. The driver chuckled instead, revealing his tobacco stained teeth from over the mask hanging around his chin.
“Chhutte nahi hain, Madam!”
“Of course,” Piya sighed. She had forgotten that expecting change from a taxi driver in Calcutta was as Utopian as expecting her date to turn up on time. A city stuck in time, she thought. Unable to spit out a hateful reply, Piya simply said:
“Aap pehle mask thik se peheniye.”
Without a care in the world, the driver gave her one last smile and swirled his way into the broad street canopied by Christmas lights. Piya took a minute to admire the festive frame, long curled up in a corner of her mind. It had been two years since she visited her hometown – two years since the pandemic happened and lockdown hit the globe over. In a parallel world, this place would have been brimming with crowds of gaily dressed people, she thought. She would have complained having to jostle through the crowd only to grab a piece of pastry from the confectionary shop at the corner of the street. She would have run into a multitude of people from her known circles, engaging in reluctant, yet brief small talk. The streets were emptier now with fewer people scampering around the neighbourhood. Oh, what she would have given now to see the crowd of her dreams. Just then, her phone beeped, slicing through her musings.
“Hi, I just started. Was stuck with something at home. Will be there in 20.”
“Uff, thank God,” Piya muttered after reading the reply from her date. “At least I would not have to sit through this all by myself like the last one”. She glanced at her watch – it was 9:30 pm.She adjusted her red skirt, sprayed some sanitizer onto her hands and turned to face her old favourite restaurant. A few people were waiting outside, before their names were called out aloud by the doorman, signalling availability of a vacant table. Since time immemorial, the queue outside the restaurant would to be a long serpentine one, with at least a half hour’s wait to get a table.This time, the same queue was a rather short socially distanced one, with the scarce attendees standing a foot apart from each other.
“Hello Peter Cat!” she whispered.
The waiting area was covered in a red velvety carpet, as if especially
laid out to welcome Piya after all this time. There used to be a small
bookseller on the pavement beside the restaurant. Piya would invariably pick up
a magazine or two and browse through the books on display to kill time whenever
she waited for her turn at the restaurant. Once, while randomly reading through
a copy of ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ by Jhumpa Lahiri at the stall, she had
discovered a few missing pages. When she had told this to the seller, his face
had turned red in shame. He had frantically rummaged through his little brown
box to find another copy for her. But it was not his fault. How was he to know
of the missing pages without reading the book in its entirety? Piya had bought
the book anyway, just to comfort him. Now that part of the pavement was clean-
naked almost, without the bookseller and his myriad collection of cheap, second
hand books. Maybe he packed up for the day and went home, Piya thought.
She strode past the string of people outside the restaurant and went straight up to the doorman. He was dressed in a white kurta-pyjama, with a black Nehru jacket on top, and a stylish turban twirled up his head.
“Table for two?” she asked.
The doorman gestured her to wait and called the Manager from inside. A middle-aged man in a black suit came out. He was wearing rimless glasses and had a small notebook with him, which Piya presumed was being utilised to jot down names of those in the waiting area. He first signalled the customers in queue to come inside, leaving the red carpet vacant and all bared to Piya. Then, he turned towards her and said:
“Sorry Ma’am. We will be closing at 10:15 pm tonight. The Chief Minister has freshly imposed a night curfew as a part of pandemic protocol, considering the spurt of new cases in the neighbourhood. Hence, we cannot entertain any more customers right now.”
“You just let at least 10 people inside!” Piya retorted.
“Yes Ma’am, they were already waiting for quite some time and were part of the same group. They’re the last ones we could allow.”
“No, this cannot be happening,” Piya thought. She’s right there, in front of her favourite restaurant after two long years, and she can’t even enter?
“But, but I will barely take any time inside! I know the menu by heart. I will order, eat and will be out before you even realize. Please let me in.”
The Manager adjusted his spectacles and looked intently at Piya.
“But didn’t you say table for two? Where is your partner?”
Piya had almost forgotten in this entire frenzy that she was supposed to meet someone.
“Oh, he’s just parking the car,” she lied. But she knew that if she told the truth, that her date was yet to arrive, she would be shown the door without a doubt.
“Hmm, okay,” the Manager replied at last. “You have 35 minutes. Please make it quick.”
“Thank you so much!” Piya beamed. Without further ado, she pushed her way through the door.
The dim lit interiors of the restaurant with a low lying red lotus lamp flitting on each table, was just how she remembered it. Piya followed the Manager as he led her to her table, in a corner adjacent to the staircase leading up to the first floor of the restaurant.
“Perfect.”
As she settled down, she checked her phone for any new messages. There were none. She checked the time again. It was 9:45 pm. She started to type a message, when the phone rang.
“Hey, it’s me. Sorry, it’s taking longer than I anticipated. Did you get a table?” the voice on the other end said.
“Yes, I did. I got a corner table. But hey listen, they have a curfew or something because of the pandemic. So, we must vacate the restaurant in another 30 minutes. If you are getting late, should we postpone this for another time?”
There was a pause. Piya wished for the answer to be yes.
“No please don’t say that,” came the reply.“I was really hoping to meet you. I’ll be there in a jiffy, I promise. Just hold on to my seat, pretty please?”
He seemed more enthusiastic than Piya expected. In these uncertain times, it’s hard to come by anyone with such a gush of positive energy. Suddenly, it felt nice; being wanted like this.
“Umm, okay. Then let me place an order for you. What do you usually prefer – Indian or Continental?” Those were the two cuisines available at the restaurant.
“Just order anything you like. Surprise me!” he grinned over the phone. “See you soon.”
Piya wasted no time in placing her order – a prawn cocktail and a house special chicken sizzler for herself, and a plate of their signature Chelo Kebab for her date, considering he had never been to this place before. She remembered his reaction when she had mentioned over phone that she wanted their date to be at Peter Cat.
“Peter Cat? Really?” he had said.“Isn’t it like, a hundred years old? You’re not even going to consider the numerous new jazzy cafes all across the city?”
It was true. The restaurant was in fact over a century old. But that was its charm.
“Yes, a thousand times over,” Piya had replied, quoting a line from a book she loved.
“Isn’t that a line from ‘The Kite Runner’? I loved that book! I wept like a baby reading it. But that was many years back, I assure you,” he had laughed.
Piya had found this confession appealing - for a man to admit that he cried reading a book. She found this vulnerability relatable and to a certain extent, attractive. It was one of the reasons she had agreed to go on a date with him in the first place. But where was he still? She checked her watch. It was 9:55 pm.
The waiter arrived with her order. The crackling sound of the house special sizzler instantly filled the room. He placed a pink coloured mat on her table which had the word ‘sizzle’ written on it 27 times. She thanked the waiter and began on her feast, keeping in mind the deadline to leave the restaurant.
“This Cinderella needs to eat first,” she said to herself.
In the meanwhile, the Manager came by and enquired. “Ma’am, where is your partner? We have to close the shutter. I’m sorry he can’t be allowed in after that.”
“Please, 5 more minutes. He is almost here” she lied again. She had no clue about his whereabouts. Truth be told, by then even the Manager had figured out that nobody could possibly take 30 minutes to merely find a parking space in the neighbourhood. It was about time that he started panicking.
“Ma’am, you have to understand, there is a...”
“Sir!” the doorman’s voice came piercing through the heated atmosphere building up at Piya’s table. “There is a customer at the door for the corner table.”
The Manager’s stern face was suddenly flushed with relief. “Let him in quick!”
Piya stared straight at the door. A man dressed in blue denims and a white shirt entered. He scanned through the restaurant until his eyes met Piya’s. He lit up immediately, evidencing an infectious smile behind his mask.
As he walked closer to the table, Piya could smell his cologne filling up the cosy corner around their table. To her, the smell felt familiar and warm.
“The table under the staircase! How big a Potter-head are you?” he smirked.
“Never too old to be an extra dollop of Harry Potter,” Piya smiled. “You are late by the way,” she said, showing him her watch. “It’s 10:02 pm”.
He took off his mask and slid it inside his pocket. He looked at Piya and smiled, revealing a small dimple on his left cheek.
“That leaves us with 13 minutes, isn’t it? That’s more than I could ever want.”
As the little party at the corner table began, the remaining tables emptied out. The waiters switched off all the lights on the floor, except the one above Piya’s table. Faint music and laughter emanated from the far end where the kitchen stood. The staffs of the restaurant had almost finished packing up and were letting their hair down before heading home. There was no noise of chatter from the adjacent tables – no clinkering sound of plates being put and swished off from the tables for each order. It was just the hum of two people, conversing and swiping off their food in immense speed.
“I was actually a bit hesitant to meet you, you know. I’ve met too many strangers and not all of such rendezvous were pleasant,” Piya said.
“So, what changed your mind?”
“Umm, I don’t know. Maybe you came across as someone I could easily talk to and get comfortable with. Plus, you have really nice hair, did you know that?”
“Wow. A compliment at last!” he chuckled.
Piya burst out laughing. She gestured to hit him with the spoon playfully. But he caught her hand and held on to it.
“Seems like we have the whole restaurant to ourselves,” he smiled. “How does that feel Piya? Here, at an exclusive date at your favourite restaurant in the whole world? For all of thirteen minutes?”
“Well, as they say,” she giggled, “Lucky thirteen!”
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