Thankful in India :: Restaurants With Food

India is a place where nothing goes to waste.  A stone that I discovered while we were there is white amethyst (the stone in the earrings).  Who knew there was such a thing? But when you think about what the natural stone looks like (right) there are parts that are white. And if you're going to use all of the stone ... well then you'll end up with some stones being white. 

As we were traveling through India we experienced an interesting quirk: the tendency to avoid the word 'no.' We were on the road and decided to stop for lunch.  We pulled off at what seemed to be the only restaurant we'd seen for more than an hour.  Nowhere India.  Literally dust in every direction.  We walk in and before we could sit at a table a man runs out with a hand-held switch broom and dusts off the chairs. Plumes of dust go everywhere.  Honestly, this is when we should have just turned around and left. 

Looking around I noticed that we were the only people in the place. We sit and check the menu.  The man comes back perhaps 10-15 minutes later ... apparently very busy doing other things?  And we ask for the chicken curry, which he proceeds to tell us that it isn't available today.  We ask for vegetable curry, then the naan, then try the lamb curry ... and with each request the man shakes his head and says "I am very sorry, but it is not available today."  We decide to try this a different way.  "Why don't you tell us what IS available today?" He explains that he could run down the road for some eggs and perhaps make us a scramble. Ok, let me get this straight.  So you don't have anything available, here IN the restaurant? 

This was a common theme on our trip.  Never wanting to say no, always hoping that they might make a sale - somehow.  This wasn't the only time it happened to us on this trip.  We were out for dinner one night and my mother-in-law asked for dessert: gulab jamun (India's version of doughnuts). We watched our waiter run out the front door and down the street.  He didn't return for about 10 minutes, and arrived carefully holding a bowl of gulab jamun he had clearly bought at another place.  Her dessert cost as much as dinner -- only fair since he had to jog cross town to get it for her?! It always makes me laugh when I think of my time in India and how it made me look at life from a different angle.