A hardearned meal

It was the summer of 2005 and I was sitting at a table in a small restaurant in small town Japan. I was there,working on a project for a customer who wasn't particularly keen on getting it over with. It was an intense 5 weeks of collecting data, cleaning it and trying to make sense and generally keeping busy. The tool on which I had to collect the data was being used extensively by the customer. As a vendor, I couldn't really complain about that, but that meant that on most days I could only use the tool between shift changes and that in turn meant that I had to forego lunch or whatever passed for it at their cafeteria. This even prompted one of them to get really concerned about my continuous absence at the cafeteria and ask me "Are you Ramzan? You Islam?" I replied that I was neither but only an applications engineer doing time in Asian fabs. But I digress. The work would usually get done pretty late in the evenings and on many days I would take a cab into the sleeping town, walk past this closed restaurant, the only one where I could get vegetarian food, to the convenience store to grab a sorry sandwich and a carton of milk and head to my matchbox sized room to crash. On those rare, lucky evenings when I could actually get into town when it was still light, I would head straight to this place which served Japanese interpretations of Italian dishes. I'm talking paper thin pizzas with a layer of wasabi sauce on it. Or pasta flavored with, get this, squid ink. I had managed to convince the manager and the chef to prepare a vegetarian pizza from scratch, as opposed to pulling out the pepperoni slices from a pepperoni pizza and christening it cheese pizza.

It was on one such evening when I was sitting there with my custom-made pizza that this story started. A caucasian couple was seated at a few tables from me and politely nodded. Being the polite fellow that I am, I nodded back and also gave them the courteous smile and proceeded to get busy with the business of inspecting the pizza for its vegetarian-ness and consuming it. It must have been at least twenty minutes before I looked up in time to notice that the couple were preparing to leave. From where they were seated, they had to pass me on their way out and as they crossed me, the lady stopped to enquire about the thread around my wrist. And even before I could play out the oft-repeated response to this query, she proudly displayed her's. In a matter of few minutes and a few exchanges, we got to know a bit about each other. In respect of their privacy, let me just say that they were from down-under and were teaching English at the local school and that they were practising Hinduism. And, more importantly, that they were vegetarians too. Rants and anecdotes of the difficulties unique to veggies in Japan were shared and before long, an invitation for dinner at their place was proffered and was accepted with restrained glee. I was leaving for home that Sunday and it was agreed that I would meet them for dinner at their place the night before on Saturday. It is not often that I get invited for a meal during my many forays into the Asia pacific region and needless to say, the prospect of a home cooked vegetarian dinner definitely raised my spirits and suddenly the world seemed to be not all that bad a place after all. Right? Well, read on.

The day arrived. I had nearly finished packing and was looking forward to the appointment. I took the train to a station close to their house from where the husband had said he would pick me up. When I got off, it was raining pretty hard and it was already getting dark. It was a small station and the few people that got off with me quickly melted away into the approaching night. Just as I was beginning to doubt whether the whole thing was some sort of a joke or maybe even a dream, I saw the lights of an approaching car. Sure enough it was him and we were soon on our way.

Societal demands compelled me to make small talk, something that I don't consider myself an expert at. We shared harmless details of our respective lives, about education, religion and of course, music. He appeared passionate about music and mentioned how he had developed an ear for Hindustani music and rattled off names that I had only seen on CD covers at music stores. He also mentioned that he was proficient on the harmonium. Now, this was Japan, remember, and I was nearly 7000 miles from anyone that was familiar with my musical abilities or the lack thereof. Not to be outdone, I mentioned the time that I had spent learning to play the mridangam (A South Indian percussion instrument). While I'm not given to hyperbole or even blowing the self trumpet, I did skip the finer print that my dalliances with the intrument were of late-80's vintage and that I had never come in contact with one since. He then let me in on the itinerary for the evening which was reading of verses from the Gita followed by a few bhajans and dinner. This was certainly not what I had in mind when I accepted the invitation a few days back. But being used to this routine from my grad school days where the propsect of good food empowered me to sit cross legged for an hour every Sunday morning and keep pace with the recital of Sri Vishnu Sahasra Namam with the help of a book, I was game. We drove on in the rains and we soon arrived at their abode.

His wife welcomed me with a "Namasthe" that made even me, a true blooded Indian, feel a little uncomfortable. The house was typical Japanese with wooden floors, mats, sliding doors and very small rooms. The place was dimly lit and the smell of incense and religion filled the air. The living room had been prepared for the evening with an idol of Lord Krishna decorated and placed in the middle. I positioned myself facing the idol, sitting cross legged on the floor. We had company that night - an Argentinian male, whose name I don't recall, who looked like someone who had done this many times before. I could, even over the incense, detect the unmistakable aroma of basmati rice and an eggplant based side dish was wafting in from the adjoining kitchen which immediately set off hunger pangs within me. I set the mental countdown to about 45 mins by which time I reckoned I would be done with the religious events of the evening and could relish dinner, little knowing that those 45 minutes would be very long, memorable ones.

The husband, who till that point was attired in cotton pants, emerged from an adjoining room in full traditional Indian attire - the panchagajam, a khadi top and a resplendent namam on his forehead. I was slightly taken aback, totally unprepared for such religious intensity while the Argentinian sat there wearing that "Been here, seen this" look. The wife had, in the meantime, set the Gita on the wooden book holder. He quickly breezed through a few verses, their translations and his own comments, concluding it with extolling the Gita. My mental timer, in the meantime, was down to 35 minutes. Then it happened. Announcing that we would now move on to the bhajans, he set about tuning the harmonium and asked me, "You said you can play the mridangam right?" I nodded gingerly, expecting him to say something along the lines of how having one would have completed a musical troupe, providing some rhythm to the songs. Instead, he went into a dark adjoining room and came back out dusting a full sized, real, strike-it-and-you'll-hear-it mridangam, complete with a cloth around its middle.

The deer in the headlights cliche doesn't even begin to describe my situation. I might be imagining this but there may have been a flash of lightning and a bolt of thunder followed by heavy silence punctuated only by the sound of rain against the roof. The look on the Argentinian's face told that even he hadn't seen this act before and I swear that Lord Krishna sported a mischievous smile on his face. Transformed into a "struggling musician", I slowly got up and received it from him: an acknowledgement that I was well past the point of no return, if ever there existed one. There had been signs and warnings all along but I had ignored every one of them. If accepting the invitation a few days back was the deep end of the pool that I was in, the mridangam was definitely the dorsal fin that I saw circling aroud. Mental timer: 33 minutes.

I don't know if it was divine manifestation or the realization of the fact that playing the mridangam was what that stood between me and a sumptuous meal that night. But whatever it was, as I adjusted the instrument to position it under my left knee and gave it the first few reluctant taps, a strange calm descended over me and I became a mridangist at that moment. There were 5 songs that night. As the couple cleared their throats, I summoned Whatever little I had by way of a general sense of rhythm and the concert was underway. Any inhibitions, fears or even the lack of knowledge I might have had at the beginning of the first song had melted away, thanks to the said sense of rhythm that shone like a bright torch that night. I even mentioned to the husband, between songs 3 and 4,that the mridangam required to be tuned and he nodded in agreement. The nerve! By the time the final song reached a crescendo, I was in a zone, striking away at the sides of the mridangam like a maestro. As I set the mridangam upright and got up, the couple came over and complimented me on my performance. They may have said that they were glad it was over but I was floating too far up in ether to hear it. The Argentine gent nodded his approval and Lord Krishna's smile no longer appeared mischievous. It was a spiritual experience for me. I became more appreciative of a sumptuous meal than I was before and also thankful that I hadn't mentioned to him that night about my attempts to learn to play the veena. That could have been very disastrous. Or not.