I have moved!

I have moved to wordpress for many reasons.
This is my new address: http://southwestsun.wordpress.com/.

Sunlight and Coffee

I always thought that all perfect moments involved some form of coffee. Whether it’s romance, literature or travel. (By perfect moments I mean these moments where you feel the possibilities are endless and no one speaks to fill up the silence. It’s almost like Keats’ Negative Capability.) So I plied my existence with copious amount of coffee. I got books about coffee, drank endless cups of coffee, and even wrote about coffee. But then perfect moments are born not made. Today, as I saw the sunlight stream into my room making chiaroscuristic patterns on my books and table, I was in a perfect moment. Everything was still; I had only the sunlight for company.
I realized I was wrong. Not all perfect moments involved coffee. Some just involve me.

A review of Free Outgoing

Free Outgoing
By Anupama Chandrasekhar
Nick Hern Books, 2007, London
Price: £ 8.99

A dynamics of a tiny cell phone in the hands of a petite playwright create one of the most moving plays I have read in a long time. I haven’t seen the production directed by Indhu Rubasingham but I have read the script. So all comments here are about the script written by a young playwright from Chennai, Anupama Chandrasekhar.

Anupama Chandrasekhar is one of the most layered dialogue writers I have ever read. Her dialogues peel the subtext into existence. She has taken an incident that happened in real life and explored the implications it has on the family and friends. In the play, the central protagonist remains off-stage for the entire length of the play. Chandrasekhar claims she didn’t write her story, but the story of the people around her.

A couple of points make her play stands out: first, the use of colloquial language in the midst of English. It's not Tamlish in the sense that we know it. Tamlish is Tamil with English words. The language Chandrasekhar uses is English with Tamil words to give a sense of place. And the translations are provided in brackets. Second, the use of silence like negative space on the page to define the meaning. The many pauses and beats in the play script provide for much meaning as the words. Third, the way the play ends: on a high and tantalizing note. The build up to the climax might not be a complete surprise but it certainly had me enthralled.

Chandrasekhar's characters are unapologetic in their approach to life. Sharan swears just like any teenager! And is unpredictable too! Just when you thought you had him figured out, he goes and does the opposite. This adds another dimension to his character. Malini, the mother seems like a tortured soul who swings between pure knaivism and cruelty. Her knaivism is understandable. Her generation might have embraced inter-community marriage but doesn't know how to handle the new generation who carry cell phones not teddy bears to bed. However, I don't understand her unintentional cruelty. You almost dislike her handling of the situation. She seems to try her best to think a way out of the siege-like situation. But fails always. It is Sharan, whose sensible idea to speak out is finally heard. Ramesh, the colleague, is again a difficult to place character. That he lusts after the mother is quite clear; the shock quotient is added when it is implied that he lusts after the daughter as well. But yet, he is the only one who comes to her aid when they need help.

Sharan is shown stepping out of the apartment and in quite a few times in the play. Interestingly, Malini rarely steps outside the apartment – and when she does only once during the course of the play to go meet the principal of Sharan and Deepa’s school, her dupatta is torn. The dupatta, a garment that is traditionally thought to preserve the modesty of an Indian woman, is torn by the paparazzi and activists, a representation of the society outside. Though it is the daughter who has brought “shame” into the home, it is the mother’s garment and by implication body, on which the violence is played out. In other words, in this close-knit family, what happens to one is echoed on the other. A domino effect which no one from the family can dodge but friends and acquaintances can get away unharmed. Therefore, it comes as no surprise when Sharan is expelled from school for no fault of his. But Ramesh slips away when he is asked to help Malini the second time. And the neighbour Nirmala is opportunistic at best, appearing just once as a harbinger of troubled times ahead.

One characteristic shared by all characters is that you can’t judge them. They have their own motivations. And I stopped one step short of liking or disliking them absolutely. Just like in real life. There is always that one aspect that alienates you from any person.

All throughout the play, the various hints about water scarcity made it all too real for me. The outside world is just a honk away. The action takes place inside an almost claustrophobically small space, which stands for the collective claustrophobically small mind on whose door, the cruel outside world knocks from time to time to open up. Eventually, when the inhabitants of this closed world decide to answer the call of society, they don’t go out to meet the world, the world walks in. In the form of television.

Chandrasekhar plays with the unusual metaphor of water with time. When the water does run out, Malini takes her daughter's share secretly hoarded under her bed, only to give a neighbour only to buy herself some time. The neighbour helpfully adds, "And you are out of time." The play starts with a vessel full of water used for a demo and ends with invisible but implied bottles of water. The gamut of implications from full to empty is played out through the play. The water situation echoes the crescendo of the emotional pitch of the play.

The play lasts a few scenes spread across the weekend and yet a whole world has changed. The characters are held hostage by not just external forces but also internal ones like fear, shame, guilt, and unspoken human needs. In this rapidly shrinking world, the only way to gain a life (and life force, water) is to sell out to the clamouring media parked outside their block of flats. But do they survive? Or do they fail? Whatever they do, they do spectacularly because it's relayed on national television.

Free Outgoing is a neatly compact play with dynamic dialogues, rounded characters, and the daring to explore the world from a single standpoint. All I have to do now is see the next scheduled production in London this summer to complete my experience of this play!

Happy New Year 2008!

On this new year's day, I travelled the world. Definitely, a beautiful start to the new year. Though on 31st night, I didn't go out anywhere, (A friend of mine was surprised that I was not wildly partying the night away.) I just saw a movie - X Men III, and went to bed in the wee hours of the morning.

January 1st 2008, AquaM woke me up at an unearthly hour 10 AM! It was the middle of the night for me! Anyway, I met her at a temple and we exchanged gifts! Let me explain. She was going to the temple and I decided to meet her there. She got me a gift from Singapore, where she was holidaying. The next friend, I met was N, who had just returned from her holiday in Bahrain, and she got me a little piece of Bahrain. Literally, because her gift included seven types of Bahrain's desert soil! And the third friend I met was the one I had first planned to meet: A. M and I had got her something from our Goa trip, which I had to hand over. And she gives me somethings from London! I am so thrilled! If the new year starts on this note, I am sure all I have is good times ahead! So, in the space of 12 hours, I had on the desk in my room, little bits of Singapore, Bahrain, and London. I felt like I had travelled the world in a day!

Back in Bangalore

Ten months after I left Bangalore for good, I went back to pay a short visit.

A friend of mine, let's call her M, wanted me to come along with her since she had to pick up some stuff from there. So the last weekend, on Saturday morning, when I could have been knocked out to the world, I was sitting in the Brindavan Express waiting for M to turn up at an unearthly hour of 6:30 AM. I got there earlier even though the train didn't start till 7:15 AM. (Aside: Did I tell you Madras can get really chilly nowadays especially in the early hours of the morning? The chill reminded me of the day-time temperature in Bangalore.)

Our journey to Bangalore was blissfully uneventful. Between having cups of hot coffee, bland breakfast, cold oily vadas, and tasteless cutlets, we googled for the name of a recently dead editor on M's shiny new Sony Vaio. (It was a part of a conversion that starts anywhere and goes everywhere.)

We got off at Bangalore Cantonment or like the Bangloreans say, Cantt. It was refreshing because the railway station had a distinctly small-town feel. You know where you feel like the end of the platform is the end of civilization!

The other main idea of the trip was to hunting for books. This might amaze you but no matter how many unread books lie on my table, I still need more. It's like a fix. Substance-addicts might understand this better.

So after a late lunch courtesy M's wonderful aunt, we went to M.G. Road, the biggest road in Blore, and one of its side streets, Church Street. Now, Church Street is not famous for Churches but has the maximum number of bookshops in one street!

We got off near the Bible Soceity, dangerously crossed the road between Koshy's and K.C Das, and walked towards the first bookstore Premiere. You can find any book on this earth in Premiere, but not at a discount. After a quick dekho, we proceeded to Blossoms, that discount-book heaven. I saw more pubs had opened since the last time I was there. And we were so tempted between peeping into the Beer Bar near Coconut Grove and Blossoms. But Blossoms won and so we spend four hours in the three floors of books.

So after shopping like crazy, much after 8 PM we took the small byline to head towards M G Road looking for a shop that sold bags. (M had accumulated too many things that they didn't fit into her backpack anymore!) The weather was rather nippy. We spotted an istore, the authentic Apple store! And drooled over the Macbook, itouch, and yet-to-come-to-India iphone.

The AC-ed istore was much warmer than the air outside. Remembering our forgotten mission, a duffel bag, we set off walking. Cafe Coffee Day passed us by but no bag shops in sight. Many sales guys tried to sell us T-shirts even though we said we wanted a bag! Many a time, we spotted bags but they turned out to be bags of the sales guys! They were packing up to go home!

On the way back "home", the auto ride nearly killed us. The cold was unbearable. M kept saying, "It's worse than Delhi!" We had a paper-thin red shawl to protect us against the icy wind. We shared it since M hadn't brought any warm wraps. The auto driver was very amused that we were feeling so cold. He chuckled from time to time. Since we couldn't physically fight the cold, we decided to fight it mentally. All along the way, we tried to think of all the warm things in life - hot coffee, hot chocolate, hot samosas, warm razai, even Horlicks and Milo - just to trick our bodies. We ended up gigling a lot. M's major grouse was that no one told her that Bangalore was so cold! I never missed warm muggy Madras as I did right then!

We came back from the book shopping, thawed out a bit before setting off again - this time all wrapped up - to get hot chocolate from Cafe Coffee Day at the corner of the road. A little further on, there was a Regency Hotel whose chef was Bengali and made yummy rolls so we got a hot chicken roll (for me) and a paneer roll (for M). M's aunt has three fat orange cats and one old dog, who pretends to be too sick to get up from his comfy bed! We ate our dinner while the cats watched us. In fact, everywhere that I went inside the house, three pairs of cat-eyes followed me.

The next day, Sunday, we had to catch the train back from Blore at 6:30 AM! That was another day of getting up at an unearthly hour in the morning! The train was delayed for nearly an hour. The chill was still in the air but not as bad as the night before. We sipped hot cardamon tea at Cantt while looking at the orange ball getting brighter and brighter in the sky but no sign of the train! Lalbagh took its own sweet time to get here from Majestic/City station.

The highpoint of the trip back was not the train ride but a bus ride. Right outside Central Station I saw one of those new fang pristine white Volvo buses with an LCD display. I had to check it out. After asking the conductor if it went to ___ area, I hopped on. The bus was truly international standard. I could regulate the AC with a touch. The best part? No haggling with auto guys! The fare was also quite reasonable too. Only Rs.23 when compared to Rs.90 that I would have to shell out if I had taken an auto!

All in all, I really had a good trip. The only thing I missed was some sleep.

White and green

Last night, as I peered out of the window, I saw a light shine adamantly on a green plastic chair. Next to it, a heap of broken 1940’s bricks. The rubble where my neighbor’s house used to be. Another space broken down by money. Another old house and memories obliterated to make way for a matchbox apartment. As the rain hammered on the earth, I thought I saw the chair smile. A tube light spotlighted the drama in white and green.

The craft of poetry at work

I subscribe to this site: New Writing, which is a part of the Contemporary Writers site. All British Council initiatives to encourage writing and spot new writers, poets and novelists alike. I discovered Henry Shukman in the September Themes series.

The Poetry Book Soceity has this to say about Henry Shukman:

Henry Shukman’s work finds poetry in the most unlikely of places; a Japanese skijumper, a trawlerman’s Friday night out, moving house. Without unnecessary verbal tricks or flourishes he creates poems that help us remember, help us understand better our own lives. A momentary description, a word or phrase perhaps, is all it takes in a Henry Shukman poem to open our eyes to the extraordinary nature of every life.

Here are two poems that I am stunned by. Truly, the craft of poetry at work.

Leaving

A last wade through the fields. Home
comes up to your waist. I know this view:
the camouflage of woods,
a single plane crawling into evening.

My wife, who doesn’t want to leave,
takes solace in a tub under that red roof,
longing for a mutual longing – a cottage
sunk in grey hills, an oceanic window.

The larks are going crazy.
Swallows skim the grass like fish.
A train sighs to Oxford, unseen,
and the grass hisses, stay, stay.

The Call

All these years and I still don’t understand
how it works, how the signal gets through
the bones of my hand, the bricks of this house,
the bank building opposite, and across miles
of suburb and field, pylons and roads,
hills and four rivers to precisely you,
in another city, another house, another room,
hunched by the bath with your phone in your hand,
sobbing. You can’t bear to feel so split,
you gasp. Downstairs you hear
a chair scrape, a man’s voice.
He laughs, in dialogue with another ghost.
But I understand how light works.
Earlier your back gleamed like a guitar.
The last leaves on the sycamore
flickered like a school of mackerel.
Later I will go out in a leopard-coat of light
without you: just me and the trees baring themselves
for winter, and the marbled paving stones,
and my empty hand shining.

© Henry Shukman 2007

Note: The poems sited here are with the intention to inform not for commercial purposes. You may not redistribute, sell or place these materials on any other web site without written permission from the British Council.

Reading update

I have been reading rather sporadically for a month for so. But since I have been reading many books at one time, some are a bit left behind.

Notable books I am reading right now:

• Memoirs by Pablo Neruda (Memoir)
• Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk (Memoir)
• Isla Negra: A Notebook by Pablo Neruda (Poetry)
• The Gabriel Club by Joydeep Ray-Bhattacharya (Fiction)

Books I have finished recently:

• Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy (Young Adult Fiction)
• Toast by Nigel Slater (Food Autobiography)
• Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl (Fiction)
• The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne (Fiction)

Both Pessl and Landy are first time authors. Landy has created a truly unforgettable character the detective Skuldugery Pleasant. Pessl's mystery was erudite and clever. Nigel Slater is a rare find. No part of this book was boring. But the best was Boyne's book. I was so shaken after I read it.

A Nostalgist's Map of Madras

This month, we celebrated Chennai that is Madras. August 22nd was Madras Day. It was this day in 1639 that a strip of land, where Fort. St. George stands today, was bought by the East India Company. The deal was struck by Francis Day, his 'dubash' Beri Thimmappa, and their superior, Andrew Cogan, with the local Nayak rulers.

A group of enthusiastic people started the Madras Day celebrations in 2004. This year, they had a list of activities lined up, none of which I could attend. The newspapers covered it well.

Any birthday is an excuse to look back at our glorious past. On the left is Mylapore in 1906. Anyone familiar with Madras will now only see shops, restaurants, vegetable haats, and cows in the area seen here. Such beautiful space unfortunately is relegated only to sepia-tinted photographs.

On the right is Mount Road a.k.a Anna Salai. It's the arterial road of Madras. Today, it's a bustling road no pedestrian can cross. I am not even sure which area of current Mount Road this pic shows, which goes to show how much it has changed!

I stumbled upon some short articles written by non other than Asokamitran, one of best known Contemporary Tamil Writers, on old Madras. (Of course, they were translated.) An air of pure nostalgia permeated these pieces sometimes even with a sprinkle of humour. Here is a sample:

...The Adyar Library was a world-renowned one till recent times. This library, which was a part of the Theosophical Society, has a lot of texts of ancient scriptures, many of them about Buddhism. The founder and first President of the Theosophical Society, American Colonel Olcott, has mentioned these texts in his autobiography "Old Diary Leaves". Col. Olcott and the other founder, Madam Blavatsky, established the Theosophical Society in Adyar. Most of us do not know that it was a very revolutionary decision in many ways. There was a general opinion that this was also a group of ascetics like any other one but the only difference was that they were also clad in white. But the truth was different.

These Westerners accepted Indian philosophy and also believed that the saints who lived in the Himalayas were a guiding force. It is also said that one such saint appeared before Colonel Olcott and gave him a turban. The turban is still preserved in a steel almirah. The name of the saint has been given as just "Muni" in the "Old Diary Leaves" book. Even though the Theosophical Society has been established all over the world, the impact is maximum here.

In the past whoever came to Chennai used to go around certain places - one was the Zoo (near the Moore Market), the second, the Museum and the third was the Marina Beach and the last was the Theosophical Society. The Theosophical Society occupied a very vast area with old-fashioned buildings here and there. The other areas resembled a jungle. This place was well suited for the spirits to wander, in which the members of the Theosophical Society believed.

To continue reading this article, click here.

To see more of old Madras, click here.

A True Existential Comedy - A review of Ristorante Immortale

Note: Ristorante Immortale by Familie Flöz was one of the international theatre productions at the recently concluded The Hindu Metroplus TheatreFest.

The group: Familie Flöz
The play: Ristorante Immortale
The place: Music Academy, Chennai
The time: A sultry Saturday evening on August 11, 2007

Sometimes we forget that theatre can be performed without words as well. Familie Flöz's Ristorante Immortale all the way from Berlin reminded us just that. Using elements from diverse theatrical traditions as commedia dellarte, l’arte della pantomima, the masque, and absurd theatre, director Michael Vogel created a physical comedy of exquisite performances. Each character's story was told with amazing detailing. And words were not needed at all! A shake of the shoulder, a nod of the head spoke volumes. Was it my imagination or did I really see myriad expressions in those masks?

Exaggeration was endemic to the performance but for once it was not out of place. Underlying such comedy were 'Immortale' themes like alienation, lost love and youth, yearning for artistic recognition, lost dreams and hopes, the relationship between generations, and the eternal wait for something meaningful to happen. A true existential comedy, if there is such a genre!

What was interesting was that each character had a personal prop, which showed something about the character. The irascible chef with her accordion, the meticulous manager with his bell, the rickety old waiter with his much-traveled trunk, the restless young waiter with his flower, and the narcissistic waiter with his silver tray. Each prop showed something about the character.


I found myself imagining the dialogues in my head such was the force of acting. All other elements, sets, props, clothes, were minimalist as if to highlight the richness of the acting.

Comedy thrives on timing; needless to say, their timing was spot on. The audience responded enthusiastically with laughter. (The guy who sat next to me laughed at all the things I didn't, which means the play gave different things to different people.) Laughter without pathos makes the play frothy and without depth. Think about Chaplin, and you will know what I mean. So a bit of the downside of life is also explored in the play. I found layers and layers of meaning and many arresting images to carry away with me.

Every character had its own back story, which gave depth to the characters and their motivations and this is what raised them from being mere stereotypes, even though that's where it all starts from.

The structure of the play was linear with no divisions into acts or scenes. At least, no divisions in the traditional sense. The scenes were fluid one moving into the other effortlessly. This meant that for 90 minutes, the actors were constantly on stage doing something or the other, either together or solo. From the story told, I could make out some rough divisions.

The play started with the chef's solo accordion performance much before the sets were revealed to the audience. You could call this the prologue. Then began the first scene. The first scene was of the old waiter's unsuccessful attempt to leave the restaurant every night.


The second scene (again, my division) revealed the daily routine of the restaurant. As soon as the old waiter puts his weathered trunk beside a chair, and feeds the birds at dawn, he is joined by the narcissistic waiter, who loves to check his reflection on any shiny surface especially the silver tray and later the bell. (More about the bell later.) They are joined by the young restless waiter who is hopeless at his job but ever eager to learn. The dynamics between these three are enough to make the entire hall laugh. They run, play, laugh, pull each other's legs, and share a common fear of the Meticulous Manager. (Henceforth, to be referred to as MM.)

The MM comes in everyday to do three things: (1) Ask the chef to change the menu to attract people to the restaurant. In vain because the chef bangs the sliding window on his face; (2) Ring a bell to call his staff – the three waiters – who then proceed to regale him with different towel routines, accompanied by the chef/accordionist and (3) Check the preparations are in order to welcome the guests of the restaurant. Guests who never turn up.

When the preparations are finally made after much suspender-changing, towel-banging, flower-keeping, dish-cleaning, running, mopping, and dancing, no one comes in. The body language of the actors is so precise that even the audience gears up to see who will come into the restaurant. There is a Waiting-for-Godot-ish moment before things resume their own momentum. Scene two comes to a close as the MM walks up the stairs to – I assume – his private quarters. In a move of sheer directorial brilliance, the MM's climb up the stairs takes place off-stage. It is indicated by the way the waiters follow his progress up the steps with a corresponding staccato movement of their heads. Such little details add to the overall veneer of the performance.


The third scene was the back story of the young hopeless waiter who gets up late everyday and is perpetually in trouble with the MM. As another day dawns on the restaurant, he brings a bunch of flowers to the MM. This makes the other waiters jealous. To top it all, that day he impresses the MM with an improvised towel routine. The other two waiters feel rather threatened so they scheme together to bring MM's recent favorite down. He is asked to hold a clothesline right above his head. Higher, higher, they keep telling him. After a while, his hands start shaking so he uses a handy broom inside a basket to prop up the clothesline. But to get this setup in position he has to climb into the basket and accidentally ends up sitting inside the washing basket kept on the table. Being a creative and sensitive soul, he is given to flights of fancy. He fishes out an oar-like prop from the same basket and imagines that he is rowing a boat on the vast sea. The other two waiters pretend to carry out their duties by hanging out the other clothes to dry. In reality, they end up egging him on. Suddenly, the MM appears out of nowhere to see his recent favourite sitting inside the washing basket atop a table in the middle of the restaurant! The other two waiters have disappeared. All hell breaks loose. After chasing the culprit, MM catches and pummels him with the same oar-prop. The other two waiters pretend to sympathize with our hopeless waiter. What follows next is one of the most magical scenes of the play. Our creative soul dreams up a mother (almost like Virgin Mary) who appears to grow out of the white tablecloth to take him in her arms and console him. She disappears as suddenly as he appears leaving the audience breathless.


Next, he finds his multiple selves appear out of nowhere and do all the different duties of the restaurant. I found his scene to be very psychologically realistic. His multiple selves run the show betraying his innermost need to control his environment rather than be controlled by it. I assume that these are dreams because the fantastical element of the show is not separated from the realistic by any such obvious markers. As soon as the hopeless waiter's dream is over, we have got to know out character rather well. On the surface, nothing has changed and another day starts all over again.

The fourth scene starts with the regular restaurant routine. This time, our narcissistic waiter reveals his motivations to us. The narcissistic waiter dreams – or daydreams - that he will one day be the owner of his restaurant. The bell is the MM's precious prop. Only the MM touches it not anyone else. But during the narcissistic waiter's dream, a doppelgänger appears on stage to hand him "the bell." He then proceeds to lord over the restaurant including making the staff –and MM- play musical chairs! In another inspired scene, we see that though the new manager wants his staff to play musical chairs, his staff don't seem to be that keen. But that doesn't affect the narcissistic waiter's enjoyment of the game. All he wanted to do was win. One by one his staff drop out either out of lack of interest or arthritic pain. So he does end up winning the game. Scene four comes to an end as his reverie is broken and the routine of the restaurant continues.

Scene five tells us the story of the MM. At the end of another day of waiting for guests to arrive, the MM feels rather dejected. He decides to put the bell away. This is very worrying news for his staff. So they make a plan to bring things to normal. After all, what's a boss for if he doesn't boss over and moves around more like a wet towel? So, the three waiters and the chef disguise themselves as traveling musicians to cheer up the manager. In a play of supreme farce, this plan fails. As the MM calls the chef (knocks on her sliding window to the kitchen), there is no answer, which puzzles him. Obviously he doesn't know that his chef is sitting outside with a brown mustache and accordion pretending to be a traveling musician! So the waiters try to juggle between being guests and waiters to hilarious effect. They are discovered soon which gives us another chance to see the actors orchestrate their entry and exits almost like a dance past the swinging doors.

Scene six brings us the story of the rickety old waiter. He tries to leave the restaurant again by taking his much-scratched tin trunk. But then he remembers that he had come into this very restaurant as a jaunty young man, many many years ago when he had no knee or back pain and could walk briskly. He remembers the restaurant’s heydays when glamorous people visited it. One of whom – a striking woman in red - catches his eye. They dance the tango in a supremely romantic setting. But she leaves soon. Today he has neither love nor hope. The memory of the woman releases something within him finally giving him the strength to leave. But he leaves his trunk behind on the table.

When scene seven unfolds, it is a solemn day for the restaurant. As the everyday routine resumes in the restaurant, one by one they notice that something is amiss – the old waiter is not in his position. They decide to find out by moving beyond the restaurant. One by one they take the plunge leaving their personal props – flower, tray, bell - on the table. All except the accordion, which continues playing throughout this scene, till the bittersweet end. [Aside: If this was a movie, a close up of the props would be the last scene.] The last to go is the accordionist/chef playing another solo piece, which could be seen as the epilogue. As they leave, they are all released from their everyday routines. There is no answer as to where they have gone. And this openendedness is what gives the play its tantalizing aspect.

The restaurant is a metaphor for life. To leave it one had to either leave it forever or stay on and play by the rules of the restaurant. All of us have out roles to play in it. Though we may want to leave it, it might not be always possible. Our hopes, desires are all tied up with the restaurant. It might seem petty to the others outside the restaurant but the restaurant is all there is to the people in it. They hate it and love it with equal ardor. Without the restaurant, the people would seem to be without context. And we all need a context to live.


Images courtesy: http://www.familie-floez.de/