Doing the Waltz

The car broke down. I was on a slope uphill, so I put on the hazard and eased myself down into a side road. Thereafter I pushed it into facing down hill and tried getting it started on the first gear. It didn't. I got out, and pushed the car till I reached a side road. Just behind me a young man had parked his car and got out to help me. I told him I was allright.

It was night and I figured I'll get the mechanic to look at it in the morning. As I locked up the car, the sky broke and it rained in buckets. I got back in and figured I 'll wait it out. Two minutes later, that same young man pulls alongside. In the pouring rain we roll down the windows and he asks if I need to get somewhere.

I grab my laptop, lock the car and get into his. ' I was just getting back to my flat when it started to rain,' he declared. So ... he must have wondered about what I was going to do. And he had come back. There must be days like this in heaven.

I pointed to the way to my house and asked for his name. ' Hassan,' he replied. He was a student at the university nearby. In his final year. I thanked him but stopped short of saying he's a good man and got off at my house. I realized then that I hadn't had dinner. So when the rain stopped, I walked out to the shoplot area and figured I'll treat myself to some old fashioned steamed fish. I mean a car breaking down can be quite traumatic.

It was a karaoke bar that I get to visit once a while when I'm hit with the blues. I order the steamed fish and one of Ireland's finest, Guinness.  They bring me the Guinness but tell me to speak to the chef about the fish. I meet an Indian chef in a Chinese karaoke bar who now offers mutton, chicken and monitor lizards in chilli. I change my order to mutton in chilli. He says I ought to try the monitor lizard in chilli. Just a sample he says. Okay I say. What the heck, they don't have fish.

Turned out, the monitor lizard in chilli was precisely what my grandpa used to bring back home from his drinking jaunts in my young days. But he said it was mutton.