"Happy Birthday, Mr. President"

     A. F., the other foreign resident here at the TAJ, has been sick. Dizzy, aching joints, hacking cough, get-into-an-auto-rickshaw-with-the-maid-to-go-see-a-doctor-25-minutes-away-in-Indiranagar sick. [Incidentally, in honor of the shutdown of the United States government by the Republican-hostaged House of Representatives that's spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $70 million overturning again and again a piece of legislation that everybody wants, I can't fail to mention that her visit to the doctor cost $5.00. And her medications (two of them!) cost $7.00. Um, go team America?] A. took those cheap meds and began feeling better almost immediately. And yesterday she and I went to lunch together so she could get out of the house.

     It turns out it was a good deal more difficult to get lunch than we'd anticipated. Everything was closed. Or, more accurately, everywhere that we would eat was closed (germ paranoia = no street food). One place had a sign out front that said "CLOSED FOR DRY DAY." We ended up at UB City, a giant mall/hotel/entrepôt for foreigners, thinking that, at least we'd be able to find someplace that would feed us--hotels being, like airports, somewhat removed from the temporal/geographical/and cultural realities in which they find themselves. And we were right. There was a Subway® with a long line. You may surprised to learn that we passed up the opportunity to get a Paneer Tikka sub, but we did. Finally, we walked thtough the automatic doors of the Oakwood Hotel to find ourselves in 'Soul City', the hotel restaurant which was open, had empty tables, and with about 20% Westerners felt like the Whitest Place I'd Ever Seen. In case you're thinking: 'Soul City'--funky vibe, great music, fried chicken and biscuits and collards and waffles and bar-b-cue and cornbread and beans with bacon and sweet tea and pie and... nope. It was a semi-formal dining room straight out of West Elm® down to the cluster of antiqued mirrors on one wall. And a lone, extra-large-screen TV bracketed into a corner (pictured above in someone else's photo which I found on the internet). They had only a buffet available, because of the mysterious 'Dry Day', which was fine and similar to the kind of lunchtime buffets at nicer Indian restaurants you can find in the US. Maybe a little bit disappointing, actually. I mean, come on, look at that place.

     A. commented that the two of us would never come to a hotel restaurant like this anywhere else, and of course she's right, if only because we wouldn't be able to afford it. When we got home, I asked R. K., our resident local/journalist/genius, what in God's name 'Dry Day' was and why in the name of all things holy did the town of Bangalore see fit to prevent me from having a three-martini lunch? "It's Gandhi's birthday."