Business as usual?

Khush and Sujata take me to Leopold’s to pay homage. They’ve already been, in the days soon after. This one’s for me. Not a table free, and a small knot of people hovering about indecisively. I don’t believe this – they’re waiting for a table. All these years, no one has ever had to wait for a table at Leo’s. A table scrabble upstairs yields us the penultimate table with the ultimate following close behind, both relegated to the back by the speakers in relative darkness. The music makes you feel nineteen and silly and the discovery that it’s the 26th explains the hordes. One month. I’d lay odds that their sales have quadrupled. There’s no prison ambiance, the bullet holes barely visible, the food apart from the biryani mostly indifferent and the service beyond shite, as the kitchen and wait staff collectively collapse under the sentimental solidarity. I feel nothing except for recurring pangs of hunger, nostalgia with the music and a bemused irritation at the wait staff. This sucks.
Ba points out that the last time he was here, was with Aashish and Rahul. The menfolk making serious dents in the pitchers of draft and plates of oily biryani, running up a bill of hundreds, while the women wallowed in the luxurious service, yellowtail carpaccio with Yuzu, soft shell crab rolls and chocolate mango tarts at Wasabi down the road, racking it up by the thousands. Leopold’s and the Taj. Evenly split. Our family. Could’ve been us boosting sales at Leo’s a month later….
To borrow Khush’s words, “Homage paid, enough done…not coming back here.” Neither am I.