Small, medium or large

I went to Nirula's for a while today. I ordered hot chocolate fudge. It was when I was sitting and enjoying my hot chocolate fudge, that I heard a singularly remarkable conversation.

The conversation was taking place between a potential customer and the cashier. The customer, evidently inexperienced when it came to ordering fast food, took one look at the menu and asked the cashier, "Small kya hota hain?" The cashier, initially taken aback, slowly recovered and masterfully came back with, "Small chhota hota hain." The customer, seemingly not satisfied with this answer, shot back, "Kitna chhota?" Now this left the cashier quite confused, and it took him a while, after which, unable to come up with anything better, he once again repeated, "Small chhota hota hain." The customer, at this point of time realized that he was not going to get much more out of the cashier on this particular topic. So he moved on to the next subject on his agenda.

"Large kya hota hain?", he said. The cashier, by now familiar with the routine, said, "Large bada hota hain." The potential customer thought for a while, and probably realized the futility of his next question. So he jumped on to a totally new subject.

"Medium kya hota hain?" The cashier, I am sure, was expecting this question, so he said without a moment's hesitation, "Medium beech ka hota hain." This seemed to satisfy the potential customer, and he said, "Phir mujhe ek beech ka de do." So the cashier promptly entered something at his computer terminal, and a minute later handed the puzzled customer a rectangular piece of coloured paper.

"Yeh kya hain?" said the customer, feeling quite sure there had been a mistake. He had ordered food, and here he was being offered a sheet of paper. So the cashier tried to explain to him how he was to go about procuring the food he had come for. After a somewhat lengthy explanation, the man left the counter, only to be recalled and gently reminded, "Paise to de dijiye." This, I was happy to see, made some sort of sense to the man, and he paid up, although not before remarking, "Mujhe to pata hi nahin tha ki paise khane se pehle dene hain."

This brought the unusual conversation to an end. The customer went and sat at one of the tables, and kept sitting for quite some time, before one of the men at the counter had to personally come and tell him that his order was ready.

Moving on to the more important things in life. I started playing Caesar III yesterday, after a hiatus of about 3 years. I quite enjoyed it. The fact that I am enjoying playing Caesar III does not say much about the excitement levels in my life, considering all there is to the game is building lots of houses, and waiting for people lugging carts to come and settle in these houses. The only other thing you have to do in the game besides building houses and waiting for cart-carrying people is saving your game and building a few temples occasionally.

In completely unrelated news, I went to LSR today, at the insistence of one of my friends, to attend a concert that the Western Music Society of LSR was putting up as an antecedent to their annual fest, Tarang, which starts on Friday. It was called, quite predictably, 'The Winter Concert'. It was a very well put up performance. The songs were absolutely amazing, the best one, in my opinion, being a wonderful French song, the exact name of which I don't remember right now. Lots of great music. Lots of pretty girls. It was totally worth being called Aditya Goel for an evening. Not that I like being spoken to as Aditya Goel, but given a choice between being called Aditya Goel for an evening, and not going to an LSR Western Music Society concert, I would definitely choose the former.

The next few days are going to be hectic. Tomorrow I start with my formal driving lessons (I already know how to drive, but my parents refuse to get me a license until I take formal lessons.), and my mom's holidays start day after tomorrow. Which means that day after tomorrow onwards the bulk of my time is going to be spent in accompanying my mother to relatives' houses, and lifting heavy grocery. But I am not complaining. I do have lots of interesting stuff planned out for the following week.

Life, ladies and gentlemen, surprisingly, continues to look good.