Turn Off The Drill or We are Leaving!

(L-R) top row - Shifa, Jody, Alan, Sarah, Adam
bottom row - Sue, me, Anita (Notice it is March and there are still  holiday  decorations

Last night we all got together at Lyons, our default, Indian restaurant in Sector 17 to have our final group dinner before we starting peeling off and going our separate ways today. Anita is the first to leave, then a larger group on Saturday, and then the rest next week some time.

From our perspective, since we have not seen otherwise, Lyons is considered a "nice" restaurant. It is located in their "premier" brand section of a strip shopping center that is their "Rodeo Drive." It was probably built in the 80s and has an all-white interior with marble floors, a white and chrome railing leading to the upstairs fancy bar, and  back lit marble panels on the floor and walls to give it an expensive kinda sheen.

(L-R) Sue, Adam, Shifa, Alan, Anita, Jody, Sarah-

It serves fancy Indian food at affordable prices ( $6-8) an entree, and ,lots of waiters who bobble their heads and pretend to understand you even though they are really clueless regarding speaking English. Let's be clear, it is really our responsibility to learn Hindi, but still, if you are going to appeal to tourists, shouldn't you have at least one person who understands English? But in all fairness, it is mostly a restaurant that appeals to business men who have expense accounts and upscale professional class families who are there for special occasions.

So we sit down and as we are served drinks, we hear what sounds like the loud whirring of a mixer, but it is unusually loud. We ask what it is and they mention lime soda drinks so we just let it go, assuming it is the mixer. But after a few minutes, the sound becomes more intrusive and we realize that it is a power drill and that they are doing construction in the bar upstairs.

It is so typical India to have this kind of collision of cultural expectations. We are sitting down for what we think is going to be a nice, quiet dinner, and they are probably ecstatic that the construction guy finally showed up to fix the problem upstairs. If it is anything like we have experienced, it can take days to complete a one-hour appointment.

Anyway, we ask that they please stop the drilling during dinner so we can hear ourselves think, much less talk, and they say, "yes mom, we are so sorry, just a few minutes."

The drilling continues. I tell the waiter we will leave in one minute if the drilling is not stopped.

"Oh no mom, we will stop the drilling."

Drilling stops, we are served first course.

Drilling starts again....our table is vibrating it is so loud.

I go over to the manager and tell him if they don't stop the drilling, then this party of eight is going to leave their meals on the table and we are not going to pay for what we have ordered, and the owner will be very unhappy with the bill.  I point to the door and let my fingers do the walking as we say in America, when we want to show someone we are planning to walk!

Dinner is served.
Drilling stops...........
Sheesh...
Dinner over
There are lots of things I will miss about India.
Drilling over dinner is not one of them.