Tuesday, December 04, 2007

At Least He Was Honest

It’s time to get back to blogging -- even if all I have to offer you today is a small snippet.

The other day, a bunch of us had gone to one of these small dhabas next to our office. The food in our office cafeteria is unworthy even to puke out -- so such places run a thriving business. We sat down at an empty (and surprisingly clean) table and tried to decide on what to order. (This, most of you’ll will agree, is an NP-Complete problem.)

Finally we settled on an order and summoned one of the waiters -- a young lad of about 12. He hurried to our table, pen and pad in hand, looking ready to jot down anything we could throw at him. One of us started calling out our order, one dish after the other. He didn’t put any of it to paper but instead, I could see each name was adding a further ounce of confusion and befuddlement to his face. After about four dishes he was completely lost.

“See,” I started kindly. “You have a pen and paper. Why don’t you just write down the order? There’s no way you’ll retain the entire thing in your mind.”

He just gives me a shyish smile.

“What’s the matter?”, I asked.

“Sir, I don’t know how to write!”

The mystery of why he was toting a pen and paper around may never be solved.

5 comments:

"A"ustin said...

welcome back :-)


..about the post....well ....i dont think it should be labeled 'funny'


we're so involved with what we have ....that things such as these seem insignificant to us....and yet we dont know what we can do.

screw labor laws.... screw life as it is.


.....and we'll go back to our lives (and to our order)


i dont know if i'm making any sense....it's too late in the day for that :-)

FifthBeatle said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
FifthBeatle said...

"a":- When it comes to child labor (and I think that's one of the things that you're trying to get at), I find it hard to believe that it's all bad. Okay - he's a child, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't be allowed (note: "allowed" not "forced") to work if he wants to!

Illiteracy is a bigger problem, and one that we obviously need to solve. Ideally, he'd be going to school and then working at this place at the same time - if need be.

But should all this stop it from being "funny"?

Hmm... Don't know! :|

RT .. hXc?LqD said...

welcome back!
maybe i should take a cue from this and get back to blogging myself!

Mulling Over My Thoughts said...

it was humorous, more of the suppandi genre!!!
and we need to stop dissecting humour so often... wonder why people get so serious about everything that sometimes they forget to laugh and prefer to languish in pity instead!

hehehe, now im being piteous!!!