The Poori Thief

My Memoir Of My Struggle To Get Breakfast On May Day

Photo by Ashwini Chaudhary(Monty) on Unsplash

The picture above illustrates what I was up against as I tried to get a shot at breakfast on May Day: somebody in the process of swiping all the pooris before I could get at them.

The Background

We were on vacation at AR Thanga Kottai, a resort in Yelagiri, a hill station in Tamil Nadu, last week.

It was a typical bed-and-breakfast place, probably slightly worse than others.

They did the usual scam of ‘complimentary breakfast’. Think about it for a second. Why would somebody whose livelihood depends in part on selling food give away free food?

They don’t. It comes from what you pay. But due to the logistical challenges associated with assembling chefs and ingredients early in the morning, maybe the establishments aren’t sure of the quality of the fare they would be serving.

So, by falsely billing the meal as free, they can pre-empt customer complaints about having paid for bad food.

The Value Of Poori

As if to prove my preceding rant, the only thing good at the breakfast buffet was poori.

It was my practice to make a beeline for it as soon as I grabbed a plate. But on May Day, as I was almost upon the poori container, there was a woman who served herself what looked like a suspiciously large amount of it before closing the lid and sneaking away.

I wasn’t too bothered until I lifted the lid to see no pooris staring back at me. She had cleaned up all the pooris.

To add insult to injury, she had closed the lid only to buy some precious seconds to skulk away without any challenge, and she succeeded because now, I wasn’t sure which of the women around it was.

Not sure what else to do, I filled up half the plate with sagoo, grabbed some coffee and went to sit at the table to wait for the fresh pooris that my wife had asked the staff for.

The Steal

My wife kept a lookout for the fresh pooris and warned me as soon as she spied a waitress, who herself looked like a human poori, hurrying to dump the handful of fresh pooris into their receptacle.

I promptly went with my half-filled plate, ignoring my wife’s suggestion to grab a fresh plate as instinct warned me that these pooris would also be gone if I stopped for another plate.

I hurried to the poori container to see a man in front of me taking his own sweet time messing with the tongs meant to grab the pooris.

There was a woman who had interposed herself between the man and me. I wasn’t sure if this was the poori thief, but that instinct I alluded to warned me not to let her have a go at the pooris before me.

But if I waited for the guy to be done playing with tongs and serving himself, I didn’t see any way for me to go before her.

So, in a moment of inspiration, while the guy was still toying with the tongs, I reached my pre-sanitised hands and grabbed a couple of pooris for me and one for the wife.

The guy, still clumsily handling the tongs, looked at me and muttered what I thought was ‘uncivilised’.

I retreated in triumph as the guy was still trying to figure out the business end of the tongs.

As I cast a glance behind, I saw that the guy had finally managed the arduous achievement of serving a poori onto his plate and had abandoned the poori box to the tender cares of the woman.

My suspicion was confirmed when, in a fraction of the time it took the man to serve himself, she had stacked a jaw-dropping number of pooris onto her plate.

The Consolation

As I reached my table and kept a wary eye on the woman, I saw her alternate between her table, on which sat more ‘poori-like’ people, and one food container after another that she polished clean of their contents.

My only consolation was the thought that I had beaten such a seasoned food thief at her own game, swiping a few precious pooris right under her nose, a possibly unprecedented event in her career.