MY FRIDAY BLUES @ ORANGE HARA

My hand clock was showing perfect 5 of the evening as I browsed through the racks in a bookstore at Mumbai Airport. I realized that now its time for me to leave this scholarly stopover to board my flight for Delhi, suddenly my phone rang. As I picked the call, person at the other end congratulated me for winning the ‘Star Entrepreneurship Award 2010’ (reason of my presence in Mumbai) before I could say thanks for his gesture, the line got disconnected due to network congestion. I tried calling him back but couldn’t get through.

The weather forecast informed that the rain god is happy on Delhi and pouring generously due to which my flight got delayed by 20 minutes. Still, I boarded my flight at 5:45 pm. While back in Delhi, my team was all geared to give a warm welcome on my achievement, they managed their way through unwieldy traffic jams and water-filled potholes on roads to receive me at the airport.  On coming out from the arrival terminal, they spotted me with a trophy in the hand and rhythmically congratulated in a thunderous voice following which everybody present was staring at us.   

As we settled ourselves in the car, they all started demanding the party which I promised. After few minutes of discussion, we zeroed down ‘Saket’ as our next stopover, reason being the plethora of eateries it flocks. Though our plan was to go to ‘Kaustubh’ restaurant which serves all-vegetarian Chettinad cuisine, as my colleagues wanted to celebrate this day on a high and they don’t serve alcohol, we finally landed at its neighbor ‘Orange Hara’. On a fantastic Friday night, the place was under a deep stillness and lighting was melancholically dim. Unlike its moniker that spells ‘orange’ (surprisingly was missing from the scene), the restaurant has a fawn at the entrance, ebony decor with red and white lamp accents and a wall filled kitschy contemporary paintings.  On walking inside, the cut on our left leads to a small lounge area adjacent to the bar and highlighted by a huge mirror and low-leveled couches with marble tables.

However, we went head straight and rested ourselves on a sofa-chair table with a wine bottle in the middle. Greedily, we asked the attendant to bring the menu while one of us started fiddling with the bottle. Understanding our curiosity, when the waiter got us the menu, he informed us about the offer owing to which the bottle will only cost half the price. All of a sudden, one of us popped up the idea of having ‘Sangria’ tonight and following our conversation he said, “Sir, we can make ‘Sangria’ from this wine only”. At once, the proposal sounded interesting to me. But, when I checked the price of the Sangria pitcher in the menu, it was half of the bottle. Seeing that not everybody is interested in drinking it, I ordered from the menu. He went and came back after five minutes to inform, “We can’t serve Sangria as we don’t have fruits soaked overnight which are required for the drink”. We said to ourselves ‘why’? Few minutes before, he only took the initiative to make the drink and if they have something mentioned on the menu then they are liable to make it available to the customer.

Fumingly, I gave my visiting card and asked him to call the manager without further delay. Meanwhile, my photographer already started clicking the pictures of the venue, wine bottle and menu. He came back in an intimidating state and reported that they are getting our ‘Sangria’ pitcher within next 10 minutes and the manager will be seeing us shortly. Although, I was worried about the verity that how will they manage overnight soaked fruits. The question went unanswered. Nonetheless, we were no longer in a mood to have food and drinks here as our appetites were killed with this unlikely incidence.

We made a quick egress, filled our hungry tummies from the KFC next door and decided to call it a day with a plan to party on coming Saturday night, at the place where we get, what we want without using our veto power.

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