Vijay Sharma is a legend in the cafes lining the little enclave behind the Jahandigar Art Gallery in Bombay, India. He is, by profession, a Maître de, and in the way that only India (with its long history of caste) can produce, he is the consummate Maître de, the son of the son of the son of a Maître de, his family, perhaps, dating in that line of work all the way back to the Maharajas. To those who know him, the image of Vijay in sash-and-turban commanding the affairs of a royal table is not hard to conjure up. Who better to do it? In all of Bombay there is no one like him!
Vijay is fifty, tall, trim, and svelte in his impeccable blue suit as he stands by the door greeting customers like long-lost friends. He knows the names of his regulars and the names of their parents and children and their distant relations in New York and London and Sidney and Dubai. He will recall their favorite dishes and where they like to sit, who likes mild and who likes spicy, who can't stand to be seated next to smokers, who doesn't like to be under an air conditioner, and what someone ordered for dessert at a birthday celebration a decade ago. In return, many of these same customers knew Vijay's father, and a few even recall his grandfather, and Vijay's familial presence is one of the many reasons they frequent the Copper Kettle. They sigh and observe, "Thank God some things never change. There is at least one place in Bombay that—no matter what—will treat you right."
Vijay may be praised for his memory, his ability to multi-task, for transforming from gracious host to demanding boss in the click and swish of a kitchen door, but Vijay is especially renowned for his unflappable poise. There is no dish so spoiled, no crockery so smashed, no bill so mis-tabulated, no spill or stain or snag or tear so severe, that the smooth orbit of his mood is disrupted by so much as a hair's width. And (even more remarkable) in all his years of service, there has not been a single customer so rude, insulting, demanding, or disgruntled as to alter Vijay's professional demeanor in the slightest way. In fact, it is at the moment when all eyes are on him that Vijay is at his best.
There has been much speculation as to how Vijay keeps his composure. Some credit meditation. Others say that the secret is a strict vegetarian diet. One rumor concerned a silver flask with an exotic alcohol-and-opiate mixture. Yet another rumor—fuelled by a reporter for the Times—claimed that Vijay came from a long line of enlightened yogis, and he offered to help Vijay write a self-help book on the art of self-control. How to BE Like the Maître De. When asked his secret Vijay responds with his trademark Mona Lisa smile. If pressed on the issue, he will blush and say, "The secret in my grandfather's magic potion." That quits the question with a round of laughter.
Except that, well, there may actually be a magic potion.
Arjun Mahajan is 82 and has worked at the Copper Kettle for 71 years, beginning as a pot-scrubber in the alley and rising to busboy, kitchen assistant, cook, and finally, as he became increasingly arthritic, to bartender. He is the oldest employee of the Copper Kettle and, as such, is counted upon to retell various incidents in the restaurant's (and Vijay's, and his father's, and his father's-father's) history. Many of these incidents, of course, deal with various difficult customers and always circle back to Vijay's (or his predecessors') legendary self control and rumors about the magic potion.
The existence/non-existence of the potion was debated even when Arjun was a boy. In those days, Vijay's father, Suhas, was Maître de, and he also was praised for his grace under pressure. But squatting over a bucket of soapy water in the alley behind the building, Arjun was in no position of observe Suhas closely. And later on in the kitchen—sweating over a glowing charcoal brazier—Arjun had a better view of the restaurant, but was always too overworked to pay close attention. Finally, as bartender, Arjun had more time and closer proximity to Vijay, although that brought him no closer to a definitive answer. As he neared retirement, he became obsessed with Vijay's secret. It was an obsession that went beyond the simple desire for an answer. For 71 years of his miserable, poverty-afflicted life, Arjun worked, ate, and slept—for what? He wanted to know, Are our labors in vain? Are men good, or evil? Is reality real, or is it a mere parlor trick? Arjun was certain that if he could he could solve the riddle of the Vijay question, he would have found the final piece to life's puzzle. He would know whether his own humble existence was a lesson or a sham. And today he was blessed with the holy vision.
It took a rare combination of factors. First, the night before, Arjun fell on the way home from work and turned his ankle, and he was so hobbled that the bar manager allowed Arjun to sit all night at the bar. Second, the Kettle was unnaturally slow, even for a Thursday. And third, perhaps feeling his mortality, Arjun was in a particularly reflective mood. Relaxing at the bar, he relived in his mind many of the restaurant's most famous episodes. And then, this very night, there appeared at the door a particularly irksome customer.
Ask Jerome Urban about his bad day and it would start two weeks ago with the hellacious thirty-hour flight from LA to Hong Kong to Bangkok to Bombay and the bad airline food and the lousy choice of ‘in flight entertainment.' Add to that the deluxe room that wasn't deluxe, the AC that didn't work, the heat, the humidity, the mosquitoes, the traffic, the maddening shoulder-to-shoulder, jam-packed stench of the place, the parasites that nagged his intestines, the cab drivers who cheated him shamelessly, and the beggars that practically picked his pockets, and you had a man at the boiling point. And that very day, two weeks of negotiations with his oldest and most trusted steel supplier collapsed—a ten-million dollar order dismissed with a "We don't need your business, Mr. Urban." He had left his suit coat in the conference room, his laptop in the cab. He left his American Express card at the travel agent's office where he tried to change his tickets home and found that all flights were full for another week. And then, walking down the road from Colaba towards the little enclave where he could at least get a good meal and an honest shot of whiskey, a man with a vegetarian sandwich bumped into him and plastered the front of Jerome's shirt with ketchup. The avalanche had begun long before Jerome walked through the cast-bronze-and-glass front doors of the Copper Kettle and said to the man in the blue suit, "One, please."
Vijay looked Jerome over calmly and professionally. He indicated that Jerome should take a seat upstairs. Jerome nodded and huffed off. Unfortunately, unknown to either of them (as the night was especially slow), and there was not a single customer in the upstairs section, the upstairs waiters had slipped into the alley to smoke a chillum of hash, where high and forgetful, they immersed themselves in a game of dice.
Jerome found a table by the balcony and had a perfect view of the goings on—the customers coming in and being greeted and seated graciously, the drinks poured, the baskets of appetizers arriving, the wait staff, solicitous and punctilious, taking orders, serving meals. And he watched, and he watched, and he watched. And he checked his watch and he watched some more.
Perhaps it was the odd quiet night that allowed Vijay to let down his usual, multi-tasking, vigilant guard and forget the rumpled, sweaty, coatless man with the red smear down the front of his shirt who he had shunted off to the upstairs balcony. It was, after all, nearly nine—the hour when the restaurant should have been hopping, should have been firing on all eight cylinders. But it wasn't hopping, it wasn't firing on all eight cylinders, and Vijay would not forget the man who suddenly appeared in front of him, fists clenched, shouting, "Is there something the matter with me? Take a good look at me? Do you not want me in your restaurant? If there's something wrong with me, you tell me to my face and I'll gladly go elsewhere."
Vijay immediately grasped the situation—the errant red-eyed waiters crouched over their dice in the alley, the solitary man shunted off to a quiet section and forgotten. The waiters could be dealt with later. For now, with every eye in the restaurant fixed upon him, Vijay had to be at his best. And Arjun watched the whole thing from his barstool five meters away.
Vijay nodded deferentially to Jerome and said, "Of course, not, sir. I am so sorry! The fault is mine. We are glad to have you here," and seated Jerome at the nearest table, the one right by the front door. Vijay snapped his fingers and instantly there were peanuts and crackers and a plate of bread. One waiter poured water while another proffered menus. "May I offer you a complimentary drink, sir, on the house?" Vijay asked. And he rushed to the bar and, practically under Arjun's nose, poured Jerome a whiskey-and-lime soda.
Vijay took Jerome's order, suggesting house specialties. He gave precise instructions to the cooks. He hovered over Jerome's table making certain all was well. He brought extra napkins. He kept Jerome's water glass full. He brought Jerome a copper bowl of hot lime water for Jerome to wash his fingers when the meal was done. Vijay brought Jerome a brownie and a cup of ice cream for dessert—also on the house. He packaged Jerome's leftovers for takeaway. He counted Jerome's change twice and refused a tip. And when Jerome left, Vijay offered to find him a cab. He opened the door for Jerome, apologized again, that look of hurt sincerity in his eyes as Jerome left. He followed Jerome a short distance down the street, shooing away the little street urchins who hang around begging for leftovers. If the Prime Minister had been his guest, Vijay couldn't have treated him better.
Everyone in the restaurant saw. Customers and employees alike shook their heads and asked, "How does he do it?" Surely his father and grandfather looked down from heaven and smiled!
Arjun sat in stunned silence.
As the restaurant neared closing, and the employees gossiped among themselves about the events of the night, Arjun whispered to the headwaiter, "I saw it!" and after work, the staff gathered in the alley behind the Copper Kettle and waited for Arjun to explain.
Late, Arjun creeps out, waits for the group to fall silent, and then tells the story. The rush to the bar. The pouring of the drink. The sleight of hand.
When he has finished they are incredulous. "So he puts a potion in his drink?" they ask.
"Not his drink," Arjun insisted, "the customer's drink!"
They make sour faces and move away.
"But I'm telling you," Arjun pleads, "I saw it with my own eyes. I was only this far away." He gestures with the finger and thumb of his right hand.
"Get some glasses, old man," a cook tells him.
"It's getting time for you to retire," says a waiter.
"You're getting batty," says a busboy.
How could Arjun explain? He was certain of it. The hand that strayed to the coat pocket, the fingers that struggled with something—a stopper, perhaps—the quick pass over the drink...
They shake their heads. The let down is worse than disappointment—it's an assault on their hero. An insult. "How could that possibly keep him calm?" They ask. "No," they say. "We won't hear of it." In a few minutes, they have left Arjun alone with no one but the deaf boy who wipes up spills.
On closing, Vijay catches a cab to his little flat where his wife waits and watches television. His oldest son, Ram, will be buried in his school books. Ram is not keen about the restaurant—he wants to be a computer engineer. But Vijay still holds out hope for Gurudas, his youngest. The little one will be lounging near the front door and will run to his father and search Vijay's pockets for sweets (which he always finds).
Vijay will greet his family with that same implacable smile he wears at work. He will kiss his wife and ruffle his sons' hair, and then, in the sanctity of his bath, he will wash leisurely and change into his pajamas. He will lay out his suit for his wife to take to the cleaners and make certain that tomorrow's suit is pressed and prepared. And on nights like tonight he takes from a little safe behind the nightstand a small glass vial of amber fluid. He checks the stopper to make certain it will not leak. Satisfied, he places the vial in the inside pocket of his suit coat.
And after particularly difficult nights—like tonight—Vijay sees his sons off to bed; makes sure they are covered and comfortable. He remembers his father checking on him the same way, sitting on the edge of his bed telling stories of how his grandfather and his great-grandfather both served under and fought the British. "You must," his father said, "make their lives truly unbearable. Smile and nod and yes, sahib your way into their trust. It makes the pain of the poison all the more unbearable, for though they suspect, they cannot accuse." Someday Vijay will teach his sons the formula. There is an art to keeping your poise when others abuse you. The potion is bitter. But revenge...ah, we all know that revenge is so very sweet.
Jerome lay on the cool marble floor of his not-so-deluxe hotel bathroom. He'd shit so much he plugged the toilet and now alternately sweated and shivered, his guts wrenching. The stench of his excrement was enough to make him nauseous—a nasty, bitter, chemical smell; the kind of death-signaling odor that could peel the paint off walls. He wondered if they could smell it in the hallway. He shut his eyes as another spasm wracked his intestines. Bloody India, he thought, I am never coming back.
Melvin Sterne earned his Doctorate in English from Florida State University and teaches writing and literature at the American University of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He travels extensively in Asia and Eastern Europe, often writing about his "unlikely" experiences. There is more truth to this story than he would like to admit (or you, fellow traveler, might like to believe). Other fiction has appeared in Natural Bridge, Blue Mesa Review, Crucible, Reed Magazine, South Carolina Review, Watchword, Willow Springs, Kaleidoscope, and other journals, and won awards in writing contests at several universities and/or journals. "Poise" is his 20th published short story.
Comments (closed)
essence
2010-04-19 09:23:27
your story is mad long i can't read it until i know what it is aboutr can you shed some light on that subject please
JPenton
2010-04-19 19:28:37
Alternative, "essence," maybe you could just go find a dumber web site for dumber people.
Don Bagley
2010-04-21 12:50:27
The story is well worth staying, it gathers momentum as it proceeds Nice
admira
2010-05-24 09:43:37
This story is undoubtely worthy of being read meticulously and delved into over and over again. It conveys an invaluable message to the seekers of the tranquility of human soul.It is food for thought, heart and soul. The language is plain though concerned with the uttermost misteries of life, which makes it so readable and appealing to me as a reader. This story is a nugget of information for everyone who feels steeped in the world of tarnished values, endeavouring to get the insight into human existence, or at least, nonexistence...
Kris Aithal
2010-06-02 03:47:52
I would be more sympathetic towards someone who shows incomprehension of the meaning of the story, having been one who moved from the initial state of confusion to a state of clearer perception and understanding. I look at the story as a kind of jadu,--to use the local expression-- magic. Like a jadugar, a magician, who puts something in a black box and pulls out something else by sleight of hand, Melvin Sterne mesmerizes the reader by his vivid description of characters, setting, and action. Just as Arjun, the character in the story, a careful reader gets a quick glimpse of how the performer plays the trick, but would be hard put to explain it. Even if he/ she attempted to do it, nobody would have, perhaps, listeners and they would meet the same fate as Arjun’s. Who would be interested in the analysis of the properties of color, smell, specific gravity, taste, etc of whatever Vijay Sharma puts in the drink? We have witnessed its power—the thing plays a charm on many customers, causes violent bowel movement on some others to the point that they would never return to India, and it throws the British out of the country—and we are impressed and ask no more. The part of the power lies in the secrecy surrounding the potion. The shroud of mystery adds to the beauty of the story. Sterne’s narrative has cast a spell on me and I am inclined to believe that it does on others, if it takes a little while for a few to discover it.