At Viceroy

It was a weekday, late afternoon, I decided to head to Viceroy’s coffee shop by myself for a cuppa tea over a novel. The coffee shop was quite and deserted, as predicted for that time of the day. Braced with my thoughts and my novel, I got seated by the lake view. As my tea arrived, I was sipping it and enjoying every bit of it. Then the waiter, shyly walks over to me and excuses himself for interrupting me, but he had a question that he wanted to ask me. I said go ahead.

He asked me if I was a columnist or restaurant critic for any news paper.

I constrained my elated alter ego with great struggle and asked him why did he think I was a columnist or restaurant critic.

He continued to say “you are by yourself, reading a book and carefully noting something down, so I had to ask”. I went along with it and replied “even if I was one, I cant tell you that”. He then apologized for his brief interruption and excused back to his world. But there I was sipping my tea and felt like a renowned under cover journalist, giving a review to that coffee shop.

I completely forgot about this enchanting memory from couple of years ago, until this morning over our hot chai, V brought up something about “Taj Banjara”.