The little girl dropped a fork, then a glass of water, then hit her head on the table and started to bawl. The restaurant was half full with couples of all ages who’d come to relax over a lazy Sunday lunch. Every one of them had a glass of wine, or champagne, before them. They had ordered salads and pastas and braised prawns and asparagus. And they were upset that a nasty child was ruining their afternoon. (Many had probably left their own youngsters at home.)
The child’s mother ignored the hysterical screaming and crying. One of the group of four women shouted across the restaurant demanding a sheet of paper for the child to draw on. Then she shouted again for a glass of cola. And then once more for a pail of ice. She — their whole table — appeared unmindful of the glares from the diners around them.
While the mother ignored the wailing child and one luncheon companion chose to shout their orders to the waiter when he was at the farthest point from their table, the woman in white slacks talked incessantly into her mobile phone. “No,” she said, “the decorators haven’t finished yet.” “No,” she continued, “I haven’t forgiven the b*****d for walking out on me.” “No,” she shouted, “I can’t go to Paris for a holiday this year, I’ve just been divorced, remember!”
The fourth quarter consisted of a woman in a red T-shirt who, if it was at all possible, talked louder and longer than her lunching companions. “We’ve got a time-share in Goa,” she said, “just off the beach.” “The idiot,” she talked on, “wanted a villa in the hills, but I’m allergic to mountains. I signed for Goa, and now we spend two months a year there, though it means,” she tittered, “we have to hire our own apartment because all we’re allowed is two weeks. The” — she fumed — “crooks!”
I was alone, my dining companion a half-hour late, and I probably shouldn’t have, but when one of them was demanding crayons from across the room for the child, and the white slacks had got around to discussing the personal and shockingly vile habits of her former husband, and the red T had informed the whole restaurant how she had brought back a truckload of Goa sand for a theme party at her Delhi farmhouse, out of a sense of desperation I asked the maître’d for a scribble pad and pencil “I presume you’re enjoying your day out,” I wrote, “but so are some of us. Which is why we’d appreciate it if you’d keep the child quiet, and talk softly among yourselves. Besides, talking on cell phones in restaurants is rude.” A waiter took the note across to the group of four.
The sudden silence should have been a warning. The chit passed between them all. They looked up at the waiter, who pointed at me. I smiled back at them, and then bent over the menu. Sibilant whispers and furtive conversation followed. The child was smacked for some impropriety, but though it induced tears, unnerved by the quiet, she too remained silent.
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I was deciding between the tenderloin steak and the pan-smeared pomfret (I had been requested by my guest to place our orders) when the ominous click-clack of sandals picked up pace and stopped somewhere in the vicinity of my table. “You,” admonished the T-shirt, “are so abominably rude.” “You tell the f****r!” shouted the white slacks, taking a respite from talking on the mobile. “Wait for me,” said the child’s mother, and rushing across to join her friend, deliberately or inadvertently managed to empty the entire contents of a jug of water across my kurta.
They stayed, I left. Moral of the story: Mind your effing business.