The Strange Dinner

"How can I help you, Sir?" asked the woman at the front desk. We were surprised by her question, because she had written down my name in the list of people waiting for dinner thirty minutes ago.

"I, er... you wrote down my name... you said there was a thirty to forty minute wait for dinner, and I said we'll come back and... the name's Banerji."

She glanced at her notebook. I could see my name had been scratched out. Clearly, she had thought we weren't coming back.

"Oh.. ah.. yes, yes! Please follow me." She showed us to an empty table for two. The time was around 9:20 p.m. Grant Village Restaurant closed at 10:00.

Soon, a waiter arrived to take our orders. "Hi, I'm Sam," he said. "What can I get for you tonight?" he asked, pouring us two glasses of water.

We were terribly hungry after our long day and we had already decided on our order. "Grilled trout and rice pilaf with steamed vegetables for both of us." I said. He wrote it down and went away.

Poulami and I sat and talked for some time. The restaurant was still quite crowded, even though empty tables could be seen here and there. "Would the order take long?" we wondered. We could see Sam serving other tables, but he seemed to be avoiding us. I signaled to him.

"Don't you serve dinner rolls with everything here?" The question was just a formality. It was written on the menu. 

"Yes Sir, we do."

"Can you please serve our rolls?"

"Actually Sir, the rolls are being warmed. They will be ready in three to five minutes." He went away.

We stared longingly at other people's tables. They had baskets full of dinner rolls, and baskets full of butter. "Well, at least we'll get the fresh warm ones." I told Poulami.

But the rolls didn't arrive. Five minutes passed. Then ten minutes passed. Then our food came. The main food, not the rolls. The portions were pathetically small. Whatever little rice they had served was just plain white rice. The "steamed vegetables" turned out to be half a dozen shriveled asparagus. We were aghast. It didn't look like food worth $23. I asked about the rolls again and were assured they would arrive soon as they were being warmed. Sam left again.

Then I looked at our dinner properly. The colour of the trout seemed suspiciously pink. I tasted a piece. It tasted exactly like salmon. Poulami agreed that it tasted like salmon. This was the last straw. Sam was nowhere in sight, so I called a nearby waitress.

"Do you find everything all right, sir?" she asked, surprised.

"No! Our waiter is ignoring us. We didn't get rolls. We didn't get the food we ordered. Nothing is all right." I barked. She fetched Sam. The subsequent conversations went somewhat like this.

"Sam, what did we order?"

"Rolls, Sir."

"No, what food did we order?"

"Trout."

"And what is this?"

"Trout, Sir."

"Are you sure this is not salmon?"

"Absolutely sure Sir. Would you like to talk to the chef?"

Now I am pretty confident about my ability to distinguish between fish, being a Bengali and all. But when it comes to calling a person a liar on their face on a fact which would be difficult to prove, I back out. So I said there was no need for the chef, just the rolls would be sufficient. Sam went away and returned with two rolls on two little plates.

Two rolls. On two side plates. One for each of us. Not a basket of rolls. No butter to accompany them. The rolls were cold, and pretty much the worst rolls that I have ever tasted. So much for the story about them being warmed.

I asked for butter. Sam vanished again. The chef showed up, grinning from ear to ear.

"I heard you're having difficulty believing that's trout?"

"Ah yes, I think this tastes like salmon."

"Actually, that's a type of trout called the red trout. The salmon comes without the skin on the fillet."

"Okay, I believe you. By the way, do you serve butter with your dinner rolls here?"

"Yes. Let me send you some butter." She left. Sam came back with a large plate heaped full of those little rectangular packs of butter that they give you at restaurants. It was a very weird way of serving, and I may have been imagining things at this point, but there was definitely an unsaid "Here's all the butter you can eat. Calm down now," hanging in the air.

We stopped complaining and tried to eat. We were still hungry by the time we finished everything. By 'everything' I mean the food and the rolls, of course, and not all the butter. We had also finished the water long ago, but nobody came to refill our glasses. We were too tired to complain. Since it was nearing closing time, it was too late to order anything else. And let's be honest, we hated everything about the place by this time. We knew we were being treated poorly; we just didn't know why.

We asked for the check. When Sam delivered the check, that question answered itself. The check was just for one order of grilled trout, not two. So they had judged us to be cheapskates who would order one entree and share it, and they had been behaving poorly towards us throughout the dinner because apparently that's how they treat people whom they judge to be cheapskates. Keeping aside the question of whether such behaviour was appropriate, we can say that we didn't even deserve that behaviour since we actually wanted to order two entrees and were hungry even now. I told Sam what had happened. I expected him to apologize, at the very least. I expected too much.

"Actually Sir, in English, when we say 'Grilled trout for both of us' it means split one order of trout for the two of us."

"You don't have to teach me English now, do you? This isn't the first time I'm ordering something at a restaurant."

"I wasn't trying to teach you anything Sir, I was just saying that the fault lies with both of us. Why didn't you say you had ordered two when I brought the food?"

"How was I supposed to know you had brought one order when you had split it equally into two parts? I thought maybe your portions were small."

He took away my credit card. When he brought it back with the receipt, I wrote down $0.00 for the tip, something I don't remember having done in a very long time.

"Open the trunk," Poulami said as I parked at our lodge. "I'll need to grab the cereal bars and bread and bananas for the night."

(To be continued...)

A Road Trip and a Speeding Ticket

Our approximate route

We are just back from our longest trip yet, and our first true road trip. Driving through eleven states, we visited four national parks and camped in three of them. We saw a full moon night on the prairie, a meteor shower over a coniferous forest and a total solar eclipse. We also saw a variety of wildlife ranging from bison to hummingbirds. In all, I drove nearly 5000 miles (8000 km) in 17 days.

My trip meter resets to 0 after crossing 999. So that's 4908.4 miles

When did we plan this trip? It is actually hard to point to one particular date, but bits and pieces of this trip were planned over many months. For instance, I had wanted to see the total solar eclipse on August 21 from St. Louis when I first heard about it about a year ago. The meteor shower always peaks on August 11 or August 12 and I try to be at a national park when that happens. The fact that it was just ten days before the solar eclipse was a happy coincidence. Everything of course boiled down to the availability of lodging in Yellowstone National Park. Once we got that, five months before our trip, the rest fell into place neatly.

But more on that later. Now I'll narrate the story of my first speeding ticket.

We were driving from Grand Teton National Park to Salt Lake City on the ninth day of our trip. We were passing through the town of La Barge, Wyoming when we felt the need to fill up the gas tank and have some coffee. So we entered a gas station on the right side of the highway. After buying the gas and the coffee, we came out of the gas station, took a right turn on to the highway and was promptly aware of flashing red and blue lights behind me. I hadn't yet crossed the next block after entering the road, and I had no idea what my speed was, but I don't have one of those cars that can break the speed limit within two blocks of starting. I pulled over and rolled down my window.

An officer approached me. "Do you speak English?" he asked. On hearing I did, he informed me I was speeding. "Do you know what the speed limit is? Look out the window and see that sign there," he said.

I looked at that sign. It said 35. The officer informed me I was going at 45. I had no idea what my speed was, because I had barely started and hadn't really looked at the speedometer, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't 45 mph.

"It's 35 mph throughout the town. Where are you from?" the officer asked me.

"Illinois," I said.

"Which part of Illinois?"

"Lake Forest."

"Oh, I was in Springfield myself. Is this your car or rental car?"

"My car."

"OK. You sound like a nice guy. Here's what I'll do: normally this would be a $180 ticket, and it would go on your license, and your insurance premium would increase. But I'll write down you were doing 40 mph in a 35 mph zone, and then it will be only $70, and it won't affect your license and insurance premium. Does that sound good?"

I had to admit that it was sounding the best that anything could sound under the circumstances.

He took my license and wrote out a ticket. "Any questions?"

"Do I pay online?"

"No, you see that red building there? Just go there and pay right now, and you'll be good to go."

He told me to follow his car and I did. We parked in front of the little red building which was the courthouse. Two people were coming out who looked like outsiders. I wondered if they had received speeding tickets also. On our way in, he asked us again, where we were really from.

"India," I replied.

"Ah yes, India! I was just watching all those kids dying in the hospital on the news. How do you say 'thank you' in your language?"

I was seized by a desire to teach him a well-chosen expletive, but refrained and taught him the actual word. He cheerfully repeated it. He called out to the lady inside.

"Madam Clerk, here's another gentleman who would like to pay up front. Can you take care of him?"

The officer left. Madam Clerk, in the meantime, informed me I would have to pay 4% extra if I paid by credit card. I agreed and we completed the transaction. As we were leaving, we saw the officer had caught another speeder. The speed limit on the highway was 70, but it dropped to 45 for a block, then to 35 for 2-3 blocks, before rising to 45 for a block again and then going back to 70. Wikipedia tells me the town of La Barge has an area of 1.00 square mile and a population of 551. They must appreciate the extra business.

So now I have a speeding ticket in my portfolio, a ticket that says I was driving five miles above the posted speed limit. But more importantly, I have an experience that will definitely help me avoid such situations in future trips.

And now that's out of the way, I can talk about better memories from the trip in my next post.

A few words on racism

Dr. Annette Beck-Sickinger, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Leipzig, Germany, recently refused an internship to a male student from my country, India, citing the ‘rape problem’ in India as a reason and implied she would be endangering herself and other female members of her lab if she allowed him in. Although I am aware that the German Ambassador already wrote to her and expressed his views in unambiguous terms, I still write this blog post to say a few things that I wanted to say.

In her now-public e-mail to the Indian student above (a mail written in English so appalling that I was almost convinced for a moment that it was fake), Dr. Beck-Sickinger says that India has a rape problem. I wonder how she arrived at that conclusion. If she meant it in terms of numbers, then I have to admit that she does not understand numbers very well. Sheldon Cooper, a fictitious character in the popular American TV series The Big Bang Theory said recently, “The only math biologists know is, if you have three frogs and one hops away, you have two frogs.” While I have a lot of respect for biologists in general, it seems Dr. Beck-Sickinger is one of the biologists that Sheldon was basing his observation on. I do not know how she does her research, but the way I do it is by starting with Googling some information. Googling rape rates per 100,000 people in countries across the world, one finds that the number in India is just 2 in 100,000. Wikipedia says, 

“Adjusted for population growth over time, the annual rape rate in India has increased from 1.9 to 2.0 per 100,000 people over 2008-2012 period. This compares to a reported rape rate of 1.2 per 100,000 in Japan, 3.6 per 100,000 in Morocco, 4.6 rapes per 100,000 in Bahrain, 12.3 per 100,000 in Mexico, 24.1 per 100,000 in United Kingdom, 28.6 per 100,000 in United States, 66.5 per 100,000 in Sweden, and world's highest rate of 114.9 rapes per 100,000 in South Africa.”

So if these 2 rapes out of 100,000 make India a country with a rape problem, what do the 28.6 rapes per 100,000 make the USA? What about UK with 24.1 rapes per 100,000? Does she deny internships to students from these countries too? How about Sweden with 66.5 rapes per 100,000? When she says female professors across Europe are planning to deny entry to Indian students (something she mentions in her email), does she consider Sweden and UK part of Europe? Or are rules different for dark-skinned people from third-world countries?

(It may be worth mentioning here that another biologist who confirms Sheldon's observation is none other than the famous Richard Dawkins. He tweeted about India having a culture of rape without bothering to check the numbers, and then hastily deleted it when the numbers were pointed out to him.)

Does this mean I am trivializing those two cases out of 100,000? Not at all. In a country of over 1.2 billion people, 2 out of 100,000 means a lot of rapes – about 25,000 rapes per year. But that number, while still about 25,000 more than what it ideally should be, is a mere 0.4% of the six million Jewish people Dr. Beck-Sickinger's countrymen killed during the Holocaust. Does that then make Germany a country with a genocide problem? I would like to know if Dr. Beck-Sickinger was ever denied entry into any country saying there are a lot of Jewish people in that country, and it would be dangerous for them if she was allowed into the country.

Actually I already know the answer - she wasn't. Because while she is a racist, most educated and civilized people aren't so. In the modern world, an act of judging a person based on his or her country, religion, gender or race is punishable by law, or at least severely frowned upon. This basic point somehow seems to have been totally lost on Annette while she was receiving big degrees and diplomas from reputed universities.

India has a diverse population of people from all countries, races and religions, and we do not have a culture of judging people based on their race and country of origin. Today, as the whole world is trying to progress towards attaining equality for all human beings, Annette sits like a frog in her well and denies entry to a prospective scientist on the basis of his race. Not because he is bad at science, or because that he himself is a rapist, but because he comes from a country which she feels has a rape problem. As a result, she has brought shame to all Germans, and to researchers and professors all over the world. She claims to speak for other professors across Germany and Europe, but I doubt that they would like to have her as their spokesperson. For instance, Jakob de Roover, a professor from Belgium, opposed Annette's views publicly.

Of course, some of my own countrymen have endorsed Annette's opinion. Ever since BBC released an illegally made documentary interviewing the convicts of the 2012 Delhi rape case on YouTube, some left-liberal pseudo-secular creatures on my Facebook friendlist have started denouncing all Indian men as rapists. One of them took this opportunity to get some free publicity and Facebook likes for her profile and argued that the racist actions of Dr. Annette Beck-Sickinger were justified. She went so far as to say all Indian men currently abroad should be sent back to India immediately since all of them were responsible for the rape culture of India. When I confronted her on this and started an argument on her Facebook wall, I was obviously called insensitive. Her so-called educated friends even came and tried saying that it was "natural" to think India has a rape problem and the German professor cannot be blamed for thinking that way.

I do not want to go into the details of the documentary here, although I strongly object to the manner in which it depicted Indian men. Whether it should have been made is a debate that can go on, but this post is not about the documentary. When I see a documentary about 9/11, I do not automatically go and judge all Muslim men. When I see a documentary about 26/11, I do not say all Pakistani men are terrorists. I got mugged on the street, not once but thrice, by black men, and yet I don't think all black men are criminals. And this woman has the audacity to question all Indian men (probably based on the interview of a convicted criminal) while she hails from the country that started two world wars and wiped out two out of every three Jewish people in Europe. She did issue a half-hearted apology after her emails became public and she was criticized all over the world. The standard stuff - it was taken out of context... I'm sorry if I hurt someone... blah blah blah. One would have thought she would have been a little better at apologizing, given her education and all, but evidently, education isn't enough.

Annette Beck-Sickinger's actions somehow remind me of Hitler's denouncement of Jewish scientists including Albert Einstein. I could have written pages about it, but what is the point? I could go on to say that Germans haven't learnt their lesson from history and are making the same mistakes again, but then I would be no better than her. As the German ambassador's mail clearly shows, all Germans do not share her views. In fact, I am sure most Germans do not share her views. So I will end this post with the hope that she mends her racist ways and stops judging people by their nationality or race. What good is a biologist who does not believe in the equality of all human beings?