Intermission on the Jaipur Delhi Route

The bus stopped at RTDC Midway and the bus conductor announced that the bus would stop only for 20 minutes. I was secretly hoping the bus wouldn't stop anywhere between Jaipur and New Delhi as I had to catch a flight that same night. There were a lot of shops next to each other housed in a big complex. There were shops selling toys, memorablia from Rajasthan. One especially notable was the shop selling the katputli or the puppet.  It is also the name of a place bang in the middle of the line drawn from Jaipur to New Delhi. And, this line happens to be National Highway 8.

All my fears of missing my flight were pushed aside as soon as I saw the colourful shops selling colourful things. I really wanted to buy, but, posed with the fact that I had to lug it around for another 5 days before I reached home made me decide against buying. I even asked the price of a Rajasthani doll hoping he would quote very high so that I can reject the idea of buying. The price he quoted and if I bought it or not is a mystery which you will never get to know.

Five minutes passed thus and I realized I was hungry. I rushed to the cafe and ordered for a sandwich. The place has many things on offer - all kinds of Dosas, ice creams, rotis, rice, soft drinks, even soups and hot chocolate! The options were too many to process in the given time. I took the easier route of ordering what the person in front of me ordered. I also had seen a couple of people eating sandwiches and I had made up half my mind as I saw them when I was walking to the counter. The Delhi guy behind the counter who was issuing the tokens was quite rough and rude. The conversation went thus:

Me: Ek sandwich dijiye (Give me a sandwich)
He: *kd8e9*? ( I didn't understand what he asked)
Me: Haan. Veg. (Pretending to understand)
after 30 seconds
Me: Grilled sandwich milega? (do you get grilled sandwich?)
He: Aap ne toh nahin bola! (You said you don't want when I asked before!)

And the bill that you see is the result of my pretending to understand. A bill with the original order corrected. After a full 5 minutes, I enjoyed my sandwich watching Australia lose Ponting's wicket with 144 on the board against Zimbabwe in the 2011 cricket world cup.Wait. That didn't come out right. I enjoyed Zimbabwe getting Ponting's wicket while eating the sandwich.