Rambabu ke Parathe

My first job had taken me to Indore, a city of about 1.5 million people, slightly to the left of the middle of India. Even though Wikipedia lists it as the 147th largest city in the world, Indore behaved like a small town - the people were very polite, nice, helpful and friendly, the streets were crowded, but the people were patient. People talked to each other and smiled.

Indore is famous, among other things for its food. This is an anecdote about one of these excellent eating places that dot the city.

Whiling away our time after office one day, me and NP chanced upon a new eating place that had opened close to our office. It was called Rambabu ke Parathe. Both of us liked parathe and so we decided to dine there the following afternoon. The place seemed nice, the smells were good and above all, in contrast to most places that we generally ate in where the menu followed an ancient oral tradition, passed down through generations of waiters, this place had a printed, laminated multi-page booklet listing the fare.

By force of habit, I have to read the complete menu of any restaurant I go to, and this one was a rather interesting menu for in addition to giving a list of the food available and prices charged, the menu also had a short history of the restaurant, how it started, who Rambabu was, how it got famous in Agra a long while ago and how they came to be in Indore and so on.

While reading through the menu, each of us made a significant discovery. NP went to the nub of the matter as he usually did: the price of one paratha was the princely sum of Rs. 35. This amount would usually buy a complete meal at the other places we ate at. It was, in foreign currency equivalence, about 20% lesser than the number of cents required to make a full US Dollar, but was still a good amount of money in those days. NP beckoned the waiter.

"Why is this so expensive." he asked, getting to the root of the matter.

"Sir, these are special and good." The waiter said.

"Which waiter says his food is lousy and expensive?" NP countered. His logic, it must be said, was impeccable.

"No, sir, the parathas are really good. Once you try, you will agree as well."

"What's so special?" NP generally had fun conducting such inquisitions.

"Well, you just have to try them to know. I can guarantee that you will like them." The waiter had apparently been coached not to sway from the "try it and know it" line.

"Will you give me money back if I don't like them?"

In the meantime, I hit paydirt - or what I thought was paydirt. There, in black and white, was stated in the menu that "If a patron ate three parathas, the patron would not have to pay for the meal."

This was outrageous! It was the stuff dream are made of. I showed this statement to NP. He was immediately suspicious. He was of the opinion that the parathas would be terribly large, else the place would be out of business soon.

"How big are the parathas?" he asked our friend the waiter.

"Normal size sir."

"What is normal size? My friend who is six foot four can hold three cricket balls in his hand. For him that is normal. What is normal for a paratha here?"

He indicated that the order for the table next to ours was ready. We could see what was the normal size of the paratha when it was brought in. That seemed fine.
Well, the parathas were a tad above normal, say about seven inches in diameter. There were some vegetables in the plate along with some curd and salad.

"How much for the rest of the stuff in the plate?" asked NP.

"That's all free and unlimited."

NP thought the owner was slightly stupid. This seemed like a an opportunity for arbitrage that was not long for this world. Already both of us were making plans in our head to eat here everyday, thrice a day - to squeeze in as many meals as we could before the place went out of business or changed the rules.

I proposed that we order three each and be done with it. NP was of the opinion that we should declare our intention of eating three each but order them one by one so we got them hot. This seemed to be the logical thing to do, so this is what we did. The waiter said it would take ten minutes to get our first order. To kill time, we ordered a phirni (dessert) each and if it was anything to go by, the parathas would be worth the wait. 

Finally, in what seemed to be one of the longest ten minutes of my life till then, we got the first couple: the paratha was deep fried, resting in a small pool of ghee, very crisp, golden brown with deep brown patches, crisp flakes coming off on the top, steaming hot and smelled delicious. The first two had a cauliflower filling.

We started eating in earnest. For the next five minutes there was no conversation. We were keeping pace with each other. We had decided that we would order the next one halfway through the first so we didn't have to wait. This we duly did now. About three quarters of the way through the paratha, I realized, I was slowing down.

"Should have skipped the dessert," I thought.

I looked up and NP was giving voice to what I had just thought. "Should have kept the phirni for the end."

We were nearly through with the first one when the second lot came in. It was as pleasing to the senses as the first, but we were rapidly running out steam.

Of the two new ones, we split the first one between us and laboured through it.

Shamefully, we had to get the fourth one packed. Needless to say, we had no desserts after the meal.

The parathas were heavy. They just sank right to bottom of your stomach. Both of us were left in a food induced coma that took the better part of the afternoon to come out of. We paid the bill and kept sitting at the table for a quarter of an hour before being able to summon the will to move.

That night we met at my place to do a dissection of what went wrong: Why did we end up paying for food in a place that offered a chance to eat good food for free? These were just parathas. Extraordinary in taste, but not size. We figured:

1. Dessert immediately before was a bad idea

2. We had a late breakfast, so were not really hungry

3. Ate too much of the freebies on the plate - should focus on the parathas that we are paying for and not the free curds

4. Ban all liquids from the table - we drank nearly two glasses of water each during the meal - it all comes down to space.

Now it had become an issue of our honour. We had set out to eat three and we had failed. Next weekend we decided to plan a proper campaign. We skipped dinner. We drank lots of water to get water in the bloodstream and ensure we were well-hydrated and didn't feel thirsty while eating. This way water would not take up valuable stomach-space. The place apparently opened at eight. We landed there at a quarter past, shunned the desserts and placed our order, again, one paratha each to start with.

To cut a long story short, we both reached within a couple of bites of finishing two parathas each. We were spared the shame of having to get food that we had ordered but couldn't eat, packed, but we still ended up paying for what we ate.

The next two weeks brought two more tries with modifications of the same strategy, but we could never better our mark of eating almost two each. Four weeks into the whole thing and we had to admit that we were beaten, well and truly. We had to pay for every meal we had there. We needed to recoup our losses.

This was when NP's brilliance came to the fore. Rambabu ke Parathe, despite the excellent food and the offer of free eating remained little known. We got an old schoolmate of NP's over for dinner at the place. He was a smug sort of person who got along very well with himself but not very well with practically everyone else and who took pride in eating. 


A bet was made - If you eat three, we pay, else you pay for us.

Thrice we managed to get a free meal using this strategy, not bad for three attempts.