Birth pangs

It’s 12.20 pm on a Saturday.

I am sitting at a CCD outlet in Khan Market waiting for my wife and a cup of Cappuccino, having struggled my way through an insipid masala omelette.

A friend calls me up, saying he has taken ill after our carnivorous snack of chicken biryani, mutton curry and rotis at a shack near our office last evening.

The meal was, quoting another colleague, ‘crap’. The biriyani was soggy — it seemed to have been hydrated in Dalda before being served — the curry overawed by cheap tomato puree and the mutton pieces anorexic.

The standard of the three-month-old shack, clearly, is on a tailspin.

We hauled up the manager and he hid behind the classic excuse: “Nahin nahin, Sir. Sab kuch badiya hain. Cook to ek hi hain, Sir.”

That set me thinking.

Would I, had I been in his place, similarly deny the obvious?

Would you?

*****

It’s 12.20 am on Sunday.

Dinner done, I am sitting on my bed, watching Julie and Julia.

My wife, a great cook and not-a-great foodie, eggs me on to sit through the film.

“If this can’t inspire you to write a blog on food, nothing will,” she says as the credits roll.

*****

2.30 pm, the same day.

The moment arrives.

The laptop is opened and we enter wordpress.

The name… the name…

One or two words?

Foodstation? Nope, it’s an eatery in Calcutta.

Foodcourt? Nah, doesn’t have the punch.

We think Foodprint, but it’s already taken.

What about Eatink? Too sophisticated, isn’t it?

Then suddenly, in one flash of — may I say brilliance — Netdhaba is born.