One evening@Cafe Coffee Day

8^th December, 2005…..Mumbai

We were going to GOA via Mumbai and our train was due at 11:00 pm. We had our dinner at McDonald’s (our pockets had made us believe so). As we came out of McD, we found CCD seducing us. Some of us fell to the temptation and we landed in CCD just because we had some time left to pass. The first few minutes went into appreciating the A.C., the ambience, the people around…..and then came THE MENU. All of us scanned THE MENU looking for some not-so-dear stuff (in my case that would mean “having a price in single digit”)……and we almost jumped out of our seats when we found an ITEM for just Rs 3.00 . I was so relieved at that moment. So all of us decided that we would have THAT ITEM, enjoy it, and will leave happily. THAT ITEM was “BLACK VELVET”. So we called the attendant (he was too smart to be called a waiter) and, in the most corporate way, ordered SIX BLACK VELVETs. The attendant (trying to be extremely polite) told us that “BLACK VELVET is an add-on…i.e. we have to enjoy a coffee in order to enjoy BLACK VELVET. We went numb. We (trying to be extremely polite) asked for some time and dug into THE MENU again. The next not-so-dear stuff cost Rs 12.00 and that was Mineral Water (we even thought of ‘ordering’ a mineral water and ‘enjoy it’ with the snacks our moms had given). After lot of permutations and combinations we finally decided to ‘order’ 3 Chocolate Brownies which amounted to Rs. 90.00 and we were ‘happy’ with it. The attendant finally appeared with our ‘order’ (he was considerate enough to place six spoons with three brownies) and we just pounced upon it. It was the tastiest form of chocolate I had ever had. We finished it off quickly and left CCD (imaging the attendant laughing wickedly at us).The good things that happened to us in CCD were:

1. The Delicious CHOCOLATE BROWNIES.
2. The ultra cool A.C.(but we had to pay Rs.11 for that)
3. A gorgeous BABE (and I mean literally…a BABE!!!)
4. 30 (or 40, whatever) minutes of non-stop, hearty laughter….we laughed at everything under the roof.

I had never been in a more embarrassing situation before but IT WAS FUN !!!

This incident was forgotten (at least not talked about) till recently when, during one of my chats with Baba, it came up.... but with a different face. I don’t know where it came from but we saw an analogy of the CCD menu with LIFE. I’ll tell you what we thought….and it’s upto you to decide….

Like the CCD menu….the first thing we observe are the add-ons (the external ‘qualities’…the physical attributes, etc.). The more valuable thing i.e. the Base (the inner self….the nature, the soul) ,without which you can’t have the add-ons, come later. The add-ons are meaningless if you don’t have a good (ok…a decent) base. But then...add-ons do add that extra ZING to the base and makes the base more tasty.

Life exits everywhere…..even in THE CCD MENU !!!