what better way to say goodbye to eid than with some sweet and sour chicken? i’ve even attempted the dish at home and with reasonable success. the trick is in the frying and though i singed my skin with oil, the chicken came out nice and crisp. beginner’s luck. anyway, you can look up a decent recipe on ‘the times’ if you have a subscription like alibe. or on any decent food blog and i don’t mean lonumedhu. jk.

so, i’m here at china garden with my friend salman, the fried fish fanatic who tried the rehi aglio olio at scoop with me some years back. for the record, he thought it had great potential but wanted scoop to go easy on the rehi. and when a fanatic says go easy it really ought to count.

no matter. salman lets me do the ordering and then we sit back and take in the place. it’s spacious and cheerful with plenty of natural light spilling in from the enormous, plant lined windows, brightening up even our expensive seeming booth at the far end of the restaurant.

i tell my friend about a comic i read recently (yes, i need pictures now to engage with a narrative that isn’t mine). he asked me if it was like boyhood, the linklater film. salman watches a lot of films but i don’t think he understands them very much, except maybe on a simple stylistic level. he’s worked in graphics for a while but for the most part, his actual work is painfully dull, designing application forms and the like. yet for a little while i thought he might do something exciting, make some actual art. but he’s much too happy. in fact, i don’t think i’ve seen him in a bad mood in all the years i’ve known him.

the server delicately places two heavy plates before us, jostling me out of my thoughts. have i been ignoring salman to his annoyance? his face, smiling and glued to his phone, says otherwise. he looks up to judge the spread.
‘this is enough for FOUR,’ he exclaims and begins heaping rice, chicken and sauce onto his plate with great joy.

we begin to eat. the batter is soggy, the sauce is cheap, and there’s too little of it. the rice is dry basmati, like you might get in a bad hotaa. and there’s plenty of it.

i’m hungry but i can’t move beyond the first few bites. i look at salman and his droopy face catches me by surprise. he looks CRUSHED.

when the bill arrives, it’s almost 500 rufiyaa! salman’s sourness deepens. he pays the entire bill with his card, his face twisted as if he’s trying to contain himself. we exit silently and in haste, like witnesses to something unspeakable. a sullen fog trails us through the streets.

salman and i do not speak as we thread our way through galohu, and i begin to question my long-held beliefs about this man.

as we pass by the stadium salman suddenly screams: ‘SWEET AND SOUR CHICKEN!’

‘MAN?’ i shout.

‘sweet and sour CHICKEN.’ he yells again, scaring some pedestrians.

on my seat, i imagine his normally docile mind, cluttered with the banal junk of his life, suddenly, and in great hunger, confronting that travesty of a meal and the smug little bill at the end. maybe that’s all it takes.

soon, salman leaves me wordlessly by the intersection near my home. the fog has settled on him again, and i look on as he disappears in a belch of blue smoke around the bend.