Restaurant Review: Chilies, Basildon
Thursday, April 05, 2007

There is a rather unfortunate habit amongst us expats to view some things (or most, depending on one’s perspective) with the rather jaundiced viewpoint of ‘oh are they ill-treating me because I am an Indian / non-white?’ Whilst I am not a card-carrying member of this group, I will definitely put my hand up and admit that there have been a few occasions when I have asked myself that. More often than not, the offending situation would resolve itself to make me rethink my views. But some times, certain situations pan out in a certain way that more or less cements my belief that no matter how ‘accepting’ or ‘open’ a society prides itself to be, the reality is often a totally different concept. Last Saturday, something happened to reinforce my thinking and I would be greatly interested to see which way the readers of this post align themselves.

The past couple of weeks, I had been harbouring a hankering for a good margarita. S also kept hinting at the long overdue meet we were planning with a good (fellow Indian) mate of his from work and his wife. Deciding to kill two birds with one stone, I suggested we head for Chilies Restaurant and Bar at Basildon, which was local enough for all of us and which, more importantly, served some amazing cocktails. Plans were made and on ringing the venue, we were told that as long as we were in a group of less than eight members, we would be given a table with minimum fuss and delay. We got one within thirty minutes and I counted ourselves lucky as I recalled a past visit when we visited for a record two hours and forty-five minutes for a table for four (P was two years old then)!

We sat at our table, chatting and managed to come to a reasonably quick decision regarding the menu – made easy by the fact that three of us were vegetarian and we had just two or three mind-bending choices to make. Then we waited.
We talked about our families, which part of the country each of us were from, the languages we each spoke, our colleges, the different cities we each had lived, how we were finding living in the UK and my blogging. Still no sign of a waiter / maitre’d. And we waited.

P was getting impatient and quite a bit peckish. His enthusiasm with the kiddies pack had exhausted itself by now and he had made up his mind about what he wanted to eat. But still, there was no sign of a soul.

The restaurant was full and all around us, the staff were running around taking orders, bringing in the food, generally making sure the people were getting fed. But no one seemed to be paying us a blind bit of notice.

After waiting patiently, we decided enough was enough and we flagged one of the girls down. Who took our orders and we specified that we preferred the drinks, starters and P’s order to come in first. So it did – well, almost. One starter and P’s mains arrived together and we started tucking in, mentally imagining the beautiful pitcher of margarita.

But there was no sign of the ambrosia and we had finished devouring the garlic bread. We were desperately thirsty now and P was beginning to chant for his OJ. Another frantic hand waving resulted in a supremely uninterested girl plonking some side plates and cutlery in the middle of the table and vanishing into thin air the next minute.

This was the first time any of us had been to a proper restaurant and ended up doing part of the staff’s job ourselves. Joints like Nando’s pride themselves on their casual approach but as other patrons had had the luxury of the staff setting the table for them, we had assumed, foolishly, the same would be available to us too.

After a colossal thirty minutes, when we saw our neighbours finish their meal and exit the restaurant, we got our drinks – a pitcher of margarita, with some beer glasses. We first thought they had made a mistake. When we pointed out the fact that we were missing cocktail glasses, the girl who brought our drinks coolly explained they had run out of glasses and we had to make do.

By now, we were getting a few degrees ahead of peeved but still were determined to have a good time. So, we gamely drank our delightful margaritas out of beer glasses, imagining the salted rims and the still-absent tostada chips. Some time later, our pitcher was nearing empty, P had finished his dinner and the garlic bread was a distant memory. There was still no sign of our food – the remaining starter or our main courses.

Deciding enough was enough, we asked for a passing waitress if we could speak to the manager. The manager materialised in a few minutes, with the standard ‘hope you are having a good time’. She did not seem too shocked by our ‘no, not really.’ After complaining for a few minutes, our friend finished semi-jovially, ‘I hope you are not making us wait for our food ‘cos we are Indians’.

To which she replied: ‘No, I don’t think so.’

I was gaping at that. Having got used to a PC Britain, where at least in public people put on a politically correct mask, this nonchalance was surprising, to say the very least. The slight matter of a few patrons waiting for their food and of cocktails served in beer glasses didn’t seem to matter much and after some half-hearted platitudes, she went away to investigate. She came back, with our main courses and useless starter, and a laughable explanation of why we had been sitting there for the better part of an hour, twiddling our thumbs. The kind lady, who was ‘in charge’ of our table, was having a bad day and it was all getting a bit too much for her. Enjoy your meal now that you’ve got it.

I could not bite my tongue any more and reamed into her at the disgusting treatment meted out to us. Not once did we get a heartfelt apology or horror at having some seriously irate patrons, complaining away about every single thing.

We ate our food then in silence, most of it turning to ash in our mouths. A promising evening ruined and I couldn’t even enjoy my margarita. That was when a lady we had never seen before put in an appearance. She bustled in, full of apologies and we assured her everything was okay, all the time wondering who the heck she was. She explained that she was so busy that she was unable to pay any attention to us and she felt so close to tears to know how awful we felt.

WTF? This was not the girl who took our orders. Not unless she aged a good decade in the time since we saw her last. This was definitely the lady who was serving our neighbours and now was apologising profusely. This farce was getting ridiculous and after placating the woman we tried to carry on with our food. A few minutes later, the lady materialised one more time, armed with a scoop of ice cream for P, who gobbled it all up.

The bill, I must say, arrived without any delay and we found our delightful experience was not cheap by half. Though I wasn’t betting on it, I had thought that the management would have had the courtesy to deduct some bit off our bill, as a goodwill gesture. Well, it was obvious that goodwill was in short supply that night, especially when we were at the receiving end of it.

The only thrill we got was walking off without tipping them for treating us so nicely and making the evening a memorable one.

To think I told a friend last week that Chilies was my favourite restaurant in Britain. How things can change in the span of a few days! I think the joint should do what I suggested and put up a big board stating in no uncertain terms that folks of our sort were not welcome to partake food there. Do not start being a hypocrite at this late hour, Chilies and stick to your guns like you did last Saturday night and display the same nonchalant spirit in showing everyone what you stand for. At least this way, your august establishments will not be soiled and your staff, needlessly overworked.

Posted by DesiGirl 12:11 am 8 comments    

Labels: basildon, chilies, food, racist, restaurant

The Brits Are Not Racists!
Sunday, March 04, 2007

We gave P a big bday bash yesterday. We'd been telling him for quite sometime that for his 5th birthday, we'll throw him a big party and we did. We invited every one of his classmates plus a few of his nursery friends as well as some desi friends whose kids fall in the 4-6 category. The pains started fairly from the word go. I did not have a complete list of his classmates and made do with an incomplete birthday list compiled by a mom and random inputs by P. Still, I managed to leave two children and when his teacher pointed that out, I furnished extra invitations for the two.

Then there was the RSVP. I thought it was the desis who could not fathom the whole RSVP concept. Turned out, the Brits were too. Or maybe they just decided to ignore the invitation. When there were two full days to the party, I had heard back from 30% of his classmates. But text messages kept coming in till 3 hours to the party from mums of supposedly eager children. We never said 'oh no we can't take them as we've finalised numbers' as in typical desi style, we had ordered extra places.

Then there was the actual event. We arrived at the venue to find some parents already there. Though none of them had deigned to say more than the occasional 'hello' to me till that day, I still knew them all by face and welcomed everyone and tried to get the party started. None of them had a clue who I was. I am sure they must have walked past me most mornings. But none chose to retain an Indian woman's face in their posh brains.

When the kids were busy bowling, S and I went around asking if the parents would like drinks etc, generally trying to play our roles of hosts to our best efforts. The firang had all gathered together, like nails to a magnet and S and I and our desi friends were stood a distance away from them, as always. Every now and again, the two of us would bridge the gap to ask them if they were comfy, to which we normally got curt nods. Though I smiled till my teeth ached, all I got from the other mums was random stern glances but no answering smiles. After a while, I got tired of being sidelined in my own son's party, gave up the Brits as a lost cause, sat down with couple of friends and cousins and watched my son enjoy his party.

Then came the time to say goodbye. Other than P's best mate, whose mum is the only one who treats me like I am human, NONE of the others remembered who the birthday child's mum was. They ALL went to S's cousin and said 'thank you for inviting us to the party', to which she said 'thank you and there's P's mum, why don't you say that to her?'. I ask you! Is it that hard to be nice? I am no alien, I assure you but I swear, last night, any alien would have been welcome in that gathering, not me!

To everyone thinking of the Brits as racist or discriminatory, I say this: they are not racist. I am no Shilpa Shetty but I tell you they are not. Why? Because they can't be arsed. Intense feelings of any sort requires an effort and these lovely folks cannot be bothered to waste half that effort on the likes of me even to discriminate against me; so they just go on like I am invisible. Of course, our paths might literally cross again from Monday morning but they don't give a shit. Even if they collide headlong into me, I would never cause a blip in their radars.

Sod you!

Posted by DesiGirl 2:54 pm 2 comments    

Labels: britain, british, desi, discrimination, india, indian, racist

Judgement Day?
Tuesday, January 23, 2007

I am tired of Jade. Tired of seeing her carefully school face showing remorse peering at me from every street corner. Tired of hearing her well rehearsed apologies 'I am not a racist but I can understand why you would think so'. Her well oiled PR machine is working overtime to clean up her tarnished image and I, for one, am tired of being played like a banjo.

Jade is using the 'tu queque' argument someone accused me of, to excuse away her actions. She keeps saying what she did was wrong but is repeatedly pinning the blame for it on her upbringing, her social class, her parents and anything else she could think of.

Couple of other 'interesting' repercussions of the BB row are Danielle losing a £100,000 modelling contract and worse, being dumped by West Ham footballer Teddy Sheringham, the same man she slept with to win the Miss Great Britain crown last year. Of course, Danielle doesn't know that she ins't a WAG anymore. Jo, on the other hand, didn't have much of a career to speak of since her S Club 7 days so doesn't have much to lose and is carrying on as before.

Whilst I have had my fill of the Jade Baddy Saga, I feel Danielle and Jo, who have said more racist comments and have egged Jade on, deserve to take on the blame as well. It was Danielle who said 'I thought you were going to punch her' after Jade's pronouncement 'you are stuck up so far up your a**e that you can smell your own s**t' and even said 'your mother would be so proud of you' and even called Shilpa a dog. Jo has generally been nasty and while I cannot remember what pearls of wisdom she dropped, she has been coming across as the type of person I would cross the road to avoid, purely for my own personal safety.

I was watching The Wright Stuff earlier on Channel 5 (young P's down with chicken pox - hence am cooped up at home!) and today's panellist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown said something that seemed real sensible to me. Jade was the 'expert' on the show today and after 30 minutes of 'yes I can see how it will be construed as wrong, but I wasn't the only one' and many rueful shakes of her head, Yasmin adviced Jade to use the next three years to get a proper degree and.... well, we never heard what as Jade butted in, prattling about the same old stuff and made Yasmin gave up what she was trying to say. But I can see where she's coming from: one of Jade's biggest reasons for being such a bully is that she learnt those at her mother's knee. Well, she's in her mid-twenties now and cannot blame Mum for teaching her every wrong thing under the sun. It is time she learnt few good things on her own, especially with two young children to raise. Yasmin's advice strikes me as an exceptionally sound one, as well as her view of it will take a long time for someone to change their views (the racist or the bullying sort) and will not take place in the span of three short days, as we are seeing in Jade's case.

Education is the only way to open people's minds to the world out there. Respecting others' differences and not feeling threatened by them will only come with time. Britain today is as multi cultural as it gets, a fact that threatens many, many people. One of them decided to show their distaste by spitting in front of me as I was out for a walking with my little one and shouting 'Go back home!' Another one did his level best to push my husband on to the rail tracks by catching hold of his shirt fronts and yelling 'You bl***y Paki!' As more and more Asians come to the UK as skilled workers and as more and more jobs are being sent to the subcontinent, the ire of the locals who perceive us to have cheated them out of their jobs is on the rise.

Being different always makes us fair game and this is true none more so than in our own country, which is as widely diverse as it can get. State, language, religion, social / economic strata - we have innumerable things seperating us from another. Try to imagine the case of a Madrasi amongst a group of Hindi speaking Bombay or Delhi folk. Attire and accent are just two of the things that are causes for mirth. My telugu neighbour still speaks to me like I were from a planet many light years away rather than from a nearby state when she speaks of the 'customs and traditions of Nellore' (my husband is Telugu while I am Tamil). Couple of my tam-bram friends changed their minds about me in a hurry once they heard of my own mixed parentage.

While I do not rue the loss of their so-called friendship, I rue our own penchant to divide ourself so neatly. Even after paying with our own freedom for celebrating our differences hasn't stopped us from going back to doing the same. What is needed for us to look at one another as just people, instead of 'Jain, rich, gujju' or 'Hindu, Tamil, padayachi'? When will we stop judging one another? Isn't it high time we changed our outlook for the better?

Posted by DesiGirl 10:51 am 2 comments    

Labels: big brother, british, channel 4, colour, goody, india, jade, racism, racist