More Food - Uppuma

Chap comes in especially for uppuma. Cashier with the daughter who had studied Marine Biol. on the Gold Coast, near the colourful Reef no doubt in danger of destruction from Climate Change, turns in this direction to enquire. Asking at the Sweets Counter is she? A waiter in the back there around the corner?... Ah, no. In fact directing the question at the Australian regular, the scribbler, who ought to know. He had ordered it again this afternoon. A week or two ago one of the newer Chennai lads had rounded on the man. You wanna give something else a try one day maybe? Pongal very similar, rice flour instead of semolina. Very nice. The fellow had indicated a chap at the long central table who was also fixated on uppuma. Uppma, uppuma without fail whenever he visited. But on that particular day this chap had accepted pongal. (The last portion of uppuma had been served shortly before to you-know-who.) This might have been the very man: age, height, light colour, neat blue biz-shirt were all about right. Difficult to be absolutely sure. This same beefy waiter loves to clown, limited English no reason for shyness. (The above conversation must be understood as paraphrase of course—practiced readers will have twigged; the original with all its stumbles and mumbles could not possibly be reproduced.) Clowning in the lad's nature. Nandri, he offered the other day when he had been handed a plate or something else in order to aid his clearing of the table. Nandri, nandri — he had got it on numerous occasions and heard it liberally dispensed all round. Nandri and nothing else. Mocking. Another time the fellow had approached the table for a longer chat that began with the matter of the slow—in fact unmoving—Tamil acquisition. Two years here, soon to sign a further three year extension. Married, wife now pregnant. (A brief visit presumably.) Six or eight hours out of the city he was, still within Tamil Nadu. Mock military salutes, rapid steps over the floor, often sweat on the brow: proved his value to the employer. Out front the uppuma chap had been ready to turn on his heels in the event there was not available what he was after. A substitute would not do on this day, neither pongal nor anything else. The raised finger of the cashier had been misinterpreted and the fellow was beginning to pivot — spinning on a six-pence, the old chaps at the football club used to say of the earlier generation of deft ballerinas on the field. No pongal in any case today: earlier in the piece Beefy had said it was finished. Come down from his office tower the man, or on his way home, only the one dish would satisfy the growling tummy on this particular occasion; and take-out in fact today. Usually uppuma is a breakfast dish; two or three times a week one could get lucky lunch-times. This was getting on now: rare good fortune for the fellow. Coconut and green chilli one side, dried red the other with onion and tomato, split by a watery dahl on the silver serving tray. Uppuma does not in fact appear on either the display board at Komala Vilas on Bufallo Road, nor on the menu. A lucky chance found it once on the small Specials board opposite the register. $3.00, preceded for this palate by rasam soup served in a small stainless cup. (Add $1.50.)

NB. There are numerous Komala Vilases in Singapore—all off-shoots of the original—and apparently one or two established back in the homeland it seems (Chennai). Bufallo Road the tip, opposite Tekka Market.