"From Kitchen to Classroom" - A Teacher's Blog

3) 30 POINT SOMETHING AS A HOTELIER AND PLEASE DON’T ASK ME WHY!!

1. THE OWNER: The owner behaves like a true waiter and a  waiter behaves like an owner.
2. FREE DELIVERY: Come whatever, as long as hotel is in business, milk, vegetables and groceries are delivered at doorstep.
3. HOW MUCH FOR THIS: The women in the house never know the ever rising and seldom falling prices of the above mentioned commodities.
4. THE BEHAVIOUR: If customer comes for 20 minutes and bills 20 bucks he behaves as if he owns the hotel for those 20 minutes.
5. SUNDAY FUN: If your hotel is closed on Sundays, the owner has sleepless nights on a restless Sunday.
6. FREE-LUNCH: More free-lunches have to be offered to various “Officers” than to owners own sons and daughters.
7. INDUSTRIOUS: A hotel owner is the last to sleep in the town (washing dishes) and is always the first to wake up in the town (preparing dishes).
8. FLASH-PARTY: In case of “Bandhs” the whole family their neighbors, friend and relatives have a sudden feast, provided unenthusiastically by the owner.
9. LABOUR LAWS: Labor laws are meant as corollary incentives to officers and trouble the hoteliers. Talk about these laws to the labor himself he disappears the next day.
10. FREE WATER and SAMBHAR: Hotelier must provide free water for bathing and washing to his neighbors whenever need arises. And Sāmbhar when his neighbors do not cook vegetables.
11. UDUPI FACILITY: In the incremental order of bills the top-ups are never meant to be paid. For example for bills of rupees 12, 108, 212 or 535 you will get 10, 100, 200 and 500 paid respectively.
12. RICH: For unknown reasons a hotel “wallah” is always considered to be stinking rich.
13. MONEY-MONEY: I know that all my hotel “wale” relatives will empathize that he permanently harbors money in the pocket, which is always deficit for payment.
14.   BREAKFASTS: Ninety percent of Udupi hotel owners have Idli and Vada sambhar for their breakfast. Some may prefer upma. Dosas are luxurious delights.
15. SAMBHAR: This is the towns envy and it remains the hotelier’s ultimate pride and identity.
16. SAMBHAR Ver 2.0: The recipe is so patented that even the hotelier’s son does not know it. Mainly because no owner wants his son to be an hotelier again.
17. SAMBHAR Ver. Final: This is the most loved cuisine in the town, but the customer never pays for volumes of extra Sāmbhar savored.
18. FAIL: Cooking skills are exercised by the hotelier in his home with recipes experimented from the top half geographically distributed regions of India, but every dish smells like Sāmbhar.
19. HAIR IN THE DISH: When eating elsewhere (during tours) an hotelier never complains if he has a hair or an insect in his dish.
20. BLOOD DONAR: An hotelier is the one who “Donates” the most and one of the reasons, of many, why Udupi hotels do not sustain over time.
21. JUST DO IT: There are high chances that even the owner of any biggest five star hotel in this world, once had washed dishes, cooked food and/or served people with his own hands.
22. TEA: Only new born babies in the house of an hotelier do not know how to make or drink teas.
23. COFFEE: If available – What is tea? And sadly only a South Indian knows how to brew a good coffee.
24. HOUSE: For clear cut reasons the owner stays just above his hotel with the rest of his joint family.
25. WOMEN POWER: Women customers come to Udupi hotels (who used to come as school going girls) eat and purchase till their purses are empty and demand the hotel owner who is their rightful “Kaka” or “Mama” for the auto-rickshaw fare to return home.
26. MAIRRAGE: An hotelier may bring a bride for his son who is a daughter of an hotelier but he never wants his daughter to be married off to another hotelier.
27. EMPLOYMENT OFFICE: An Udupi hotel is a big employment office for all those relatives of the hotelier who are unemployed.
28. SWEETS AND GHEE: By default for unknown reasons an hotelier always distributes sweets and homemade ghee to his near and dear ones.
29. FAST FOOD: An hotelier or his comrade never goes hungry.
30. RE-TIRE: An hotelier never retires, but dies in his hotel.