A Fishy Story

Four of us colleagues went to England for a three month stint, not all together though. Ravi went first and after a month or so I. The other two followed with an interval of a month each.

It was time for Ravi to leave England and our host, Alan, took us for lunch at a special place. It was once the house of what we can call the gatekeeper. He operated the gates that raised or lowered boats and barges in a canal. This house was now converted into a fancy restaurant.

Ravi ordered fish.

He was not ready for what landed on his plate. There were two fish, each about 20 cm long, head, scales and tail and all. They were placed in a garden like arrangement of lettuce, mashed potatoes, chips, mayonnaise and herbs. The head of one was at the tail of the ohter. Both looked so alive that you would think that if you put them back in the water they would recover in a few minutes and swim away without much ado. Their eyelidless eyes stared at Ravi dolefully as if to say, "You are so cruel. Are you really going to eat us?"

Ravi took one look at them and refused to have anything to do with them.

Alan being a gentleman and a very considerate host gave to Ravi what he had ordered with great care and ate the fish himself.

This, however, gave me an opportunity to pull Ravi's leg. "Come on, you knew that you were eating fish. Just cover their heads with lettuce and eat the rest." and so on. Ravi was really shaken but in the end we all had a good lunch.

After my stay in England, on the way back home, I had to visit a few other countries. I landed in Germany - a place called Hof - late at night, had a restless night of sleep. I had breakfast early as my host was to pick me up early for the day's events. We had a busy schedule and it was late by the time we could break for lunch. I was tired, hungry and sleepy. My host took me to the best restaurant in town. He strongly recommended that I try the fish there as the restaurant was famous for it. I agreed without much persuasion. I needed to eat something and soon. Lunch was served.

One look at my plate and my stomach did a triple somersault with two and half twists, good enough to earn a gold in any olympic diving contest except for the thud and a splash of bile in the pool, I mean, my stomach.

The same arrangement as Ravi's fish. Two doleful eyes looked at me and said, "Du bist so grausam. Wirklich willst du uns essen? Ja", if I remember right.

To make matters worse, the waiter had said, with great pride that he was serving his guests really fresh fish, "Both of them were swimming just a few minutes ago! Guten Appetit!" My hunger remained but my appetite had fled.  That had added greatly to my discomfiture.

At least, I followed what I had preached.

I covered their accusing faces with lettuce and ate the rest of them. My host was stealing curious looks at my plate. I told him the whole story and we had a great laugh.

That night I was taken to another special restaurant and that is another story.