On The Hopper

I've lived in America a long time now, and have been pretty well assimilated. I'm surrounded by Americans and therefore do not make generalizations about them all being fat bastards in sandals, white socks and hawaiian shirts wandering around the world complaining about everything not being the way it is in Iowa. Years ago, though, I worked in the UK for a US company and we were visited from time to time by people from head office who clearly labored under the belief that any of their locations outside the States was staffed by borderline retards who needed all the benefit of their guidance just so we didn't spend the day eating the soap from the company washroom and masturbating in public.

This, it is fair to say, could get a bit old, especially as some of the visitors were themselves none too bright, and could be somewhat corpulent too. One time a couple of them came over to visit - an overweight caucasian and an American-born Chinese (ABC). They weren't bad blokes, but when the conversation got onto Indian food the fat one obviously had no concept of what we meant by "hot". He kept going on about how he ate Mexican food all the time and could handle spicy stuff. I was trying to explain that Indian spice is different but he was having none of it. My boss suggested I take them to an Indian restaurant since they had nothing going on that night, and since there were only about a thousand in that city it was not hard to arrange.

So we rolled up at the Mogul Lounge later that evening and were soon seated with menus. Obviously we started with papadums and pickles but the rest of the menu could have been in Hebrew for all the sense it made to them, so they asked me to order. Now I was much younger then, not the sophisticated debonair gentleman I can pretend to be these days, and I have to confess that I gave into temptation and ordered chicken vindaloo for each of them. It was a bastard thing to do, I admit, since I could have ordered a selection of dishes and just had one vindaloo to showcase the heat of a good curry, but I was determined that the fat one should acknowledge the thermal superiority of an English Indian meal.

The food came and we started eating. Fat man started to sweat. "This is kinda hot!" The ABC guy noticed it too but he kept eating. Fat man plodded on but made more comments, like "Wow. This is really very hot". About half way through he excused himself "I gotta go to the restroom". A bit later he came back but instead of sitting down again he said "I'm just going to walk outside for a bit". I was beginning to develop a tiny conscience at this point, and when we finished our meals and fat man came back in I offered to get some ice cream to help cool him off, but he declined. I began to wonder if perhaps he had shit himself. Transportation back to their hotel was by taxi and the taxi driver was determined to help this American in distress. He advised him to put the toilet roll in the fridge when he got back.

The next day I came into work, and an hour or so later the visitors came in. The ABC guy was wearing the smile of one who has been tested and found to be worthy, but fat man had undergone a transormation. He had become thin man. He appeared to have shed about a quarter of his bodyweight and adopted a coloring that would not have looked out of place on the slab in a morgue. Someone asked him how the evening had been. With real feeling he replied "Man that curry was hot. I spent all night on the hopper."

I'm a better person now than I was then, honest. Still, in my defence, unless you've had a genuine vindaloo from a hardcore English Indian restaurant you really have no business boasting about your capacity to handle spicy food. And nothing ever quite matched the Kenilworth Tandoori for the capacity of its vindaloo to make me actually shit raw napalm the next day.


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison