The nuisance for Influence

We often tend to be too excited about certain things in life and then when the event occurs, all of a sudden all the excitement goes to cold storage, just because of some silly thing. This is what happened recently, on a scorching Friday. Along with a couple of cousins, I went to the ‘Influence Restaurant’ located at the KNK road for a rather quick lunch buffet (we’ll come to the ‘quick’ part in a bit) as there were just 4 days left for the lunch @ 199/- only offer which had been running for more than a month. A few of us (cousins) had been planning to go for the buffet since ever but every now and then the plans got cancelled due to some reason or the other. In fact, once I went to Influence with a group of friends (instead of cousins, as plans with cousins kept getting cancelled) for the same lunch buffet, but as it had to turn out, one of my cousin had predicted (wished) a bad time there for me (as I wasn’t taking her along), and so it happened, we went there (the group of friends) and figured out that there was no power and the place was as hot as an oven would be after baking for some time. So we chose to leave the place and I got back home, all disappointed and sad that, the offer will get over and I will miss out on an Influence Buffet.

So on this scorching Friday, I and a couple of cousins had finally made reservations to go for the Influence Buffet and so we did. While reserving the table, the manager mentioned ‘Sir, we won’t have power from 1-2pm, it’s the daily power cut time. Would you like to come before or after that time? We are open for buffet from 12-3.30pm’, and so since we had some other work past 2, we decided to go for an early lunch that day and decided to be there by 12.15 or so, so that we still will get 45 solid minutes for the food rampage. But as it had to be, we reached at 12.30 and every minute mattered, we thought we should rather eat fast and leave this place before the power cut, or we will be fried in the heat(they dint seem to have a generator or an inverter). But we started off trying not to hurry up too much, so that we dint spoil the experience, but still eyes were always looking at the clock after every single bite of the delicious but cold starters. The food and the service were overall good, except for the starters which got cold even though the air conditioners were switched on, only after we entered the restaurant.

The thing which really ruined my mood throughout the lunch though was not the fact that the starters were cold ( I dint care as much for that as they still tasted nice), nor the fact that we had to eat fast ( it wasn’t really the case, 45 minutes is sufficient time to eat, when you are not talking as much, we cousins were sure why we were there ;) ), but I got irritated and felt stupid for having been behind this lunch plan for close to a month, because as we were munching on our food, my eyes kept looking at the entry door of the restaurant, as not even a single other customer had walked into the restaurant except for us and that made me feel miserable. How was I supposed to be happy and excited when I realized that, I was the only one behind this lunch buffet, no one else cared about it, to turn up to the restaurant for close to one hour we spent there and to make things worse the waiter mentioned that this is not a limited period offer, the lunch buffet usually costs only this much!

I was so thrilled about this whole 199/- buffet as I was told that the buffet at influence is generally priced at 500/-, so I thought its better to grab the opportunity while it is available now. But after I walked out of the restaurant, I realized that while having the buffet my mind was thinking, ‘what a waste of money, no one around in the restaurant’, and then I comforted myself by the fact that the food was good and it was well worth paying 199/-, but still the fact that I had lunch at a place where no one seemed to have bothered to turn up while I had made advance reservations, made me feel the whole exercise was trivial. That’s how I guess we human beings are, we need to show off, to see people, to be seen by people and what not!

Today’s Favorite Line – "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." - Theodore Roosevelt

Today’s Favorite Song – Bhaag DK Bose (Delhi Belly)