The Brainy Brunch...

Sunday morning, after a long night’s journey into inebriation, Ali and I headed out for brunch. And when I say morning, I suppose I should really say "2:30 in the afternoon," but do we really need to get technical here? We had Nihari, which is more or less this thick, soupy, gravy with chunks of soft stewed meat, that you sop up with fresh Nan, right out of the Tandoor, just the way mamma always made it. You can order it with or without brains and bone marrow in it, so we ordered one with, and one without. Now, I’m generally pretty open-minded about food here. I’ve eaten parts of animals that I’m pretty sure the animals themselves rarely touch. And I’ve eaten brain before, but brains and marrow first thing after a night of drinking? I was skeptical, but I thought that actually taking on brain cells might be a novel approach, so I gave it a try. It wasn’t too bad. It’s a strange texture, kind of like if meat were made of bananas, pastey, but cerebral.

Anyway, while I was eating brains, I was sitting across from a group of coworkers who must have been out for lunch. Quite suddenly, the cover of the big air-conditioner on the wall above them fell on top of this one guy’s head. I, of course, had to immediately stifle a laugh into my Nan, but he didn’t seem hurt, so it was ok. But then I looked at him more closely and thought, "Oh my Lord, that thing’s knocked him cross-eyed!" I had never seen that happen outside of cartoons.

It took me a minute to realize that the guy was actually cross-eyed in the first place… not nearly as exciting as I first thought. But if I were that guy, I would have been all over the restaurant management, "Look what happened to me! I see two of everything! I want my meal for free... both of them!"

I suppose the only good thing about being cross-eyed is that if your fantasy is being with two women at the same time, you're all set.