Badi Madam and Chhoti Madam

I was arm-twisted into writing this post and putting up this photo.
Please forgive me if either or both of them are not to your liking. But then again, they better be to your liking. Because the words are mine, and like every self-respecting blogger I am quite fond of my words, and the photographer is Rohit, and I am very fond of him too. And the subject is inspiring as well. It’s Badi Madam (BM), that’s me, and Chhoti Madam (CM), meaning Richa, suffused in a soft, golden light inside the Café Coffee Day, Janpath.

The three of us had met up for coffee and conversation. Rohit’s camera was with him, so he decided to have fun at our expense. Anyway, here’s in brief the story behind BM and CM.

It was the cold winter morning of January 28, 2006. Incidentally, it’s also Rohit’s birthday. Five people had decided to go to Old Delhi’s famed Paranthewali Gali for brunch...sinful parathas and lassi. We entered one of the shops (cannot remember its name, sorry) lined with photographs of Nehru, Indira Gandhi and other stalwarts eating parathas, presumably at this very same joint itself. Thoroughly restless to bite into this piece of history, all of us sat down, made ourselves comfortable, and waited. The waiter himself, about hundred years old, and with infinite knowledge about every kind of paratha there is, launched his menu on us, orally. His recitation just went on and on!

I fell in love with him there and then. Wanted to hire him for my office...so that the moment an author arrives, our man here can recite one after the other, all the books we have ever published, and all that we are ever going to. Very cool indeed. Secondly because, like all nice gentlemen he developed a special liking for the ladies, and christened them Badi Madam and Chhoti Madam. And the names have stayed since then.