Giving Tips- My Wife's 'Quantum Theory'

Our weekends, laced with fun and a sort of festive fervor, would invariably end up our dining out in a restaurant near the beach. My wife,  an incorrigible, high-strung stingy soul who cherishes unfastening her vanity bag come what may, would lavishly litter handsome bucks to waiters as tips. Never mind, she would be taking a cuppa in a food-joint [the cost which will come around Rs. 30 only] but my philanthropist better-half would toss away Rs. 15 as tips.

While I’m not against tipping waiters, cab drivers, delivery persons and domestic helps, I don’t like giving them extra large bucks as tips. ‘You may throw litters and litters of rice into a river, but do so after measuring their quantum,’ is a Tamil proverb being meticulously followed by me all through my life, and of course, at times, to the chagrin of my wife. So, I always content giving tips to the hotel servants or others 10% of the food-bill and this is normally standard.

However, this is not agreeable to my Stingy-Half [SH] at home that would glower at me and breathes fire when I try browbeating her at the time of giving sumptuous tips. Added to our Monday Blues, there arise pitched battles between me and her over the quantum of giving tips. ‘Damn it,’ she would snarl at me at such times. ‘I can’t be as mean as you are. I have my own dignity to keep always. Further I tip for emotional reasons too. For, when I give fat tips to the waiters or others and see them smile, I feel better about me. Tipping is an act of gratitude, dear. You should show it wherever you can.’

‘On that score,’ I would snap at her, red-faced, ‘you can’t be like the King Sibi, you know. When the waiters do an extra job [i.e., if he brings everything quickly, is friendly, not annoying] you may tip him 10 to 15% of the food-bill. Anything more than that is a colossal waste of your hard-earned money or an act of snobbery.

Tips were once given out of sympathy … a voluntary charitable act. But now that the society having re-oriented its outlook toward a sort of snobbery, tips giving becomes an act showing one’s status or the strength of one’s pelf. You feel infra dig if you don’t give tips. Further, tips giving were once optional but are now considered by establishments and diners as almost obligatory. It becomes compulsory too when some, goon-waiters demand out rightly a big cut in your food-bill. They demand tips as if it is their fundamental right enshrined in the Constitution.

I had met a host of self-styled ‘Good Samaritans’ at hotels and saw them tipping heavily to the servants. But what disgusted me at the time was not their out of box tipping, but their waxing eloquent like Mark Antony about their so called noble act. Their didactic on giving tips would always go like this: ‘One of the marks of the civilized society is the politeness and appreciation strangers show to each other in public situations. Tipping is a form of social appreciation and politeness.’

‘Go on Mark Anotonys… go on,’ I would moan rather mawkishly.

I don’t fidget giving tips to some one as a token of gratitude for a job well done. That waiter hurrying back and forth between the kitchen door and your table and attending your needs with a smile needs to be appreciated monetarily. Again, that depends on your being prudent and sensible and not on your hefty wallet. I never pay a single penny to those waiters who are rude and brusque though they always call me names.

There came another weekend and we found ourselves sitting in our usual restaurant with the same lanky waiter attending to our table. We didn’t dine out this time; we had our coffee. The bill was around Rs.50 inclusive of vat or rat. When the waiter brought the bill keeping it inside a small rectangular bill-folder, I became wise; passed on the bill to my wife along with my wallet. After settling the bill, she left a ten rupee note on the folder as tips. We then sauntered toward the exit and reached the parking lot.

‘Madam’, I heard the waiter calling my wife. He came running over to her. Handing her the ten rupee note that was given to him as tips, he said nonchalantly: ‘Ma’am, please have your money back. This is in appreciation of your patronage … a discount for your frequenting our hotel.’ He disappeared as fast as he had come.

While my wife stood speechless watching his retreating figure, I burst into laughter. ‘Three cheers to your ‘Quantum Theory’. It pays you discount,’ I said and laughed heartily until we reached home.

>>> 

Sometimes Tears Speak Our Grief

A ten-year old boy who taught me about compassion and how to be humane was a beggar, living out of his begging-bowl.

I met him once inside the bus I was traveling from Chennai to Madurai. The journey was long and arduous. All the jerking and the violent rocking I got from the rickety bus triggered wheezing. My long dormant asthma got worked up during the journey and chocked my bronchial tubes. I was gasping for breathe, could hardly speak. Whatever pill I had with me I had bobbed them up all already. Running out of medicines, I was at the mercy of god.

Halting the bus at Tiruchy [a semi-urban town on the National Highway] bus station, the crew had gone for dinner. The cold November wind that seeped through the frayed window blinds of the bus made me shiver, and aggravated my wheezing beyond endurance. Most of the passengers were fast asleep- some even snoring- but I was up in my seat looking around the bus for help with my wheezing getting worse.  .

Presently I saw a ten-year-old boy getting into the bus and craving  the passengers for alms. When he came by my side, he stood startled seeing how I was fighting hard to breathe. He must have thought I was dying. For I saw his face went pale with fear. I thought of giving him some money and asking him to get medicine from any near-by pharmaceutical store. But the boy ran off helter-skelter when the crew started the bus again.

The bus had moved only a few yards from the bus station when the driver stopped it again abruptly. There seemed some commotion on the road. To my surprise, the boy now appeared before me from out of blue. He was carrying a small leather bag in his hands. Following him was a doctor who, without wasting time, read my pulse, checked my BP. He then, took out a syringe from his bag, filled it with some medicines [may be Deriphyllin] and shot it in my back. I got relieved at once. My breathing became normal, I was cheerful again.

Eyes brimming with tears, I thanked the doctor for the trouble he’d taken to reach out to me. But, he shrugged off and said: “Thank the boy. It was he who’d brought me here. When he told me about your condition, we rushed to the bus station, but saw the damned bus had already left the place. Determined as were to help you, we chased the bus riding a bike as heroes did in action films,” the doctor laughed at his own joke. The boy too smiled at me as there was no trace of fear now in his eyes. When I offered to pay to the doctor, he again refused politely and told me that he had done his duty as was expected of a doctor.

Before long, the duo got down the bus and vanished off in the darkness. To me, the whole incident looked like a dream, and the boy seemed an angel sent from heaven to relieve me from my suffering. Who says that god is invisible? For, I saw HIM in the bus on that day, coming to me in the form of a boy, and saved me from dying of asthma. Even now, whenever I cross Tiruchi, I begin to remember the boy and my eyes move to tears. I didn’t give him anything, but tears.

God save him!

Tryst with writing!!

I don’t know what moves me to write; why I have such constant itching which end up only when I write some blah … blah in my scrap book. Quite often, inexplicable impulsiveness and high-horse thinking hijack my senses and make me write volumes and volumes in A4 sheets. However, still, with those tons of write-ups heaped on my table, I doubt whether I can genuinely call myself a writer of substance.

Looking back into my formative years when I had only a flair for writing, I thought I was a born-writer who would weave words in no time, write anything and everything under the sun. I had, then, mistaken my madcap a talent for writing and thought that I was born with a pencil in my hand. But then, what I had churned out those days was only pedestrian; they looked like froth.

Added to these conception or misconception was the impact or the inspiration I got from reading books. I started reading books voraciously; even pieces of crumpled papers I accidentally saw in dustbins attracted me and I read those very religiously as if they were blown out from the ‘Folios of Shakespeare. Again, some bird-witted and amateur writers who got their rubbish verbose sold like hot cakes or women’s ‘fairness cream’ greatly influenced and urged me to take up my pencil.

UUU… my thought of being a great writer [I always thought me as a la Jhumpa Lahiri having all the words of the seven worlds in my kitty] got crashed when I started writing my first piece. Rolling a pencil in my hand and making helluva efforts for getting words from up above my head, I would only stare at the blankness of the paper for long. I would wait for Saraswati [one of the Hindu goddesses who is believed to impart knowledge and wisdom to people] to pour words on my addled head and make my pencil move. Unfortunately, Saraswati didn’t come to my rescue. Whatever I wrote those days, I wrote them after long struggles, cracking my head blue. But then, all my pieces were only despised substances. I found I had only peed on the paper.

The reality that I was not endowed with born writing skills pained and bruised the writer inside me. All along I had thought of myself a ‘blessed writer’ without heeding to what Stephen Leacock said in one of his books: ‘writing is essentially thinking, at least involves thinking as its first requisite.’

So, now I think a lot, write a little. When my thinking goes high and deep, I witness all the dimensions of writing present before me with myriad colors. A neophyte, I am now about to enter into a higher grade of initiation. Having walked past the dimness and the pressure of impulsiveness, I am now in the entrance to the portal of writing which, I, hope, will soon flaunt its secret chambers for me.

Even now I don’t dare call myself an accomplished writer since I know some of the chinks in my armor. However, as a writer still trying to make grades, I offer the following tips to those who wish to venture into the realm of writing; think deeply about the thing you want to write about; organize your thoughts; put your thoughts into language that reveals them clearly; plagiarism will only jar up the original writer in you; prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched; and prefer the single word to the circumlocution.

Best of Luck!

>>>