Difficult Breakfasts.

Today as usual, I had been to the regular South Indian restaurant for breakfast near office, which I frequent about once a week, usually on Sundays. I sat at the corner table which I usually take. A waiter came up to me. I gave him a glance and saw that he was a new one and not from the usual ones who come to take the order. I was late for breakfast, as it was already past 11, and I doubted if I could get to eat something from the breakfast regulars, I just asked him what I could get to eat. He gave the usual verbal menu but it made a marked difference - his Hindi was a bit way too odd, not exactly like the ones who speak heavily accented Hindi like most South Indians do. Well, he took the order and left towards the kitchen which can be viewed through a window to the customers as well. He placed my order to the cook and waited with a tray arranged with the plate and other things. It would be a while before food would come and so I gave a cursory glance to the interiors of the restaurant and the few people who were eating there. Somehow my gaze returned back to this waiter as I saw another waiter behave very impolitely with him. I kept noticing the attitude of the staff with him which was subtly overbearing and dominating.
My food took long to come and I could see the boy also getting impatient with the kitchen staff for delaying the food. He came up to me and apologized for the delay. I asked him to take it easy and that I could wait though i had to rush back to office. His colleagues were noticing him while he spoke with me. He came with the food and asked if I needed any something else to eat. I replied in the negative and asked if he was new to this place and work before he left the table. He said that he had joined the hotel a week back and is new to the job. He replied to my few more questions and said that he is a Nepali. For a moment I felt for this young lad of about 17 or 18 who did not belong to the majority, though he was doing his work properly and carried himself with a certain air of stressfulness which is very marked in any newcomer.

I didn't have the courage to ask anything more to this boy as the picture was very clear to me. He needed to work like everybody else but was stuck in a place which would never allow him to earn his livelihood with dignity and that he would not be accepted in that set up so easily.

I finished the food and before I could eat the last piece of Roti, he came and asked if I needed tea. I asked for the bill and again this boy was standing at the cash counter for a long time before the cashier could write the bill to him. He came with the bill; I paid him and asked him his name. He said, 'Dill' . I asked again to be assured if I had heard him correctly; 'Dill' is a word which means 'heart' in Hindi but didn't know that somebody could be called by such a name.
I smiled, stealthily placing a tip in his hand and said in Hindi, "Dill, you are working fine, and are strong; Keep working, things will change'.

I don't know if there was anything else I could do for the boy other than infusing some positivity in him.

As I climbed down the stairway of the hotel, I remembered my first few months at my work-place where acceptance took a long time to arrive and when it did, I had already gathered the strength to live alone and courageously in an insensitive world.

Somehow, it is a struggle - for some it is easy, for most it is not so easy; A new job can be a difficult one, just like the breakfast I had today.