Earlier in the week I had heard from a friend about how Roadhouse Cafe in Thamel weren’t making Nepali customers feel at home, going to lengths to keep entire tables of local customers waiting while a foreigner sipping a plain coffee is waited upon with a smile.[break]
The girl who tells me about it explains it saying it was a special evening with her boyfriend, thus making the experience even more bitter than it was perceived to be. I try telling her she should have made her boyfriend buy her jewelry at Masala Beads instead. It’s much cheaper. And a damned sight more special.
She instead accuses me of not having any romance in my soul. I point out she has no money in her pocket. And she wonders which of us is better off. Quite simply, some people have no sense of precedence.
Walking into Roadhouse Cafe, sitting down to dinner on a surprisingly not so busy weekend, I check out the crowd. It’s past 8 pm and there’s hardly a soul at the bar. In fact, it almost feels like a family restaurant since every table has a lot of plates and an argument going on. I figure the diners next to us are there for the meal, not for the booze, and unreasonably loud.
Just when I begin to wonder if I’m at the right place on a Friday night, a trip to the men’s room settles that score. By the time it’s close to midnight, the place is packed. Eighteen-something line the bar, walls and walkways.
The bartenders are busy pouring fancy cocktails left, right and centre. Even the music, a watered down version of the 60s disco when I first walked in, has now given way to grunge, garage, acid, techno or whatever today’s terms for righteous sounds are. There isn’t an adult in sight, and quite plainly, too much cleavage for one’s own good.
Kathmandu’s economy is being fuelled by kids barely old enough to shave but trendy enough to walk around with half a tube of hair gel on their already spiky hair.
This answers the question the self-proclaimed “economists” funded by generous donors have been asking earlier. Kathmandu’s economy is being fuelled by kids barely old enough to shave but trendy enough to walk around with half a tube of hair gel on their already spiky hair, and Dolce and Gabbana deodorant everywhere else, let alone guzzle the double Black with Coke they’re ordering at the bars.
And they’re all spending it at “happening” restaurants like Roadhouse Cafe. Or places like it.
Which in turn has me wondering where my generation is since there isn’t a familiar face in the place. At Tamas, across the street, says the waiter. Apparently, that’s where people my age go after dinner. I tell him the cover’s ridiculous, considering there doesn’t ever seem to be enough place to stand up, let alone find a table. Plus, it’s expensive and I don’t think I can afford to get drunk in there.
He asks me if I’d mind settling the bill before I order another round of whiskey.
Walking out, still hungry and not drunk enough after settling a bill amounting to a couple of grand, I realize where my generation is. At the office working from 9 till 6 everyday, six days a week, sometimes even on holidays. Earning the money our kids can spend.
Maybe next time one of them will pay my cover and take me to Tamas.
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