The five course meal

The venue was the Quay restaurant, acclaimed as the best restaurant in Australia. It was night, the harbour bridge illuminated by an arcade of lights and the magnificent Opera house with its brightened mystic sails making reflections in water. The restaurant overlooked the circular quay, the harbour bridge and Opera house in the background. We reached the place it was busy already. Tables had been arranged such that people can sit in small groups and chat through the whole dinner. I was reminded of our conference dinners in India. Food cooked and served in big containers, heaps of people queuing up with plates in their hands, the small fights sometimes on alcohol and meat, the quarrels with bartenders of some senior people after they come under influence, I should concede that a concept of a "dining experience" is not popular in India. the Indian instincts of competition and urge for survival shows up in every instance, be a conference dinner or crossing road.
We were a bit late so we found most of the tables were already full and people were busily engaged in talking to their mates on the table. We managed to find a place in one of the tables. The tables seemed cramped with lots of glasses . I sat down to take a closer look. There were five wine glasses all in different dimensions, five knives on the right side and five forks on my left. A piece of bread was kept on a small plate onto my left. There was butter on the table and only enough room to rest our forearms on the table after all that crockery display. The waiter dressed in black suit asks" Could we start with a glass of sparkling wine gentlemen?" We nodded in approval. Little did I know that five different types of wine are to follow after that. I started cutting the bread piece with a small knife kept along with it on the table. It was not very special but suited the wine nicely. One of the Indian Australians sitting next to us started talking. He talked about his training in Bombay and his mother telling about the lot of rules she had to follow in Sydney as compared to Mumbai. He said at the end of the day he missed something which he thought would be there if he was in Bombay. i felt a city life could be no different in any city. May be he 'll find driving little better in Melbourne where he lives, may be the power never goes off, may be he can drink tap water, but the rat race ids the same. Keeping pace with others in spending in one of the major drives for earning money in a city. You have to dine in a new and a bigger restaurant every weekend, you will have to switch to better cars, you will have to move to better areas and you will have to have a holiday home.These things keep you busy running behind money. we feel comfortable or feel happy transiently on achieving these goals but soon a bigger desire enters our minds and torments us, threatens us of failure and drives us to our extremes to attain it.
The waiter asked if we had any special dietary requirements and we answered in affirmative. Chethan would n't take pork or beef and Iwas a vegetarian. He said we would be getting eggplant fry for our main course as it contained meat.
I came to know that the dinner is called Degustation dinner. A suiting wine precedes every course of a meal. The servings went on till 11 30 pm ending with a coffee.
Sydney does teach me new things!