Part I

I was doing my habitual Friday night thing. Occupying the usual table in Sri Ananda Bahwan Indian restaurant along Jalan Tanjong Bungah, waiting for my favourite meal: chicken hariyali kebab, aloo gobi, two garlic naans and a tall glass of iced tea. I was alone, having a Friday evening date with my book, The Sympathizer. Great company, since my favourite woman wasn’t with me. She doesn’t live in Malaysia.

Before the meal arrived, I took my eyes off the pages to survey the people in the restaurant, and the family directly in front of me caught my eye. Four Indians. Husband and wife. Son and daughter. The father and son faced my way while the wife and daughter had their backs to me. I guessed the adults were in their mid-thirties, the children under ten. They were beautiful to look at. Arresting to watch. Eye-catching indeed.

My attention was biased towards the wife. I couldn’t see her face properly, merely glimpses as she turned sideways to talk to her daughter, but her profile suggested she was attractive. I liked her thick black hair, a little wild and ruffled, tied back in a clasp. She sat upright with a tapered back, slender arms, and rested on a shapely yet firm butt. Frustrated, I purposely walked outside to my bike, feigning a key check, just so I could return to my table and look at her more carefully. She was foxy alright.

Their daughter, I guessed around ten, possessed her mother’s beauty. With cropped silky black hair tufting around her ears and the back of her neck, a fringe framing her pretty face and toothy grin, her cheeky animated ways and gangly frame made me think of Mowgli from The Jungle Book.

Her effervescence was a joy to watch. She pulled rabbit ears behind her mother’s head whenever Mum was distracted, much to the amusement of her little brother, while Dad pretended not to notice.

Her brother, a few years younger and dressed in matching orange, had big bright eyes, thick eyebrows and long eyelashes. He was a handsome boy and almost, though not quite, as boisterous as his sister.

Dad meanwhile sat scooping handfuls of rice into his mouth with his right hand, looking content yet bashful, certainly not gloating over his beautiful family. He had a calm, protective, attentive yet unassuming demeanour. His shaven head and five o’clock shadow gave him a rugged swarthy appearance.

They were a handsome couple. All of them together a picture of family bliss, I thought, as they talked and laughed and looked at each other intensely. It was evident they were genuinely happy. In unison. Altogether in the moment. Engaged with each other. They were a joy to observe. There was not a smartphone on the table.

My food arrived. I tucked in.

Then my attention shifted to a Chinese family seated at a table to their left. Again four of them, but this time with teenage children.

They sat motionless and speechless, pale waxen faces staring blankly at their phones. By comparison to the Indians they were a depressing sight. A table of zombified humans allowing their existence to take a back seat to an on-screen reality that was not their reality at all. Merely squandering their lives flicking past photos and videos of other people’s lives. Other people’s content about other people’s content.

What a travesty, I thought as I slurped a spoonful of aloo gobi. There was no fun in watching the living dead, so I let my attention drift back to the beautiful Indians.
 

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Part II

Then in walked the Europeans.

A man with a troop of seven children. He had a youthful boy scout leader look, his fair hair pulled into a ponytail. From his appearance one might think he was thirty-five, but from the age of his eldest I guessed he was probably closer to forty-five.

I studied the faces of the children and, given they all looked similar to him, assumed they must all be his. The eldest probably fifteen, the youngest seven. There was something about their pale complexions which suggested Scandinavia to me. Humans who don’t spend much time in the sun. Possibly this was their first day in Malaysia and they’d wandered in from the hotel across the road.

I wondered whether the absence of their mother might be because she’d exhaled her last breath delivering the seventh child. What a tribe, I thought. He looked slightly out of kilter with no woman beside him.

They sat at the table to my left, with double bench seating like mine. Two rows. Four either side. They began studying the menus.

The youngest boy soon got up and began running around the table giggling, pulling his coat hood over his head. It was only a matter of time, I thought, before this hyperactive child connected badly with one of the upright pillars supporting the restaurant roof.

He reminded me of a classmate at primary school who would regularly do odd things, like stand in the middle of the playground and scream his head off for the duration of break time. So while this one ran around blinded by his hoodie, the parent and siblings ignored him.

But not the two beautiful Indian children. They were transfixed by his antics.
The daughter’s head turned left and right as she watched the raucous boy and passed observations back to Mum. Her brother grinned and tugged at his father’s arm, urging him to look. Both Mum and Dad, showing Asian reserve and restraint, were not going to get drawn into gawking at the Europeans.

Then the silly boy ran into a post and let out a wail.

The little Indians seemed briefly perplexed by the incident and looked away, while the Scandinavian siblings took almost no notice of his cries at all. Dad calmly stood up and led the tearful child back to the table. I suspected they’d all seen his falls and scrapes before.

While the Europeans ordered meals, the Indian family had wrapped up theirs. The zany kid was soon back up dancing around the tables, only this time the two little Indians decided to join him. They began playing hide-and-seek with the hooded pale-faced juvenile from behind the pillars. It was interesting to observe the dynamics between the two tables while the cheerful Indian children and the strange Scandinavian lad ran around them.

On my left were the Europeans, seemingly fixated by their menus and largely oblivious to everyone in the restaurant, including their chaotic younger brother prancing about the place. Two of the older children had smartphones out, while the rest were sort of engaged with each other. I say sort of because there was an oddness about them. Hardly a smile. Merely an indifferent demeanour hanging over them like a cold Nordic winter.

The handsome Indian couple opposite by comparison emitted a warm sunny radiance while they murmured to each other and occasionally glanced across at their cheerful children. They presented a relaxed and contented manner and I sensed they were reluctant to appear too conspicuous in their pride at their children’s forward yet respectful interaction with this strange white boy.