Клуб любителей английского языка

Now I am a great fan of Indian cuisine. But it wasn’t love at first glance. My first acquaintance with it took place when I was ten and I was far from liking it.

At the time we were staying at a hotel called ‘Rajdoot’ in Delhi. My four-year-old sister and I adored the hotel: there was a swimming-pool in front of it and it was fun going down to the restaurant for our meals three times a day.

But their was a problem. It was our first acquaintance with Indian cuisine. And it was very hot. Too hot for us girls. In fact, it was so hot that all I could eat was cornflakes with orange juice in the morning and small pieces of dry bread from their tomato soup at dinner-time. As for my sister, she lived almost exclusively on ice-cream. The stuff didn’t know much English and we spoke no Hindi, so we had to accept what we were given.

On the fourth day of our stay we grew really hungry and decided to make an effort to be understood. My father called a waiter and said,

‘I’m sorry but your food is too hot. My daughters can’t eat it.’

The waiter repeated, ‘Hot’, nodded and left. In a minute he was returning with a broad smile. In his hands there was a bottle of hot ketchup.