The Indian Head Shake

"Do you serve iced tea?"

Our waiter rolls his head on his shoulders; his eyes float up in his head. His lips turn up in an enigmatic smile.

"Well? Do you?"

The head rolls more quickly, and Charlie and I stare across the table. What is he trying to tell us? Do they or don't they? Iced tea! The waiter's head is now going up and down, meaning yes (internationally), but it is also going side to side--meaning no (internationally). The answer to my question: Yes-No.

Indians, it seems, hate to say no. We have pondered this quirk, Charlie and I. We have concluded for ourselves, without consulting the Indian Ministry of Gestures, that the Yes-No Roll means "no, we do not have iced tea," but "yes, we will go to great inconvenience to make you iced tea, if you insist." We insist. The Yes-No Roll gets slower, a sign that the waiter is hoping that against all odds we will intuit the trouble we are asking him to go to. We do, and don't care. He stands at the table. We ask again. "Iced tea, remember?"

The Yes-No Roll picks up velocity.

Meanwhile, it is 96 degrees, with total humidity and no breeze in the coconut palms, and we would sell our children for a glass of iced tea.

We try to ignore him, standing there, hoping that he will go and do what we have asked for. Finally, he does leave. But we have no idea whether iced tea is on its way. We wait. Our meal arrives, and we start. The kids are served their glasses of Sprite and 7-Up. Charlie and I settle for tepid mineral water.

Finally, as we push back our plates, the waiter rushes up with a triumphant smile. He is carrying a tray with two tall sweating glasses of mint flavored, freshly brewed honey-sweetened iced tea. We gulp thirstily. We have never tasted iced tea like this before; it is sublime.

The same Yes-No Roll was in evidence earlier at the Lake Palace Hotel, where we stayed in Periyar, a jungle region of Kerala that the government is touting as a tourist destination. The stated appeal is some forty tigers at the reserve and hundreds of wild Indian elephants. We saw elephants, no tigers. (You probably should go to Africa to see elephants and large cats.) We had arrived at the Lake Palace by the African Queen's sister ship. Its engine wheezed and sneezed and cut out within drifting range of the jetty. The manager was waiting for us on the concrete steps, and we checked in, the only guests in the Palace's six maharaja-sized rooms. Even then we did not stop to wonder why. First up, the electricity wasn't working.

"Can we expect lights this evening?" I calmly asked the manager, who was way out of his depth even before we arrived.

(Head roll)

"OK, we'll get along in the dark, then."

He looked pleased.

At a candlelit dinner, our meal arrived cold. "Is this the nature of Kerala's cuisine, or did you forget to heat it up?" I asked.

(Head Roll)

"Will we be having warm water tonight in the shower, or just cold, like this afternoon?"

(Head roll)

"And the beds, are we getting mattresses tonight, or just the straight boards?"

(Big head roll)

"Tomorrow when we leave, can a boat be here to pick us up at eight-thirty?"

(Head roll)

From now on, when we get the Yes-No Roll, we will always assume yes, while the head roller will always assume no, and it will always come out a big fat Maybe. Sometimes you get what you ask for, sometimes you don't. It's always a surprise. But isn't this part of what makes India interesting, never boring, and a bit of a gamble?

(Head roll.)