KO PANGAN PARAKALO

‘KOPANGAN PARAKALO’

‘Hi! This is Vivek from First Data. Can you take the order?’

‘Yessssh’

‘One 100, One 31 and One 35’

‘Cheeken???’

‘Yeah’

‘Isspicy??’

‘Yeah all Spicy’

‘4439???’

‘Yeah that’s correct’

‘Okay. Half hour’ jovially.

That’s a standard conversation I have at around 12:15 PM almost everyday of the work week.I order food for my Indian colleagues and myself from KO PANGAN restaurant. KO PANGAN serves Thai, Chinese and Indian food.

Language and food has given us a tough time at Athens. It took us a lot of experiments before we could settle for a few things that were eatable and consumable daily.World renowned SODEXHO runs the canteen at FDI, Hellas. Hellas is the greek name of Greece. We tried quite a lot of things before finally giving up eating at the canteen.We ate things that looked like a preparation of running nose extract seasoned with dressing that reminded me of shit that came out if you had an upset stomach.

“Though it looks like a bad shit, it’s gonna taste good yaar’ one of us chuckled.

I reckon that even if I would have tasted shit, I wouldn’t have agreed to that statement.
Greeks are really fond of pork and cow meat, in all forms, and hence all the eating joints have varied preparations containing those as the basic ingredient. I don’t eat cow meat as that is something prohibited in my religion. Just that I have not been able to get over it till date as my other colleagues and so I was left with lesser options. I had to relinquish eating something that I thrive on because of the threatening H591 BIRD FLU epidemic, which has distressed numerous parts of the globe, until some saintly soul divulged that if they are cooked above 70 degree centigrade, it’s harmless to our system.

The first few weeks were tough and it brought out the cook in me. We started cooking dinner which looked good and did not taste awful. Now we cook food that still looks good and tastes satisfactory. We experimented with cooking and can now successfully boast of having learnt to prepare various items, all eatable.
The first time we ordered the greek food; pork and pitha (kinda Indian Bread), we went gaga about the taste. We had to ask a greek colleague to order that as the those people do not understand english. I am glad the KO PANGAN guy does, well you dont have to be a degree holder in english to understand words as 'spicy' and 'chicken'. The following few days we ate that till we got sick of it. It contains cooked but bland pork pieces on sticks like Tikka kebabs and Pitha along with a sauce and fresh onions cut in small pieces. We had to eat that till it was warm coz the pork pieces became hard if left for some time and then the jaws suffered.

KO PANGAN happened one of those days when one greek colleague ordered food from there and we got to look at the MENU, fortunately it was printed in English also. We tried that and from then on we have depended on it for our lunch. Most of the items are preparation of rice and though I am not a rice lover, I am addicted to KO PANGAN food.

PARAKALO means hello in greek. Hence when I call up the guy at the store picks up the phone to utters the same words which seems recorded, ‘KO PANGAN PARAKALO’ and the same conversation continues.There are numbers against the items and instead of saying the name I prefer telling him the number to prevent any mishaps.The food is delivered in 30-45 mins time and I get a call on my extension 4439 from the security desk, the ring which involuntarily leads to the secretion of gastric juices. One of us go out to get the food, pay the delivery guy and profoundly thank him for the food.

Ef Kharisto KO PANGAN.

!! Ef Kharisto is THANK YOU in greek !!