RO ON RUPTURED SPACE - 1

THE ITALIAN INCIDENT

The scene: a neighborhood Italian restaurant. The act: Owner thumps fist on table, and yells at waiter for not re-filling Vedant's glass with wine.

The fireworks escalate, making our meal extremely uncomfortable. I push my plate away, we ask for the cheque. The angry hissing and cursing continues. Since it’s over our wine glass, I feel it my moral obligation to defend our poor waiter, who is so shaken that he puts his sleeve into my pasta while placing a spoon; but it doesn’t matter, I can’t eat it anyway.

I’m not drinking the wine. I’m drinking Panna, which I also push away because I feel it go bad with negative energy. So you can say I’m not drinking at all.

I go up to the bar to tell the owner very nicely that he should go easy on the waiter, that it’s not his fault, that our evening has less than bearable. He smiles and shrugs his shoulders, but I hold his eyes like a leash, not letting him drop the gaze. He appears to calm down, and says, with a gruff Italian drawl, "Senora, I'm Italian, I am like this for fifty years, you can't change me.".

I don't know what comes over me the next moment. I note rather cold-bloodedly that I’m not really angry.

So I reply with utter calm, "Do you want to see how Italian I can be?”. Before he can respond, I pick up a Martini glass that has been filled to the brim with water and ice, hurl it towards the corner of the bar, and watch it smash into smithereens.

Then I walk away leaving them frozen in the numb aftermath of slow shock. Vedant follows me in a stupor. The scene I leave behind is vaguely reminiscent me of some fairy tale I’d read as a kid where the whole village is turned to stone in time – the seamstress captive while drawing a thread, the woodman petrified midway through chopping a block of wood. Only, the gentleman at the next table is frozen in action while twirling his spaghetti, his mouth open.

As I walk, wild thoughts crowd my head. Maybe the mafia is waiting outside to run over me, or maim me, or do something equally dreadful. Now that he has Vedant's name on the credit card, and my face is crisp in his memory given that I glued his gaze to mine, it’s going to be horrible, horrible.

What do I do? Flee the country - a little earlier than I'd planned on? Or am I being over-reactive? Obviously, I don't have the attitude to follow-through, or the physical muscle to handle the repercussions.

But let's discuss this incident on a purely academic note.

Whose space was ruptured?

His or ours?