Central Park at 7 am - Stadel

8 of us met at Central Park. Doc brought Peter, Zoria brought Sid, Barbara and Munnu gave me a lift. We walked around the lake and listened to the laughing club and watched people doing yoga on blue mats. There are now quite a few young Nepali security guards in blue. Umbrellas are no longer allowed in the notorious Central Park as shady things were going on there in the evenings. Rajesh Nath and others discovered the children’s park and petting zoo where there are rabbits and all.

We then decided to try out The Stadel hotel beside the stadium for breakfast and followed Rajesh there. The driveway with columns and ivy on the walls makes it look very Mediterranean. We had the First Innings dining hall all to ourselves and we had quite a laughing club there with Peter as Hash Jester. The rooms in the Stadel are mostly all related to cricket – for eg.the ladies toilet is called maiden. We could understand why the various halls were called Lords, and Oval, but we had to ask the waiter why the Bar was called Heka, an Egyption deity. Poor Zoria was hexed throughout the breakfast. She asked for sliced mangoes, and it was served to Barbara who happily tucked into it. Zoria’s plain omelet took quite some time coming as the same person who was making the eggs was also probably slicing the mangoes. She was convinced her omelet went to Munnu too but it had tomatoes and onions so she had to wait in the wings some more. I was bowled over by the alu parantha and the fresh yoghurt. The waiters were on a sticky wicket and their batting was a bit slow but we enjoyed the breakfast and will be over to the Taj after the Botanical Gardens next Sunday.

Thanks Ed and Twila for your email-“Thanks for the great story…. I miss and appreciate HASH even more when I am outside of India. Our Indian work permits were just delivered for the coming year and we look forward to HASH when we get back to Kolkata.” Bhaskar too is traveling in Europe and our numbers are low in the hot summer season.