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Barack Wins One at the Indian Cafe
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Baburam Neupane, bartender at the Indian Cafe
Politics and baseball went mano-a-mano last night, as Upper West Siders fought for control of the televisions in public places. It happens every four years, when the presidential debates roll around. By now, I should have known how it would end.
Around 8:15 p.m. my husband and I headed out into the streets, searching for a neighborhood bar. We wanted to watch Obama and McCain slug it out, while we downed a drink or two with neighborhood folks. We started on 110th Street and headed down Amsterdam Avenue. But at one bar after another, it was the Marlins who were slugging the Mets on widescreens, and beer-drinking dart-throwers were silhouetted against panoramas of Shea Stadium.
“Will you be tuning in to the debates at nine?” I asked the bartender at the Lion’s Head Tavern, where Columbia students were downing Coors and Heinekens. He just shook his head and rolled his eyes.
Of course, we were not the only ones embarked on this quixotic adventure. For example, unbeknownst to us, Peggy, a feisty fifty-something woman who lives on 109th Street, was walking up and down Broadway, doing the same thing. When we made her acquaintance some forty minutes later, she had fire in her eyes and was ready to take on the world.
“If you don’t turn the channel to CNN in sixty seconds, I’m outta here!” she challenged the guy behind the bar at the Indian Cafe on Broadway near 108th Street.
She needn’t have worried. Baburam is young, eager to please and not obsessed with the Mets. After all, he’s Nepalese, not American.
It had been my husband’s idea to try our local Indian restaurant, after striking out at every other bar in the neighborhood. He was sure they would be watching the debate there because, as he put it, “foreigners are the only ones interested in politics these days.”
No sooner had Baburam tuned in CNN, than Mr. Sharma, the Indian owner of the restaurant, made a beeline towards us. For optimal TV viewing, he positioned himself right behind me and a few steps from the painting of Ganesha, the Hindu elephant deity.
Peggy was fulminating about the proposed Wall Street bail-out. “Myself, I’ve got nothing to lose,” she said, as if issuing a disclaimer. “I’ve got no money. And I’m in the right business to be in when the economy goes bust. I’m a social worker.”
As moderator Jim Lehrer began his opening remarks on CNN, a small group of neighborhood folks coalesced around the bar and ordered chicken pakora to go with their Kingfishers and Sam Adams. Then Obama came on, and Baburam set the volume to loud, as all heads pivoted toward the screen.
“He’s just so handsome I can’t stand it,” Peggy murmured.
At the end of the bar, an elderly white man with a cane seated himself next to a middle-aged black man in a three-piece suit and spectacles. An Indian waitress came out of the back room and stood behind them. When McCain’s turn came, you could feel the room bristle with hostility.
“This is all from his stump speech!” complained a slender woman in a cardigan who had appeared at my shoulder, holding a glass of white wine.
When McCain said, “A lot of us saw this train wreck coming,” the room exploded into loud guffaws.
“I have only one thing to say,” Peggy shouted at the television, “Keating 5!”
“McCain is saying he really doesn’t want to talk about the bailout,” translated a brown-eyed, thirty-something woman next to her at the bar.
“He can’t remember the facts because he’s too old!” elaborated her forty-something friend. Next to her, a man in a Red Wings T-shirt smiled in apparent agreement.
By now, a salt-and-pepper haired Korean guy had joined the crowd, along with three more restaurant employees. It was standing room only in the little bar of Indian Cafe.
Throughout the debate, Baburam moved back and forth, quickly, refilling customer’s glasses almost to the rim. But when Obama said, “This notion that by not talking with people we are punishing them—I believe this is a mistake.” Baburam put down a bottle of rum he was pouring and applauded, along with everyone else in the room.
It was Obama’s closing remarks, though, that seemed to speak loudest to this particular crowd.
“It is important for us to understand that the way we are perceived in the world is going to make a difference in terms of our capacity to get cooperation…” Obama began. But the end of his sentence was drowned out by the cheers of everyone at the bar.
Behind me, Mr. Sharma was clapping and grinning broadly. “Everybody gets a drink on the house!” he announced, laughingly. (Not that anyone needed one by then.) And he pressed his hands together in front of his chest and made a little bow.
As we headed out onto Broadway, we could see the Mets fans still crowded into O’Connell’s across the street. It would end up a sad night for the Mets. But for the politicos of the Indian Cafe—Obama fans one and all—things were looking bright.
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