North Indian Diner

No matter how hard I try to move away, life always seems to bring me back to King Street, Newtown. More specifically, to the North Indian Diner, where I sit every Tuesday night with the same group of friends, eating the same food out of the same Bain-marie.

They sit around me now, happy, animated, waving bits of Naan or half-chewed chunks of Chicken Tikka, talking about games and gaming.

“Killing Floor is awesome,” says Vic, holding court. “There just aren’t enough zombie games for PC at the moment, and I for one welcome a new addition.”

I sigh and toy with a plateful of Palak Paneer. Under the discontinuous spectral profile of the overhead fluorescents, it looks less like an invigorating spinach curry and more like a bowl of sick.

Around me are the same faded posters of the Taj Mahal and some river scene I’ve never bothered to ask about in more than a decade of patronage. The tablecloths - plastic - are still the same. The chair I’m sitting on has easily four kilos of used gum stuck under it, including at least a kilo that I have personally chewed.

This, I reflect, this is a life half-lived. This is the treadmill. This is the real grind.

Yet my friends look happy. Vic and the Guerrilla Gamer are trading zombie impressions. Silver is showing off some unnecessary new app on his iPhone. Cmos looks on with the jealous gaze that only a long-time Nokia 3210 owner can affect. One time Nintendo magazine editor L- is picking the scab on his latest Madworld tattoo and explaining how the DSi is the only true next-generation console. Meatloaf is peering myopically at pictures of the PSP Go he’s loaded up on a netbook after joining the North Indian Diner’s famously insecure wireless network.

Sure, since 1999 the tech has changed. The first time we ever came in here, Vic was gushing about how mobiles were about to go digital, and Silver was making us sick because he had the internet on at home. Back then Meatloaf and L- still used to fight over Sony’s “betrayal” of Nintendo, and I was a major Quake 3 tragic, challenging all comers to rocket duels on The Longest Yard.

But fast-forward 520 Tuesday nights and I’m still sitting in this hideous orange chair, spooning lukewarm goop into my mouth, listening to the same guys crap on about the same stuff. I wonder what’s wrong with me. Seasonal Affective Disorder? Chronic fatigue syndrome? Swine flu?

“Your problem,” says the Guerrilla Gamer, after taking a hit from his Giants: Citizen Kabuto hip-flask, “is that you can’t help but believe too much of a good thing leaves one wanting less.”

I take a moment to think this through, and after a moment I shrug.

“No seriously,” says the Guerrilla Gamer, “you live in the best of all possible eras. Never in the history of human endeavour has life been this cruisey for thirty-something bachelors. Never have we had so many awesome toys within our literal and financial grasp.” He indicates Silver and his iPhone. “No matter how bored you get, there’s always something else out there to divert you. How about this Pandora thing, the open-source console?”

“Yeah I pre-ordered one,” says Silver. “There’s a chance they won’t ever release it, but I think just being part of the buzz is well worth $330.”

“Three hundred and thirty bucks?” shrieks the perennially broke Cmos.

“Well, US,” Silver admits. “I still have faith they’ll ship it, but hey, I just like being on the TEAM, you know?”

Suddenly, I’m on my feet and screaming. “NO!” I open with. “No I don’t know! I don’t know what we’re DOING here! Eating the same crappy food in the same crappy restaurant with the same crappy waiters staring at me and wondering if they should call the cops!”

“He’s got a point you know,” rumbles Meatloaf, but when eyes swivel to take in the magnificence of his filthy black trenchcoat and enormous Gundam Wing covered gut, he mildly goes back to looking at PSP Go photos on his netbook.

It sure takes the steam out of me. I collapse back into my chair.

“What is this about, dude?” Vic asks. “Girl troubles? Money troubles? Testicular discomfort?”

L- and Cmos both nod knowingly at this, much to my alarm. I toy with my green sludge a little more.

“I expected more from life,” I sigh. “I thought there’d be real progress, you know? Philosophical progress, spiritual progress. Not just the same games in higher resolution with more realistic blood spray. I mean,” I sit up, gripped with sudden passion, “you know what’s so hot right now?”

The guys indicate they do not presume to know what is so hot right now.

“PC games from ten years ago.” I indicate Meatloaf’s netbook. “Playing old games on new, under-powered machines. We have officially come full circle. It’s 1999 all over again.”

A huge grin spreads across Vic’s face.

“Dude,” he says, with real feeling. “You know what this means? It means no criminal record! I can finally own another sheep!”

Incidentally if you’re ever in Newtown, DO eat at the North Indian Diner. The food’s actually really good - I was just in a mood.