A restaurant in Lahore teaches me the importance of names

Once I was in Lahore. I was jonesin’ for some Qawwali.

I had heard there was a part of town with one or two hopping Qawwali joints. My lovely lady friend and I stumbled into one place called 89 Taste. They had a swinging Qawwali ensemble. But the place was nearly empty.

Ah, well, I thought. What a pity that the young people don’t appreciate the fine arts any more.

We got the menu and were overwhelmed! There were indeed 89 different dishes. More options than any one man or woman could process. Paralyzed with choice, my lady love and I ordered a simple chai and sat back to enjoy the melding of voice, harmonium, and tablain praise of the Lord.

Having had our fill of chai and Qawwali (and having sampled none of the other 87 tastes on offer), we ventured over next door and saw another joint called simply: “Chai Qawwali”.

We chanced a look inside - and Lo! - immediately our faith in the current age was restored. For here were women and men of all ages joined together in enjoying fine chai and music performed by another fine Qawwali group.

Clearly the proprieter of this establishment had keenly seen that folks out and about Lahore at night would have exactly two things on their minds: chai and Qawwali. After acting on this insight, the wise proprietor had reaped their due reward: “Chai Qawwali” had 10 times as many customers as the unfortunately named “89 Taste”.

It was thus that I learned the importance of names.

It was thus that I learned the importance of core competencies.