When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and the Communist system that had served as it’s unifying ideology was, in Ronald Reagan’s memorable words, “relegated to the dustbin of history,” many leaders faulted the US intelligence services for failing to predict it’s collapse and the dire state it must have been in before it did so. American diplomat George Kennan had written prophetically to the US State Department from the American Embassy in Moscow where he was posted in 1946 in what later became known as the “long telegram” that the Soviet Union was a vast collection of states, and that if it ever lost the unifying communist ideology it would fall apart in short order. Some Western observers who had travelled to the capital of Moscow in the late 1970’s pointed out that retail establishments in close proximity to the Kremlin were still using the abacus to compute transactions while the Western world was beginning to use computerized registered should have been scene of a system that was unable to adjust to technological advances. A more demonstrative clue to the creaking timbers of the Soviet system may have been found in the fact that many restaurants were barely operating as food listed on menus was often unavailable and what was served was often at variance from what had been ordered and was of a poor quality as well and the wait staff was indifferent to the resulting complaints. British intelligence officer Kim Philby, who had been a long time Russian agent and was forced to defect to Moscow in 1963 as a result, had previously reported that one of the sources of enjoyment for him and his Russian wife was dining out in the capital city, but his widow reported after his death in 1988 that they had stopped doing so before his passing in 1980 due to the fact that those eateries were really not functioning, and Philby, who had been born in India where his father was a colonial official, often prepared their dinners from the Indian recipes that had had learned from the kitchen servants who had served his parents. But Oklahoma’s capital city is home to a flourishing restaurant scene that is expanding in an impressive manner.
The spicy fare that the treacherous Kim Philby learned to make in his early youth is now available here at a various locales, perhaps most notably at the Gopuram Indian Restaurant that is located at 412 S Meridian off of Interstate 40. That establishment played an interesting role in the lunch plans of an elderly Oklahoma City foodie of some notoriety, who had gone to a large dental office where he thought he would have his teeth cleansed. But when he arrived there he was ushered into one of the numerous offices equipped with dental chairs and had three small wooden sticks that resembled porcupine quills placed in his mouth and advised that they would serve to deaden his mouth in anticipation of the Novocain shots he would soon be receiving there. After their bitter taste succeeded in producing a degree of the needed numbness, he received three needles worth of Novocain, and was then serenaded for a time by the sounds of a drill that bore holes into three of his molars that were then filled by the dentist. As he departed the dental chair and was advised to partake of soft foods for at least an hours time. In the waiting room he encountered an old acquaintance who advised him that he had reported to the office thinking that he would have three cavities filled, but was relieved when he only got his teeth cleaned instead. The foodie than made his way to Gopuram, for his midday meal, where he knew from past experience that it’s popular Chicken Tikki Masala that is available on it’s buffet soft quality would be a good match for his teeth that were beginning to throb, and tried not to think of the possibility of dental patient’s names becoming confused and patients being delivered to the wrong rooms.
Against the Grain 