Don't drink the moist towelette

I'm very grateful that it's Saturday today...for once, Mark had to wake me up this morning so I wouldn't sleep the day away (it was 9 a.m., way later than I ever sleep at home). After lazing for a couple of hours more, we headed out in search of an ATM and somewhere to eat. We ended up at a high-scale traditional Indian restaurant, where we did our best to order from a still unfamiliar set of options. I got a dish with masala sauce, which was very tasty, especially in combination with the garlic naan we ordered. Mark got a dish with potatoes and shredded spinach, which was okay but not as interesting as mine. At the end of the meal, our waiter thought we must not like the food because there was so much left, and I don't know that we really convinced him that we actually did like it but were just full. I'm learning that Indians are both big eaters (my coworkers would have polished off the whole meal easily) and concerned hosts, which is tricky to negotiate when you don't have any room left to eat more food.

After the dishes were cleared, the waiter brought us each a cup with warm, clear liquid and a lime wedge floating in it. Not knowing what it was, I thought it might be some sort of post-meal refreshment and began to raise it to my mouth to take a sip. At this point, the waiter came rushing over and told me that I should not drink it, it was water for washing our hands after the meal. I'd eaten semi-Indian style (they tear bread and pick up their food with it, so they largely eat with their hands), so it immediately made sense, but I of course felt like an idiot for trying to drink the hand-washing water. In a few minutes, after I recovered from the shame of it, Mark and I just started laughing, because it would have been ridiculous to the other people in the restaurant if they'd seen me gulping down the cleaning water -- in the US the most analogous situation might be someone opening the post-meal moist towelette pack, noting the pleasant lemon smell, and chomping into it.

I am happy to report, however, that I was familiar with the dish of breath freshening herbs that the waiter brought after that, so I was able to correctly ascertain that they were intended for consumption. :)