I can’t believe I never posted about this before. Well, this post is courtesy of my current tv series watching schedule. I am currently watching or I should say rewatching, the entire Seinfeld series starting from season 1. I have watched Seinfeld on cable tv before but it was a few episodes here and a few episodes there so I haven’t seen more than….let’s say 50% of the episodes. Now in the beginning I didn’t think much of Seinfeld as a show but it was being shown, 5 nights a week, on Indian cable tv just before FRIENDS and I loved FRIENDS. I have learned to have a much better appreciation of Seinfeld since then and hence the watching of the series.

So now to the actual post, back in 2002-03 I live in Calicut (the city has officially changed it’s name to Kozhikode but I still prefer & use the old name of Calicut) for a total of 8 months while I was under the employment of a now defunct company based in that city. While there I stayed in a single room in a lodge and I had two of my colleagues also living in the same lodge. Most mornings we’d meet outside the gate and go to a small mess right opposite our lodge for breakfast and then take a bus or share an auto to the office. In the evening we’d either go to the mess or one of 3 small restaurants within walking distance from the lodge. At one of these restaurants, which we preferred because the food, though more expensive, was the best we’d meet Kramer.

Not the actual Kramer ofcourse but the waiter who usually served us bore a striking resemblance in looks, height but mainly in hairstyle to Cosmo Kramer (played by the actor Michael Richards). And this waiter was weird, looked like he had slept in the clothes he was dressed in, hadn’t combed his hair since the mid 90s and was a bit rude and obnoxious not just to us but to other customers as well. When I first saw the guy, I did a commendable job of not shouting “Hey, look it’s Kramer” and later explained to my two companions as to who Kramer was (they hadn’t seen the show) and hence we always referred to the waiter as Kramer. Towards the end of my stay in Calicut and me and another colleague had gone to the restaurant and at the end of our meal, I explained to the waiter about who Kramer was and that he bore a striking resemblance to the funny character.

He seemed to like that a lot and he actually smiled for us – first time we had ever seen him smiling!