Musings of a Mad Mind - 6

One of the most important memories of my college life was that of hanging around in our canteen. Not just for the yumm food there but also for the racket that we created everytime we put our feet there.

The entire process of team building is best learnt from the then Ethiraj College Women's cricket team. We used to have breakfast, luch and our parting evening snack together. We relished it more simply because there were so many of us to share everything with.

Our college had this custom of parting with five rupee coupons for their over rated sports persons (us inluded) and although there were totally just three or four items on the menu that matched our coupon amount, we all would combine our coupons(Including the tokens for those who failed to attend practice)and manage to have more than just a wholesome breakfast.

We all would invariable have the breakfast for the day, which would be either dosa (butter dosa, onion dosa, plain being the options) kichidi, pongal or puri. There would be atleast 3 forms of dosa on the table and everyone would manage to get their hands on a maximum of two pieces!!! This would be followed by Chilly cheese toast and club sandwich. After this would be the coffees, tea or fruit juices. Now, this might seem normal to all but imagine a group of 12 or 13 girls, very noisy ones at that, all wanting to eat everything and yet happy just to get a mouthful and letting out giggles, laughter and sometimes howls (cos someone would have missed out on one particular item).It was not like we were the only ones in the canteen, but we would be oblivious to our surroundings, simply because we were larger in number and hence appeared more powerful to the on lookers.

There is no doubting who would have made the maximum noise, MOI, and all for asking the others to lower their voices. None would oblige and i would join the bandwagon, giving up dreams of pretending to be the good one!!!!!

As a team we had to time our lunch to perfection. One we had to avoid the crowd, two the lecturers who knew that we should be attending classes instead of sitting in the canteen and three, most important, not to have luch too close to pracice hours.

College's official lunch time was 11.14 to 11.45. So that was the easy part. We would have had our sumptous breakfast only by 9.30 and so the first part was dealt with easily. The next part of our luch timing was to avoid nosey lecturers and although i make it sound like it was a massive task, it was easy, actually the teachers made it easy for us. We realised that the lecturers hardly knew us and so we went about our lunch business unnoticed.

The most common menu for lunch on most days (except fridays) was parota or veg stuffed parota with PBM (Paneer Butter Masala) or Gobi Manchurian. Imagine mixing tandoori with chinese.... it was AWESOME!!!!! There also used to be tomato rice, veg rice or veg biryani as a part of everyday menu.

The exception to Friday from our standard menu was because we had the best ever Sambar Sadam with Poriche Apalam. It was out of the world. The taste of that still lingers in my mouth. There used to be such a rush to get our hands on it. Friday was probably the one day in the week where we used to have an early lunch because sambar sadam was up for grabs only during the half hour lunch break.


The post evening practice times are one of the best. Not more than a handful at college, the canteen all to ourselves and the very relaxed owners of the canteen would be happy to entetain us, maybe because we would help them in polishing off whatever was left behind for the day!!!! :)

Apart from the thrice a day meals at collge, Urmi and myself entertained ourselves rather frequently to two other personal favourites, BAR ONE AND GRAPE KUCHI (as we fondly addressed it). BAR ONE was the best chocolate of those days, according to us. I somehow had the mood for it anytime in the day and as my partner was a sweet lover i didnt have to ask her more than once. So we were partners in sweet crime.

I must not forget to mention one more important purchase from the canteen.. the all important and life saviour SPLASH. I dont know how many would know about this candy like thing. Urmi's frequent fainting spells were handled effectively by Splash. It was almost like i was hoarding it. At any given point of time there would be ten of them in my bag, and that didnt stop me from replenishing my stock everyday :)

As far as the grape kuchi goes..hmmm.. dont know if i should say this but anyway.. this is the history behind it. This grape stick was a mass of grape syrup on ice, made by a icecream company SIVITHA!!!!!! It was toooooo good. It would leave our tongues purple and asking for more. But apart from our individual binges, would be this massive team lick. I cant imagine how we did it then, but atleast 6 of us would have that one single grape kuchi and sometimes a few more would join the lick :)

Unforgettable days those, unforgettable memories and the most wonderful moments of our lives. Will they ever come back????? No would be my guess, but what the hell.. maybe there is something better waiting for me and all of us from the college canteen...............