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My time in Bombay was short lived - less than three years. To pursue my bachelor’s degree, I had to move to the far northern part of India - close to the Himalayas - to a small, sleepy town called Roorkee.
One evening, while I was away with my friend, Jay, listening to rock music and indulging in some ‘general time-pass,’ my dad received a telegram from University of Roorkee informing him that I had been admitted to the Metallurgical Engineering course and was to report within fifteen days. My life took an abrupt turn. I was about to encounter the most difficult stretch on my culinary journey.
I was over sixty-eight kilograms when I left Bombay. When I returned home after a year, I weighed less than fifty with hollowed cheeks, protruding collarbones, and skin stretched over the ribs as though it were shrink-wrapped. The food at Roorkee did that to me. As a south Indian, I needed rice with sambar and yogurt for both lunch and dinner, but I was served sookha (dry) chapatti with potatoes every single day till I was completely sick of it. At the mess, students seated next to me on either side gorged on stuff that I found impossible to take: bread pakodas dripping with oil for breakfast along with excessively sweet jilebis, raw onions dipped in vinegar as salad before lunch, and paranthas with pickle and yogurt for dinner. Often, after taking a look at the menu posted at the entrance, I elected to have the ‘sick diet’ in which we were served a bun with butter and a small cup of cornflakes with a glass of milk. At the table reserved for sick diet, I met another regular from the south.
Shankar, an electrical engineering student, who had traveled to Roorkee from Chrompet in Madras, spoke very little Hindi and was not used to eating chapattis or dal. He needed dahi (yogurt) with rice for every single meal. But Sharmaji, the Ganga Mess warden, in an attempt to prepare Shankar for the rough and tough life at Roorkee, denied him of that small cup of dahi. “Susthi Aajayegi” – it will make you lethargic – was the reason given for the denial. That made Shankar mad. He could not argue with the warden because Sharmaji did not speak English or Tamil and Shankar could not convey his point across in his broken Hindi. To demonstrate his displeasure he often demanded the sick diet coupon and sat next to me for lunch and dinner. Together we made fun of the food that we so intensely disliked. Shankar was the kind of guy who could stay awake through three consecutive nights when he had to prepare for an exam. It took a lot more than a cup of dahi to induce susthi in him. Sharmaji did not know that; it was I who prepared for exams with Shankar.
Although we called it “combined study,” Shankar regularly put it twice as much time as I did preparing for exams. After 11:00 p.m., I would start to doze off in my chair even when my preparation was inadequate for the test next morning. Shankar would wake me up, urging me to concentrate and show some will power. “I need a cup of chai,” I would reply, trying to get a break from the monotonous task at hand. He would accompany me to Guptaji’s canteen downstairs and patiently wait for me to finish my cup of tea. Then I would order a “half-maggi” – half a packet of Maggi noodles cooked with cabbage, peas and tomatoes – and eat it slowly in an effort to delay the trip back to my room, where we would have to get back to studying. Shankar never spent a penny on tea or snacks. When it came to financial matters, he managed with half my budget. But he invariably scored more than me on all the tests. The only thing he ever wanted was a small cup of dahi and that was denied to him! Shankar left Roorkee for Madras after a year at the university.
To adapt to Roorkee, I had to learn to focus on the things that I enjoyed the most and take my mind off the things that I didn’t. I liked the Saturday specials in which we were served vegetable pulao and puris with matar paneer. As soon as the server brought a container full of matar paneer to the table, we pounced on it. The first one amongst us who got a hold of the container would fish out all the paneer from the bottom, fill his cup and then pass it to the student seated next to him. By the time it got to the third guy, all the paneer was already gone from it! We behaved like refugees fighting for the food packets dropped from a helicopter in a drought-stricken area. But we were not ashamed of our behavior. It seemed like the most natural thing to do. It was like trying to board a train at Victoria Terminus in Bombay. Initially there is a sense of shock when commuters fight each other and howl like animals to get into the moving train. But soon you realize that if you don’t do the same, you will never get to your destination. By the second year, I was regularly having my cup filled with paneer! Thankfully, we didn’t have to fight for the dessert. We were each given a thin slice of cassata ice cream (a combination of vanilla, pistachio and chocolate flavors). I looked forward to those Saturday specials. On Sundays, we had the “non-cereal” dinner. I am not sure why they called it non-cereal because we were served about eight slices of bread with butter and jam, a large cup of plain cornflakes, a few vegetable cutlets, a glass of milk and a kalajam. I got the bread toasted, spread butter on it and fixed myself a few sandwiches with two or three of those cutlets in each of them. I used half the milk for cornflakes and with the remaining half made myself some instant coffee. Students on either side at the dinner table looked at me in amazement, as they didn’t understand why someone would ruin a perfectly good glass of milk with two teaspoons of Nescafé. But then, I wondered how a twenty year old could have a plain glass of milk, sometimes even without sugar to sweeten it!
In the university there were over a thousand boys, but not as many girls. There were nearly ten different hostels for boys, but all the girls in the campus fit into just one: Sarojini Bhavan. The ratio worked against us. There wasn’t much to entertain boys our age in that small village. We derived pleasure from walking the Civil Lines – the main street of Roorkee – in groups of three or four, just to look at some of the local girls. If someone in our group liked a particular girl, we would follow her, enter the same shop that she had walked into and buy the very same brand of items that she bought, even when we had no use for it. We would do just about anything to get her attention — smile at her, strike up a conversation. Sometimes these things worked, but often it misfired. The incident that I can recall is the one that took place at the tikki stall on Civil Lines.
Sushil Kumar and I both enjoyed aloo tikkis. These were small, round shallow fried patties made from boiled potatoes with a few green peas mixed in them. On a chilly day in winter, a hot plate of tikki warmed us up. The vendor fried tikkis on a slightly concave, round plate, about a foot in diameter, with half an inch of oil at the very center, right on top of the flame from a propane gas burner. The tikkis that were to be fried were all neatly arranged along the circumference. Depending on the customer who had ordered first, the vendor brought in a set number of tikkis to the center and fried both sides till they turned golden brown. He worked on about four or five of them simultaneously. When the tikkis were done, he put the required number in a china plate, sliced them into quarters, topped them with onions, sweet and sour chutney and a tablespoon of yogurt. He then picked some hot chilly powder between his thumb and the side of his right index finger and sprinkled it on top and served the plate with a spoon.
One evening, as we were snacking on tikkis, we spotted a couple of attractive girls in a shop nearby. Sushil hit me gently on the side and pointed to the girls in the shop.
“Which one do you like?”
“The one in bright green salwar,” he replied.
“Good choice. How much will you give her?”
“Eight out of ten.”
“What about the girl in that orange dress?”
“A six perhaps,” he replied.
“The girl in green looks like Arpana, doesn’t she?”
“Which Arpana?”
“Arpana Tiwari, AT, yaar. The third year chemical student.”
Sushil had a crush on Aparna, but so did hundred others in Roorkee. He didn’t stand a chance.
“But this girl is not all that well endowed, if you know what I mean,” he added.
I smiled and remained silent.
“Shall we enter the shop and check them out?”
“Ok.”
Just as Sushil was about to return his plate and pay the vendor, a man standing next to him grabbed him by the collar and slapped him on the face.
“Bathameez! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Is this what they teach you in the engineering college? How dare you make such comments about my daughters.”
The man slapped him two more times. Sushil’s face turned beet red and finger marks showed clearly on his left cheek. He seemed mortified and unable to comprehend the happenings. The girls’ father started twisting Sushil’s shirt till the top button started to press at the bottom of this neck, almost choking him. Sushil was shaking with fear. I knew I had to intervene.
“Leave him alone. He was not commenting about your daughters,” I said, shoving him away from Sushil.
The man turned toward me menacingly. He momentarily let go of Sushil and started to attack me, charging forward, raising his hand, in an attempt to hit me. I caught a hold of his hand and stopped him. We wrestled each other till Sushil recovered and dashed towards his cycle, parked near the stall. He jumped on it and started to get away. I let go off the man and ran behind the cycle, with the man still chasing me. I outran him, got near the cycle, caught hold of the handlebar and jumped on to the front cross bar.
We sped away from the girls’ father without paying for the tikkis. That was the last time I had tikkis in Roorkee.
T.N.Mukund
December 2004
To be continued ……
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