HOLY MESS
If there is one thing that you are sure to miss after leaving iit,
it must be our mess. The mess is not
just another messy place to eat, but it’s the place where junta keep track of
each other’s face, where anything and everything under the roof can be talked
about with full decibels on, where your loud guffaws and grand gesticulations
are taken for granted, where tumblers are meant to be caught and got, where
whenever in doubt Newton’s Laws are tested on poor chicken eggs. In short, it
is a grand circus orchestrated with the spectators being the participants too.
The half an hour you spend there, you don’t eat to live, but instead, live to
eat.
But mind you, the entry is not a free-for-all. The reservation
queue in Central, the darshan queue in Thirupathy, the queue for a Tam movie in
OAT, all would pale into insignificance if you get to witness the Monday queue
for puris or say the Thursday queue for Batoras. The whole queue is supposed to
be governed by just two words-‘After you’. Its really fascinating how junta
start using this trumpcard, from the Baski court,from the bogs, or worse still,
the previous day’s Memorandum of Understanding.’After You’ being the rule there
has to be a way to violate it too. And yes it’s called poondhing. Thanks to
Homo,Moorthy & Co some seem to have made poondhing an art in itself. It all
starts with a 1000W smile to your closest friend standing in the queue,
slightly nudging the next guy and start farting as if you two were inseparable
twins. And if in case the next guy has a quizzical how- the-f*** look on his
face, you make amends by starting a leisurely conversation with him and by the
time his bulb glows, its your turn.
And once you get the gauntlet-of-a-plate, a whole process has to be
performed. In fact, on Saturdays, before you start eating you feel like having
accomplished a great task on earth, and get to know what earning your bread
really means. Starting with standing for the plate, getting your buns (or
whatever), cutlets(with or without sauce), oil fried chilli, boost,
bananas and eggs and then again
standing in a queue for the hot plate to get your breads toasted or roasted,
before ofcourse giving your eggs to someone in the other parallel line and
coming back with your fingers burnt and and after all this, if you are blessed
enough to have one of those typical omelet-maker in his not-so-good mood you are bound to see some funny things.
Sample- a request for a mild increase in chilli could be replied with a whole
spoon of hot chilli making the omelet and your face red. Or sometimes your carefree unintended whistling could be met with a stern warning
with a liberal use of words from chaste Tam.
And if you are not very amused with all these things going around
you, you’ve got some cute companions too. Indeed, if there is one person who
should be happy with our mess, it must be our own Menaka Gandhi. We may have
lost some tigers in distant Nandankeni, but here in our own backyard, we have
got cats and pussies almost making up for the lost tigers. It’s just not the
grub they are fed with, it’s the freedom they
enjoy. They can freely roam about the mess, under the tables, between
u’r legs and licking u’r feet, wagging their tails in a way , that tickles you
and sometimes makes you ask for sorry from the next person. Evenings are their
best times. It is almost customary to give them their share of whatever snacks
you get. If not, they dare to raise their heads, their glowing eyes frighteningly fixed at you, whiskers raising , nails in position and ultimately
making you drop whatever you have in your hand. Indeed, they are a blessed lot.
Now coming to the core- the grub we eat. As a matter of fact, we
must be lucky to be ‘fed upon’ such exotic and sometimes even erotic dishes. There are days when we know not what
we eat. Someone says its pulkas,
someone else is sure that its paratas, for others, it’s the same old chapathi
and for the confused lot, its all-in-one. As in other cases, the dishes too
have got their own flavour of nicknames. To name a few , Flourescent Rasam(morr
kozhambu), radio active Halwa(Kesari), gutter milk(butter milk), vulcanized
rubber(idlis), allout mosquito repellant(rasam) etc. Friday nights must be the
most special of the lot. For, it has become a rule to eat out, thanks to the
menu or rather the lack of it. For some, the abhorred day is Sunday.
With all this hungama, where working day afternoon mess resembles a
honeycomb that has just been disturbed and destroyed, there are some protocols
to be observed too-the foremost being the seniority-wise zones. The tables are
not just table1,table2…. Each has got its own designated set of junta with
freshies being pushed to the farthest. The table that greets you first is though different. Meant to keep
your bags, baggage and books in rest, they sometimes get so overcrowded that,
you give up trying to find them. There are some records to be maintained too-
the highest extras bill, the biggest cool’D consumer, the highest overall bill.
It seems at present, there is a keen neck-to-neck fight between Fox,Dildo,Jg
and other lesser knowns, trying to outclass each other. Needless to say, their
extras exceeds basic.
And now the guys who keep the mess going, the mess workers are an
interesting lot, though they may be having
highly varying moods. The Supi for example, is seen with a fully bearded
somber face on a particular day and a fresh clean 7 O’clock shave on the next
day. And if you are able to strike a rapport with any of them and you are not
the one knowing Gult or Tam its back to stone age trying to communicate in
signs, symbols, sounds and what not. It’s quite a treat to watch two persons
talk without a common language.
So with all these, years later when we look back at our hostel days
we may not remember the time we spent in classrooms, on the grounds, mugging in
the rooms, but the daily two hours we spend in the mess will be the toughest to
forget. So, the next time you enter the mess, be sure that you are entering the
sweetest part of your hostel life.
HAPPY
MESSING !!
-KITCHU