The Gourmand

Ragging phase was over and every one of us already connected pretty well with the seniors. By that time, we accustomed to the hostel environment and particularly the hostel food, in fact we raised ourselves up to the level where we could easily tighten our tummy with hell lot of rice, that too merely with some boiled potato and dal. Well, that was our usual kind of hostel mess condition during the last week of every month. We noticed that some of the seniors quite often used to enjoy some extra delicacies, like for instance some of them used to ask the hostel cooks to fry their share of boiled potato with some onion and green chili. Wow! My mouth is already filled with water, that thing was so damn tasty. Few of the seniors used to keep egg in their rooms and sometimes used to ask the cook to make omelet for them. Sometimes the seniors used to contribute few bucks in a group to buy chicken from outside. They used to ask the cook to prepare something really out of the world for them. As expected, such groups usually used to have late lunch/dinner on that particular day/night. First semester guys usually didn’t dare to demand special delicacies and satisfied themselves with the regular meal. But whenever the dining hall was free of seniors, even the first semester guys also used to shout “boil alu fry, boil alu fry, I want boil alu fry”

We used to have one senior Shashank Da, in our corridor and pretty close to our room. He was quite huge and used to enjoy most of his time with himself. We didn’t see him partying interacting much with the other hostel guys. He was the kind of character with whom neither his batch mates, nor even his seniors dared to take unnecessary panga, kind of argument. I still remember his laugh, as whenever he used to laugh the ceiling and the walls of the room seemed to shake a bit. By that time we didn’t know much about him and the only thing we knew is that he had an ultimate passion for food. One morning after jogging, please don’t misunderstand us to be that active, jogging was mandatory for the entire fresher’s during the ragging period. After jogging the dining hall was filled with the fresher’s and special puri sabji was served in breakfast during the entire ragging days and everyone used to have a good "eat count" of puri’s. 

One fine morning Shashank Da was also having breakfast with us and we’re not at all surprised to see his consumption rate. Shashank da encouraged all the fresher’s to eat more puri’s and then all of a sudden, one of us dared to ask him how much puri he usually used to consume. He became quite shy that moment and replied "Now a days I can’t eat much, my tummy becomes completely full with just 30-35 puri’s. When I was a fresher, I used to eat 60-65 puri’s"

One afternoon, I and Nair were just about to go for lunch and Shashank Da called from behind "Hey! Are you guys going for lunch?" We replied yes and he asked us to wait for a while, as he also wanted to go with us. We saw Shashank Da was holding 6 eggs in his hand and we were quite happy and expected a delicious lunch that day. I was very much delighted and thought "Wow! each of us would have double omelet today" We all sat in the same table and the hostel boy already served us the regular meal. Shashank Da asked the guy to prepare omelet out of the 6 eggs. I was eating little slowly and was about to shift gears once the omelet was prepared. A little later we saw that the hostel boy arrived with an extremely huge single piece omelet and kept it beside Shashank Da. The smell was mesmerizing and within a short while 50% of the omelet was already disappeared from there. After some more time Shashank Da asked us "Would you guys like to taste it?"

Nair replied "It's OK. It’s fine, we're almost done with our meal"

Later we got to know Shashank Da little more closely. Besides being a foodie, he was also a remarkable cook. He was an extreme kind of non-veg fan and experimented with every possible flesh. Whenever he wanted to have meat, most of the time he used to cook by himself and never got satisfied with anything below 1 KG. His daily requirement was much different from the other guys and everyday he used to have some special food, along with the usual hostel stuffs. It didn’t took us longer to realize that in order to maintain such kind of a lifestyle, that too in a hostel with abundant number of food desperado’s all around, Shashank Da must had to be little shameful and there was no other alternative for him. But sometimes even he was quite generous enough. 

The Landlord

After passing out of college, my good friend Sinha immediately came to Bangalore. As the market was tight that time, so most of us had to struggle a bit for our first job. Initially we found Bangalore quite horrible place to live in. In order to rent a house, tenants required to pay 10 month’s rent in advance and the cruel tradition is still being followed. WTF? As miserable job seekers, we didn’t have any other option but to stay at a hostel. Food was really the major challenge for me and it was quite overpriced, but the Andhra Mess made many of our life smoother to some extent. Sinha was quite fortunate enough, as his elder brother was working in Bangalore that time and he used to stay with him. 

It seemed Sinha’s landlord was an extraordinarily distinguished kind of character. He was extremely dark, little short and absolutely round shaped. He always looked serious, especially with his tenants and used to smile only on special occasions. Whenever Sinha used to encounter his landlord, the picture of a Rhino used to come to his mind. He stayed at a different place and usually used to visit all his tenants on the 1st of every month. Well you guessed it right, to collect the house rents and he had 4-5 tenants at that place. But sometimes, very rarely though, he also used to give odd kind of visits to the territory, possibly because of some maintenance issue. He couldn’t speak or understand English and his knowledge in Hindi was extremely adorable and on top of that, his Hindi pronunciation was very entertaining. Whenever he used to go to collect rent, he would usually sit on a chair and quite lazily used to count the money. As soon as he finished counting the money, he used to repeat the process for few more times. In the meantime, Sinha constantly used to stare at his face, as if he expected something out of it. A little later, Sinha used to see a very charming and extremely satisfying smile on the landlord's face. He would be very happy that moment and before leaving, he usually would say in his broken Hindi "if you have any problem just inform me"

One morning after breakfast, Sinha was standing at the front door and all of a sudden he encountered the Rhino. Sinha was confused and wondered why the landlord came almost a week earlier to collect his rent? The landlord must have liked Sinha, as he had a smile on his face and asked him “Kya Samachar hai? What the news?”

Sinha was little confused and thought he might have asked about cricket score, as some cricket tournament was going on that time. He replied "actually I don’t watch much cricket. What else news you want to know?"

The smile immediately disappeared from the landlord's face and he looked quite serious and confused. Later Sinha realized that it was his usual way to greet "Hello, how are you?" 

The landlord immediately changed the topic and asked "Gaon ko kab jata? When you would go to village?"

Sinha again got confused and replied "Kaun sa gaon? Which village? Actually my home is not at a village. Even though it’s not like Bangalore, but it’s definitely not a village, it’s a big town"

That moment the landlord was exceedingly confused and said to Sinha "OK OK, Bye" and immediately left from there. 

Sinha later realized that Gaon is actually quite a common term and doesn't necessarily mean a Village. Quite often it’s used as a synonym for someone’s native place. Even if any tenant could be from heart of Mumbai, someone could still ask him "Gaon ko kab jata?"

Would You Like To Have Some Tea?

Initially first few years, after passing out of college I didn’t have much opportunity to meet my good friend Nair. Well, we were roommates during the entire 4 years of our engineering days. He was working in Doha those days and all of a sudden he called us and said that he would come to Bangalore for a week. We used to have a decent hostel gang in Bangalore that time and the gang was scattered all around the city. Everyone was pretty much delighted to know that Nair would be soon in town. When we asked Nair about the reason for his visit, he said that he would come specially to visit us. Everyone instantly believed him, although it was a different matter that in last couple of years he never bothered to call any of us. Initially we doubted that he might be coming to attend some interview, but later we realized that he actually came to see Shruti, well the typical arranged marriage story. 

During that time my wife was in Pune for a year, as she was doing her PG diploma out there. After my wife left for Pune I stayed alone for  few months, but later two of my hostel mates Ram and Mriganka used to stay with me. Nair landed early morning and during that time Bangalore airport was within the city. Immediately after landing he called us and we guided him how to reach our place. At 6 AM the door bell rang and everyone was delighted to see Nair after a long time. We chatted for a while and then I asked Nair "would you like to have some tea?"

Nair replied "that would be really great"

I asked "you would like to have milk tea or red lemon tea?"

Nair replied "milk tea would be fine"

So I went inside the kitchen to prepare tea, but as I looked for milk inside the refrigerator, I couldn’t find any milk out there. I said to Nair "sorry dude, milk isn't there, so you could have lemon tea only" Nair was OK with that and I switched on the gas to boil some water. I looked for lemon inside the freeze but couldn’t find even a single piece of it. I said to Nair "abbe, lemon nahi mil raha hai"

Nair said "It’s OK, without lemon also it would be fine"

Gradually water started to boil and I thought to keep sugar and tea leaves ready, right in front of my eyes. But, what the hell? I couldn’t find any sugar inside the kitchen. With little shyness I said "yaar Nair, even sugar is also not there"

Nair replied "abbe koi baat nahi. It’s OK, red tea would be fine without sugar, just put small amount of salt in it"

Finally the drama ended. Guess what? I couldn’t find any tea leaves inside the container. Even though my tongue wished for complete rest that moment but somehow I simply said "Aree Nair, even tea leaves also not there"

Poor Nair, what he would have said? He simply laughed and said "it’s OK, what to do now? Forget it"

In the mean time the water completely boiled and I literally poured it in several cups, also mixed some salt in it. I served hot salted water to Nair and said "just assume it to be tea and drink it sip by sip, you would feel better"

It was only after an hour at 7 AM, when the nearby shop opened and Ram bought all the necessary stuffs. Later, Ram prepared some wonderful tea and we all had one of our best tea that morning.