So the alma mater is 50 years old this year. This week has been one of hectic reconnection — and probably crazy work for the organisers of a reunion in Hyderabad. I’m looking forward to it but, in the meanwhile, I’m going through a prolonged burst of nostalgia.
What is it about JNU that inspires such strong emotion? Someone said it’s because we went through intense times together. That sounds about right. Even physically the campus was designed to foster interaction; buildings were connected by open walled corridors and there were teashops dotted under the shade of the few and sparse trees.
The campus now is much larger, with many more hostels and eating places than we could have dreamt of. Hostel mess food being what it was, institutional, it was unattractive from the word go — you could smell the fug before you reached the actual dining hall and the unimaginative potato-rich menus were repeated with boring regularity.
So the dhabas provided all the sustenance that we desired, social, affecting to be intellectual, and alimentary. There was tea in chipped Khurja mugs, “fans”, some form of Danish, and, if you were really hungry, ‘bun-omlate’. This was what the teashop across the lawn from my hostel sold. It was then called, eponymously, Kashi Ram, now I hear it’s Ganga Dhaba. The other cluster of hostels had a tea shop called Nilgiri, or popularly, Chachaji’s.
Nameless but nourishing
The menu was the same. But if we had funds, we ate at the shopping complex that had a paratha joint run by Kamal, after whom the entire shopping complex was named. He sold some dubious looking sweets, samosas and aloo parathas, though his oeuvre was anda paratha, filled deftly with a beaten egg. Watching him make it was almost thrilling: he made a regular, everyday paratha, but when it was half-cooked he inserted the tip of a knife to part the layers and tossed a beaten egg in. You could ask for chopped onions to be added.
There was also a nameless kabab joint whose menu was rumali rotis, seekh kababs and mutton qorma, but, depending on finances, you could buy just the gravy of the qorma and wolf down several rotis dipped in it.
Some years after we joined, a Chinese restaurant opened. Ki Cha. I think. It had a vast laminated plastic menu card that numbered soups and fried rice and noodles and all manner and combination of chicken dishes. I still remember the excitement of eating there.
When it was still fairly new, Ghildy, who had a reputation as a cook, took me to lunch there. While eating the chowmein, crunchy with cabbage, capsicum and carrots I got something in my mouth that had an unexpected, unusual texture. It was a rubber band. But that didn’t deter me and I chomped on, until I got a whole, smelly beedi.
The old campus had a dosa joint run by Gopal. He made hot, crisp dosas, vile sambar, and, for when you were feeling luxurious, mango shakes. But only in the daytime.
As the action moved away from the old campus Gopal also moved up, to the boundary wall between Ganga and Jhelum. New campus Gopal had a small window set into the wall through which transactions were made.
Tea set
The old campus also had two tea shops, one outside the old library, which made samosas and bread pakoras at tea time, and one behind the admin block. This latter was owned and run by two doughty men, Lalaji, short and cubic, and his brother, less short and less cubic. They were so much a part of our lives that when Madhavi and Uday got married, Lalaji was part of the wedding party that entrained to Dehradun.
The tea in all these was uniformly disgusting: treacly sweet and with the flavour only of milk, because the tea leaves, never fresh and fragrant, were boiled and re-boiled to death. Coffee was a rarity but the canteen in the Club Building, run by the original Coffee Board, did decent coffee, with cream poured on to a cupful of black coffee that was stirred constantly so the cream didn’t get a chance to settle, and you could sip your coffee through a layer of thick white cream. They had the usual potato mash and they had minced mutton, which was served in a dosa rolled into a cone. Pretty awful, but those were desperate times.
Even with the patina of nostalgia, I don’t remember the food itself as great. What’s memorable is the company, the excitement, the belief that we were part of important events. Then, samosas and ketchup or omelettes sandwiched in soft white bread seemed perfect.
From the once-forbidden joy of eggs to the ingratitude of guests, the writer reflects on all associations with food. vasundharachauhan9@gmail.com
