However hungry we were, one whiff of the hostel mess and all appetite vanished. The menu sounded okay: dal, sabzi, dahi, roti and rice. But the dal was always chane ki and the sabzi always potatoes; with or without gravy. Even arbi was mixed with potatoes. The dahi was water with white lumps, so tart it set one's teeth on edge. For nutrition we sometimes got soya nuggets mixed with the sabzi of the day, and they tasted of nothing but felt like rubber.
Once or twice a week we got mutton curry at dinner, and then there were “Special Dinners”, when you could reserve a place for a friend from another hostel. All meals were served in rectangular steel trays with depressions, and the smallest of them was pre-filled with the most sought after dish on the menu.
All purpose gravy
At special dinners this was an universal all-purpose gravy, thin and dark brown, into which a paneer kofta was lobbed if we'd opted for a vegetarian meal, or a shiny white hardboiled egg if not. Until a friend told me how they do it in Bengal, I hadn't known that simply frying the boiled eggs with a little turmeric would have transformed them. Custard – from a packet, not made with real eggs – was also rationed out, and by the time we picked up our trays a dark, thick skin would have formed on top. This was at university, where we were told to be grateful that we got this so cheap, and censorious hints were dropped about subsidies.
I was fresh from a girl's college hostel, and the contrast was vivid. College food had not only been cheaper, in retrospect it seemed like haute cuisine. Most things were unlimited and made with a lot more care. The biggest downside was the predictability. Breakfast was hardboiled eggs, unlimited bread and butter, hard red jam, a huge glass of milk, cornflakes that were low-tech and turned to a lovely malty mush in the hot milk and a banana (except on Tuesdays when we got an apple instead of the egg - the hostel super was a staunch believer.)
So where we lacked in choice we made up for in sheer volume and goodness. Monday lunches were rajma-chawal-palak alu (and all the girls fasting for future husbands begged that the rajma be shifted to another day), Tuesdays were whatever (it has been more than 30 years) and Wednesdays were kadhi-chawal with sookhe alu .
Potatoes are obviously an institutional favourite, not just because they were cheaper but probably more people ate them. Even at tea time. College teas were also potato-centric, but wonderful: Hot samosas , filled with potatoes; bread pakodas , filled with potatoes; bhel puri , with potatoes; and sometimes gulab jamuns and, on Sundays, cheese sandwiches.
On Wednesdays we got “English” dinner: noodles mixed with boiled vegetables – naturally carrots and cabbage – bread and butter, potato “cutlass” filled with mince, and soup. Our daily steel water jugs came brimming with a steaming liquid which, when poured into steel tumblers made them too hot to handle. It was red, hot salt water. “Tomato soup.” We also got ketchup with English dinner.
On meat days we got little white ceramic katoris filled with mutton curry, but that was quite horrible because the meat was oddly cut, there were tubes and pipes adhering to the pieces and there was lots of cartilage. The pieces and the gravy were very yellow, and there was no flavour of any spice bar turmeric.
The food wasn't great, at either place, but neither was it inedible. What then was the problem? It was the smell of the food and the air. The menu was largely Indian, and completely justify why landlords in the West bar Indian tenants. B-grade rice, quite unwashed, curries with sautéed onions twice a day, burnt milk and burnt flour created odours that hung in the air from semester to semester.
Cleaning
That was one factor; the other was to do with the cleaning. The mess was a large closed room with a few windows, and it had large laminated tables – both college and university had selected dark brown. After meals the kitchen cleaning staff would walk around with large jugs of water and pour copious quantities on each table. The tables were littered with lumps of rice and splashes of dal and vegetables, which would be allowed to soak and soften. Then the same chap would sweep the tables with a stiff broom, managing to get some of the spilt food off the table and onto the floor. But most would stay on the table and vigorous sweeping would rub it in thoroughly so that the laminated surface, which was originally shiny and smooth became permanently matted and velvety.
Whatever food had fallen to the floor was also soaked and swept around, but we never saw anything being carried away to the garbage: the cleaning effected no removal, just a thickening of the patina on the surface. Then a mop that had never seen detergent or sunshine was plied over tables and floors and it added its own fragrance to the mess. So we didn't have to sit at the table and bring our noses close to it – a steamy fug was the permanent feature – we just had to round the corner of the corridor leading to the mess and our noses led us. We could have reached it blindfolded.
Vasundhara Chauhan is based in Delhi.
