After 4 years in MEC I came to the conclusion that the toughest business in the world is to run a canteen near a government college. How many people came and went attempting to feed the gourmets and gourmands of our college?? Invariably all failed. The reason, they never knew that these gourmets and gourmands had a strange aversion to pay money for the food they ate.
When I joined the college there was a locked up building reminiscing the haunted houses of funny horror movies. The gates were closed but it had a shabby board indicating it used to be a kitchen. Later we came to know that it was college property and once housed canteen. Then we had two hotels in the vicinity of our college, one named hotel.com (to enthuse the supposed nerds of our college) and the other without a name but fondly called gopettan’s (named after the owner). Hotel.com served all type of food from biriyani to ordinary meals. I never used to go to these places when I was in the first year fearing ragging. In the second year when we came to the college Hotel.com rechristened itself into Shangri la (tech gave way to spirituality) and had a new management. That was the time when I started visiting these places. Lakshman used to have this strange habit of asking onion salad for every dish he ordered. Thus he became notorious among the waiters of Shangri la. At that point of time there was no billing system in that hotel. People who ate used to go to the counter and tell what they ate. Some of my enterprising friends took advantage of this practise and never paid for the lime juice they drank after the food. One particular friend of mine said once to me that it was not the idea of saving money that prompted him to do this but the adventure of cheating the hotel owner who sat on the cash counter.
Though the biriyani and breads where tasty in Shangri la the meals were never good. Thus I decided to check out gopettan’s. It was basically a house converted into a hotel. Though it was a very cosy place and the food delicious, space constraints made eating an excruciating experience. But some of the girls in my class always went there to have food. Speaking about girls, some of them never visited any of these restaurants. They followed hygiene religiously. A ‘lady’(who later got the name hygiene m....) once asked the boy in a juice shop whether the glasses were washed with hot water and dettol before serving. She infact came to have a lime juice which costs 3 rupees. Another girl never came to the restaurants nearby the college, but on desperate occasions visited the coffee house in CUSAT. Once I saw the funniest practice of hygiene by this lady. She actually sipped the juice once but did not take it in, then she unsipped (pardon the grammar) the juice in an effort to clean the inner part of the straw. This act became famous in our circle with the name straw cleaning with even photographs being taken of this.
In coffee house Lakshman used to ask for the side dishes again and again for the Rs 12 meals. After asking it for the fourth time the waiter losing patience gently warned him that there is a limit to it for the money he paid. Lakshman saw it as an insult and swore that he will never have meals from the coffee house. Back in college Shangri la aka hotel.com again changed the name to razhakiya. This time they introduced a super alert waiter who ran with a bill book to every table to save the hotel from the fate of previous managements. Around the same time kudumbasree group (a government backed association that helps women earn money), leased the haunted house of college and started a canteen. The food was subsidised for students and delicious too. The problem was women always are applauded for culinary expertise but the fall far behind men in management(especially serving and accounts). The premature closure of the college canteen was a big shock for us. After that canteen closed, the administration in our college with strong left leanings came to the conclusion that the particular building earmarked for canteen was jinxed and started building a new canteen. As the building progressed various rumours started spreading like the new complex might be a coffee house or even a cafe coffee day. The love birds who expected a cafe coffee day were shattered when a board came up on the new building. Thus we got the second canteen building which was basically smaller than the older one.
In between I should mention another shop near our college called shamla (again named after the owner whose sister it was rumoured had a crush on one of my class mates). It served lime juice in a steel glass and named it half lime. You could have a half lime for Rs 1.50. There were people who used to survive on the half limes and cigarettes from shamla. Inspired by this the hotel.com aka Shangri la aka razhakiya introduced the half biriyani (first in kerala) with half chicken and half rice.
The new canteen was leased by an old couple. I still feel sympathy for them to have taken such a dangerous endeavour at a late age. Vishal would go to the canteen in the evening and order a tea, then he would eat every kadi(snacks with tea) in the menu (including parippuvada, pazham pori etc). Unlike the mohanlal’s taste buds which charge Rs 150 for kadis these old people put only reasonable price tags. But human whims are strange and whims of vishal even stranger, he found pleasure in cheating the old lady who sat in the counter. He would have all the snacks in the hotel and go to counter to say “one tea, that’s all how much??” like a Good Samaritan.
Another hang out near the college was a hut which housed a chayakada. It was the favourite place of all the comrades including our principal because it served kattan chaya (black tea) and parippu vada( staple food of communists).
With all these places I ate the best food in my college days not from any of these places. I ate it inside the college. Yes I ate food like a savage along with 15 others sometimes from the same plate. Those were interesting days, more about that on my next post.......