Of Mess Food & Mehra's

Of the four years spent in college, the topic that endured almost every discussion session was obviously the food. We all did miss the ‘mummy ke haath ka khana’, and were painfully aware of that from then on it would always be a rare show for us. However, it didn’t stop us from dreaming about eating sumptuous amounts of yummy food. And man, did we try to materialize those dreams to our dining tables!!!

After my mom’s scary lecture about the bad inedible food in the hills and of course, the mess I was frankly not very optimistic about the meals. But the meals served in 1st year were unbearably agonizing not only for the tongue but also for the stomach. And yes, during the initial ‘advices n stories’ session before college, someone told me that they make an awesome Arhar ki daal on the hills. It being my favorite in lunch (well, screw the time – I can eat good Arhar any time) I was looking forward to having it sometime on my plate. And they did make it in Aravali (my hostel in 1st year) pretty soon. And if I remember correctly, it was nice, not as good as home, though…! It was only later that I learned that the mess workers were given specific instructions by the hostel warden to make special food only till the parents were in the hostel, with their children.

After that, the quality of food consistently deteriorated, never to rise back again. But worth mentioning is the part that even the quantity of food consumed per student was strictly checked and the rare occasions on which they somehow made a meal worth eating, the amount of it served was so low that our tummies threatened with a hunger strike…

Since the ragging period was not over yet, none of us was frequent on outside visit late nights (courtesy stories of 1st years being kidnapped into 2nd year hostels during the night). However, optimistic as I always was and am, I longed to be in 2nd year, where I had heard and some others had tasted that the food tasted superb. But Nanda Devi Hostel (2nd year christened NDH in short) was again a no show as the control of the mess committee transferred into the final year seniors’ hands some of whom shared the hostel with us. This was where food tasted so great till last term and suddenly wasn’t even worth smelling this year.

Frustrated of the seemingly quality less food, this was when we became familiar with local restaurants – Adhikari & Mehra’s. They did serve food which was better than the hostel’s and perhaps much better than the hostel’s. Although it was rich in nature and costed us extra 200-300 bugs every week, but we didn’t mind it for the sake of our appetites which would definitely would have revolted had there been any more of those hostel meals. Only one time did I use to eat while in 2nd year in hostel mess, and that was the breakfast. It was partly because, I was habitual of rising early and the hot breakfast didn’t seem so bad. And yet another meal outside, would have showed badly on my wallet!!!

The aloo ka paranthas, chicken, paneer and mushroom were the regular stuff that we used to stuff our mouths with (and tummies too). The fast food was restricted to treats and the evening outings. And lord save the retailers there, the chilled packaged stuff was sold on rates more than MRPs!!! Once or twice, we encountered them with this cost situation and they calmly replied that the extra charge was for keeping them cold in refrigerator. As a result, the coke bottle for which I would have paid 7-8 Rs. at a normal place amounted to Rs. 10 and the ice cream of 15 Rs. was charged at Rs. 18 for keeping it the ‘ice’ cream…

Adding to our agony was another fact. By the starting of the 2nd year, the interaction with the girls had risen considerably (it was kept hush-hush till now, because of the ragging practices in college) and by now they had started enjoying and analyzing the mess food as well. They didn’t actually switch over to a new mess because the hostel for them remained the same. And now since they could eat food with their heads held high (and not watching the third button, as in ragging period sharing the same table with seniors) it was easy to develop a taste for food. So when they told us that the food on their side (Read Gangotri Hostel, where 1st, 2nd & 3rd year girls were and so it was the heaven, out of reach for us) tasted extremely good, it was like a kick in the guts for all of us.

The third year (Gomukh Hostel) brought a wave of relief for us, for now we truly were kings of the mess and in addition, the facility for cooking one’s own food in the mess using its resources was given to us. Well, it went good…the third year and finally the mess committee was working responsibly. To the dismay of the restaurants, their business from our batch dropped to an all time low. There were a couple of hiccups here and there during the menu making and management…but they were finally seen off. The students who managed the mess decided to cut the flab during the sixth semester and toned the menu a bit down in order to save some money for the students. It was met with fierce response from some of us like me, who were the self-confessed foodies of the batch but ultimately we decided to switch again to the Mehra’s and the battle subsided.

Final Years’ was supposedly the best mess in all college and I was more than eager to be in it. One more enchanting feature of the Kailash Hostel was the canteen juxtaposed to it. Much to my dismay, the committee for the final year changed (those who were in third year were tired and retired from the constant nagging of fellow students). And those who were in-charge in the final year never heeded to the response. One of them, when ever complained to, made a face so pathetic that even the others around him mould cry for his state. Yet another was so happy with his decisions and the state of food that he never saw a fault in what he did. So it was once again me and Mehra’s, lone companions enjoying night after night after night of meals. We never let the chickens flourish and new varieties of paneer were introduced on request. Even the canteen owner got a kick out of me and decided to start making proper dining meals in addition to fast food this year. I had to settle a bill in the order of thousands of rupees on my exit from the college.

And now that I am eating ‘mummy ke haath ka khana’, temporarily, I miss banging the plate with the spoon and shouting, “Roti lao, kaamchoron!” between the helpings of the chapattis. I miss those late night discussions of the food that we dreamt of eating and that still allures us and the things that we could do to the mess committee guys for destroying our appetites. Yeah, I miss them badly.

But utmost is another fear. In just a couple of weeks, I’ll be in Delhi, working and living on my own and unless I find a sasta-saaf-achha dhaba, I’ll have to cook for myself. Lord save me from myself, all I know right now is how to boil the water.

Life after Grad, my dreams and my...

I dream of hearing this after some time in near future, over lunch/dinner with college batchmates.

Batchmate 1 (earns twice as much as any of us): I’m depressed. Work sucks. Is there any job that sucks more than mine?

Batchmate 2 (recently quit his job): Mine did. I was bored every day. I’m applying abroad. Do you know how much you can earn there?

Batchmate 3 (confessed bum): Money isn’t worth your unhappiness. You should be dating more, I’ll set you up with a friend.

Batchmate 1: But how can I be happy without money? Great dramatic sigh, I’m having a quarter- life crisis. Who are you setting me up with?

And there it will be, the mystifying term that would have single-handedly captured our 22-year-old chaos. At first it would sound funny, but when the thought would sink in, we would all be quiet for an uncomfortably long period of time. Will we surely need to have it?

And then, I’d hear the phrase thrown around a lot. After graduation get-togethers would be surprisingly frequent. It would be a withdrawal symptom, we’d all be desperate to hold on to the certainty that we had in college. Now that everything would become so unstructured, we would cling on dearly to the people with whom we shared such carefree and sometimes careless days with. We would reminisce about how our lives used to be, and how they are now. Many of us would be in our third or fourth jobs. More and more would be leaving the country to “find greener pastures,” joining that ever-growing diasporas like spores drawn to more fertile ground.

There would be a shared sense of “lostness,” not because we would have nowhere to be. No, we would be all lucky enough to be somewhere, but most would want to be somewhere else. Everyone would tell us, we are meant to be great, or at least achieve a slice of greatness. We are of that generation the generation that has it all, the generation that never had to work for anything because it’s all instant and automated. The natural expectation to surpass those before us would pose an unnerving problem: What would happen if we don’t?

Maybe the pressure has been there for centuries, but never like this. The world used to be enormous, a planet of rocks we only see in science books. But now the world is shrinking.

Everything, everyone is within reach. The overwhelming proximity of it all has turned us claustrophobic. Wherever we find ourselves becomes too small a place. We are always looking for that something, the thing that will supposedly match our destined greatness.

Upon writing this article I decided to Google the term. Lo and behold, the omniscient Wikipedia had some interesting answers. Quarter-life crisis is a medical term for the phase following adolescence, usually for ages 21-30. Some “symptoms” include: (1) feeling not good enough about one’s job (2) frustration with relationships (3) insecurity about life goals (4) nostalgia for school (5) a sense that everyone is doing better than you. Furthermore, the stage occurs shortly after young, educated professionals enter the “real world”, when they realize that it is tougher, more competitive and less forgiving than they imagined.

So it’s not a 21st century thing after all. Ah, but Wikipedia doesn’t stop there. It goes on to say that today, “the era when having a professional career meant a life of occupational security has come to an end.” Indeed, it is no longer enough to get a well-paying job and do it for the rest of your life.

The lines used to be clearly drawn: you were a dentist, a doctor, an engineer, a businessman. Today, things are not as black and white. Our “real world” is now literally the entire world. We take our internships in multi-national corporations, study abroad on exchange programs, and attend art seminars in New York. We find worldwide options exceeding the imagination of those before us: techie jobs in Silicon Valley, trading in the Hong Kong stock market, even advertising for Google in hidden GoogleLand. I had a classmate who took up journalism in New Delhi, while another one graduated from a famous busines school in London. We are constantly considering so many options, debating which ones we can qualify for and which ones will ultimately help us define ourselves.

Older folks say this is generation me, me, me. We want it all now, now, now — even when we really have no idea what we want. So we end up wanting it all. They (my parents, friends of my parents, parents of my friends) shake their heads in disapproval at our inability to stay in one job.

They say we can’t stand any ounce of discomfort, any morsel of unhappiness. It’s true. We are impatient, always fleeing from one place to another — because that is what we grew up doing. Change has always been inevitable, but if there was ever a time when each year sees changes that used to span a century, this would have to be it.

One minute we were shrieking fans of the Backstreet Boys, and the next we were cult followers of Matchbox 20. We have no memory of dinosaur computers; to us everything runs at 100Mbps. Our shelves of Britannica have gathered dust; we only have to go to YouTube and streams of video would unravel. We had the networking craze Friendster, but even that didn’t last.

Soon we were creating separate accounts for Multiply, Facebook and self-blogs. We shop on sites of local strangers and order via cellphone banking. Oh yes, don’t even get me started on cellphones. They have rendered everything else useless: watches, cameras, music players, calculators, dictionaries, even mirrors.

Every time the world changes a part of itself, we’ve had to change along with it. I’m not saying we should go back to the era of I’ll-be-waiting-two-weeks-for-your-snail-mail. I cannot leave the house without my phone. Maybe we’ve become little brats of technology, the spawn of an age always trying to outdo itself. If patience is a virtue, then the remarkable deficiency of it has become our unconscious vice. Our adult lives are an extension of our adolescent years, when coolness was attained by downloading mp3s of a newbie rock band before everyone else did. We are always on the move. We are fickle-minded, discontent and extremely volatile — which according to Wikipedia, are natural to those in their 20’s. But to be in your 20s at a time when clients at work are Australians you will never see past email correspondence, then it becomes a world that gives you only two choices: move, or get left behind.

We are expected to march out into the world with iPod in backpocket, one earphone pounding against an eardrum. With our bountiful gifts from mother technology and our cross-cultural media grub, we’re supposed to find a way to make ourselves great. Now more than ever, we have to prove ourselves worthy of the time we were born into. So who can blame us, for wanting to run all the time? The pressure is immense. So much is running after us and worse, there is so much we are trying to keep up with. Like the reluctant monster Incredible Hulk, we are always growing out of proportion, our clothes tearing as we expand. And so we run, gasping for air, looking for a place that can contain us.

I’m grateful for being born in an era that constantly pushes itself forward. But we were raised in a period long past mere survival, where the worst blunder you can commit is not so much failure but mediocrity. And so we make this plea: don’t be so hard on us. It may now be less challenging to defy boundaries, but the world out there is still as tough as ever. Let us have our little crisis; spare us the time that we never seem to have enough of. Give us the chance to find our own corner, where we can dig and shovel and bury ourselves in. Because when the clouds clear up — when we can finally stop twiddling our thumbs and wringing our hands in restlessness — you will see what we have built out of our chaos, and you will be damn proud.

Graduation Speech : 'Speeched' to none

In honor of myself finally becoming respectable and earning my B.E. degree from the Kumaon University of Nainital, Uttarakhand, I felt inspired to write a graduation speech that I would give to those who have graduated with me and if there were anyone to ask me to do so. Part of what inspired me to do this is because the college that I studied in is yet to come up with my final result and they are damned enough never to arrange such lasting memories for us.

First I want to of course offer up my congratulations to you, the graduating class of 2009 (that includes myself), and to everyone who helped you and me achieve the goal that we are here today to celebrate.

Usually these speeches are intended to provide us with a glimpse into the future, the quote real world, and to give us words of inspiration as we set off into this world. Well, this isn't going to be one of those speeches, because let’s face it, the real world kind of sucks right now. I would guess that most of us know this already, probably better than I do, so there is no use going on with false platitudes about how there are a lot of opportunities out there for us because, well, there aren't a lot of opportunities out there for anybody. Instead, I hope to provide ourselves with some advice on how to proceed from here. Hopefully this advice will one day be useful to all of us, or at least will not put us to sleep.

Some of us may not care to hear any words of advice from me. You already know what you’ll be doing tomorrow and next week and beyond. All of our plans are set and maybe we are ready to go. To you I can only say good luck and god speed, with the knowledge that most of the graduates who feel this way are skipping this ceremony and have probably already left campus for good such that I don’t need to worry about finding something witty or profound to say to them.

No, my advice is for those of us who are not sure what we’ll be doing tomorrow or next week or beyond. Maybe we have a job or a post-grad school seat lined up, maybe we don’t. I would guess that we are feeling a mixture of emotions right now. Part of us is happy that we are finally done with college and will receive the degree that we worked so hard the last 4 years to attain. I would bet, though, that part of us is sad to see this day come, because we are about to say goodbye to the world that we have built for ourselves here and basically start all over again, and that can be one scary thought.

If you ever want to know what a ghost town feels like, visit the campus tomorrow. All of the buildings, quads, and sidewalks that just yesterday were teeming with students will be empty. All of the students will be gone, all of the faculty will be back home, all of the buildings will be closed and locked, all of the dorms will be empty, and only the janitors will be around to clean up after the ceremonies. It is kind of eerie and spooky, perhaps even scary, to be surrounded by all that emptiness. It perhaps mirrors the feelings that some of you may have now, the scary emptiness that comes with saying those final goodbyes to your friends, your classmates, your professors, and the campus community that you have called home. You hope that by staying in contact with your friends and professors that you’ll be able to maintain some semblance of the life that you have enjoyed here, but deep down you know that it won’t be the same.

And now we face the challenge of having to find a new home with new friends, new co-workers, new advisors, and a new life. This could seem daunting, especially with the current economic climate, but it is not as big of a challenge as it might now appear to be. For many of us our college experience was our first time away from home, the first time we got to decide what to eat for dinner or which roommates we lived with or even whether or not we were going to attend classes that day or which party to attend that night. Even if someone else was paying for it we still got to decide, or at least have a say, in how the money was spent. By surviving and perhaps even thriving in this environment we proved that we could make a life for ourself and that we could establish an identity of our own. The survival skills that we learned while being here will also help us establish a new life, a new identity for ourself, when we leave. And these skills are just as important as the technical skills and body of knowledge that we gained in pursuit of the degree that will be awarded to us.

I would also advice us all to be patient. If you already have a career path laid out for yourself that’s great, but don’t panic if you don’t have any idea what to do. You still have plenty of time to figure that out. I know we hear all these platitudes about living for today and only doing what you want to do for a living, but unless you are very lucky or very crazy this is probably not the live that you will end up leading. Indeed, chances are that the life we will one day have will be very different from the one we now think we will have. It may turn out that we’ll end up in a career that is different from what we studied. I know plenty of people who have successful careers in fields that were not the ones that that they studied in college. That is not to say that your time here would have been wasted. If you are patient and flexible you will eventually be able to establish a career for yourself no matter what condition the economy or the job market is in, and who knows, you might even one day get that dream job where you get paid for doing what you want to do.

Albus Dumbledore once said that we shall be faced by two paths - the easy one and the right one. The choice will always reside with us.

So my parting thoughts to you are this. It is perfectly natural to feel unsure and even a little bit scared about what will happen to you after today. Your life will be different and it will be a challenge to establish a new life for yourself, but the fact that you are standing here today is proof that you have the ability to overcome these challenges and succeed. It may take a while for it to happen, but if you were able to survive college and walk out of here with a degree in your hand then you stand a good chance to surviving life after college and walking onward into a successful career and a successful life. My hope is that this will one day happen for all of you. I wish you all the best.

Good Luck and God Speed.

The journey to the God...

The exhilarating mood after the end of the final viva of 8th semester never ceased, as long as I was in college. Although, it suffered the hiccups of end of 4 years of masti and endless joy, of 4 years of unforgettable night outs with friends and beginning of the temporary emptiness that it would fill our life with, it was soothingly satisfying that after a grueling 4 years, around 50 end semester examinations, 100 internal assessments, quizzes and assignments, I was finally getting something that I didn’t deserve.

However, the entire joyful mood, the emotional outbursts of sanguinity and specially the feeling of getting 4 years older would come to an end in no time at all. The shrine of Badrinathji is on route that leads to college. And so it was decided that my parents will fetch me from college and also make a trip to the sacred mountains. I had earlier thought that it would be me who would be taking my parents to the temple, but unfortunately it was turning out to be the other way round.

However, persistent as I was, I tried to cajole my other out of the situation but was as usual countered by the time tested emotionally blackmailing lectures – Beta, mummy papa ke saath bhi time spend karo; bhagwan ke darshan mein kya burai hai and all. And then the rest is a legend repeated in my personal diary many a times.

After snaking for around 110 kms. in the Rocky Mountains at 20-30 kmph, we reached Karnaprayag in the evening and decided to call it a day. The panorama and the environment were obviously quite cool; they did nothing but fuel mom and dad’s desire to reach the shrine as soon as possible. Next day was equally gruel some and yet another 125 km stretch awaited us. After a steep vertical ascent of around 1200 m. Badrinathji awaited us. The path was rewarding though, breath taking beauty resided in every corner of the mountains and each turn presented an entirely new scene.

A lot of area has already been covered by Hydro-electric power companies – NTPC, NHPC, THDC and the Jaypee group. Alaknanda flowing beneath the mountain that we were moving on is their prime target. Ceaselessly, they are harnessing the flow of water to produce electricity (and in course they sometimes added to the beauty of the hills, especially for the perspective of an engineer). One hill that my driver specially mentioned was Hathi Mattha and no points (or pints) for guessing, it was shaped like an elephant’s body. The hill brought me face to face with yet another cruel reality; 4 years of graduation couldn’t fill me up with Imagineering. I couldn’t make the head or tail of the elephant. There was just a slight depression on the top after a almost perfect curve and then again a curve continued till the end of it. Perhaps I was more interested in finding a small temple somewhere on its periphery, because it is impossible to believe that Indian pundits/sadhus could leave a mountain without a shrine. But then, there was this harsh reality that the mountain was so rocky and steep, that even if a pundit could climb it, find a natural Ganeshji formation and color it on the hill (Yes, that’s how temples originate in India), there was no way that a common, not-so-near-to-god man like me could possibly find his was upwards. Poor pundits, I bet they would find some space on the foot of the hill in some time.

And yes, since the signals (of mobile network) were rare on the way, I kept receiving messages out of the blue from people who I couldn’t meet before leaving college and some others giving instructions on how to properly ask the God for something.

Anyways, it was quite hot at the shrine even though the altitude was more than 3 kms! After parking the car, we walked towards the temple. As always, there were more beggars, hawkers and pundits than tourists. Local shops were selling precious stones, gems, lockets, Prasad packets and small deities. A larger fraction of them were Vishnuji’s and his avatars’. I finally realized that this was Vishnuji’s shrine (Gosh! Why couldn’t these people fix one proper good name, they always create so much confusion). The queue was around a km long but thankfully dynamic in movement!!! While in queue I kept watching the snow clad tops of the surrounding mountains and their small glaciers giving way to small waterfalls and streams. A couple of smart gals came around and I shamelessly ogled (Didn’t Krishnaji flirt with all those gopis???)

I was getting frustrated when the line didn’t move for some time and gave my mom an annoying look, but she countered with a stern look that said – Keep-standing-no-matter-what! Inching towards the main temple, I got a better look of its architecture which was clearly ancient. And the carvings that I thought were like Khujraho caves were actually Lord Vishnu’s incarnations depicting his various earthly activities. It suddenly occurred to me that this entire procedure of asking the lord for something was at fault and will never be fruitful specially in front of someone whose greatest speech enlightens about karma and its importance. I felt like laughing on the irony but kept myself from it because any public lecture on this topic would supposedly be suicide!!!

We got inside the temple just in time before his holiness gates would be closed for lunch (He doesn’t have to eat if you look at him as a stone, neither does he have to do so is he is a god). The dynamic nature of the queue was inversely proportional to its distance from the temple and as soon as we got inside the temple, the pushing and pulling started. The main temple is of stone (as it should be) and one has to complete a loop while watching the lord. Quite believable as he was in front of me, spanning a huge throne, he was made of silver. What was more, the throne, the doors to his room and his surroundings were made of gold!!! But before I could somehow enjoy the beauty of the deity, a wave of push came from behind my back and I was rushed out of the temple. Laughingly, I watched the temple behind my back and saw that even the top of temple was of immaculate gold. Wow! This was definitely one opulent god.

As I was crossing Alaknanda on foot on my way back, I realized two things:

1. Vishnuji would need Z+ security to protect his silver and gold, and

2. I forgot to make a wish for something in front of him.

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