We, iitians, are always discontent about something or other. And particularly about Mess, throughout the year. I had a friend, whose genre of humour was sarcastic, used to start cursing the mess manager from the time he entered dinning hall. If you could laugh its okay, otherwise your stomach would be filled with his vitriolic outpour. Thats usual in our hostel.
Last saturday, someone knocked my door and invited me to the hostel GBM[1]. The hostel PA[2] system was blaring continually till then. It seemed, dinner that night was unpalatable. In the meeting vociferous management students have kept the front rows, agitated. The warden with a deceivingly charming smile and the assistant warden(probably, you never know!) quiet and quite uninterested were at the dias. Junta was hesitantly standing or peeping inside. And the accused, the mess workers, dressed in their usual dark-coffee colored clothes were just themselves, obfuscating any attempt to look inside their collars.
And the proceedings began. Sshhh...every 2 sec. one would hush, cause he thinks he has real issues while others were just blabbering. As he begins, the hushed ones and more fresh voices would barge in and the GBM would become a fish-market, sometimes with the smell. Anyway, as a curious onlooker I had put on my satirical journalistic glasses.
The mess workers were called to the front, and asked to sit down. The mattresses were packed, some sat down on the floor- one moved a guy for a place on the mattress, another smiled and occupied an empty seat on the bench- others chose not to. Its hard to remember what was the first question asked to them, but they were told the 'cucumber" in salad was bad and who cut the bad cucumber into the salad should be held responsible. No name came out. Someone was impatient. He said, if messing in all other hostels were good, H1 had to do something. Grass is greener at the other side of the fence huh ? Many more complains pour in.
Warder explains. He had been a witness (thanks heaven, not victim :D) of the sordid saga for almost eight years now. There had been complains, meetings, talk about rotating the mess staff between hostesl, submission of memo to HCU, nothing seemed to change. He categorically said, "there is no solution for this problem. you cannot force them to cook good food for you". While I searched for a response to this pragmatic pessimism, an overly excited panchhi[3] blurted out, "we need to explore every possibility, if needed use 'force'." While I busted into a mouthful of laughter then, wardern started to articulate the length and unedning process of "force". It is then when the blame is shifted entirely to one person. That cook is supposedly the worst of all, does not give a damn to any threat. Sometimes back the HCU tried to force him to take VRS, which he denied and HCU was left at its wits end.
One mess worker is allowed to speak. He says, dont talk about time. We are the most flexible mess in terms of dinning hours. They are, I agree. They serve you 15min before and upto 1 hour late. The demagogues catapult, what is the use of time if its not edible.
Then someone responsible comes up. He tries to reason. "Out of seven days, do u get 5days good meal or not". Junta is hesitant to agree. "The idea of a good food is personal, isnt it", they point the worst as their standard of bad. "How many of you appreciate for a good meal", I do, I do...all of them join the corus. I dont think I ever did. I have not seen anyone ever doing that.
I get impatient, I had told santosh to call me after 10mins. He did, I moved on. Reminding myself the Rs 1.75 meal we used to have in West hostel back in my college and Laksya. "No amount of make up would make a monkey look like a Man" thats his difference between Mess food and Home food.
In the whole affair, the Hostel Mess Manager was surprisingly never called, he was absent anyways, never accused. Except for the fact that all effort to rectify him has also failed previously.
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1. General Body Meetin
2. Public Annoucement System
3. An iitian
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