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As I was saying, the so-called Faculty Hostel that I joined in 1967 was still a Foreigners' Guest House, in its death throes. And it was late one Saturday evening that I shifted there with my metal trunk that held all my earthly possessions...I had thrown away from my top floor window the couple of cooking utensils and a kerosine stove that served me for a while when I ventured cooking in BF - 4/12 into which I was pushed against my will.
Before retiring to my room on the first floor I asked Rajan, the Manager, if I had any choice in my meals. And he gruffly replied:
"We have what is called Standard Meals with two Special Dinners a week and that would be served to all. And you pay for the entire meals whether you eat it or not"
"What are the monthly bills like?"
"Rs 210 as of now...we are in the process of upward revision"
That scared me stiff. Rs 210 would leave in my pocket a few rupees for my cigarette bill after I sent Rs 250 as my monthly remittance home. No room for extras.
It is another thing that within a couple of years there were all of about 25 poor teachers like me there and the Standard Meals was abolished and we paid as we ate in what we invented as the Skeleton Meal System, and my bill hovered around Rs 100 only. That is a story fit for angels and Prof Acharya from Bikaner who, when asked to take down the menu dictated by our newcomer bachelor NCC Officer, Lt Kamat, volunteered to write down, starting with breakfast, smacking his lips:
Kamat: "Two eggs to order"
Acharya: "T..w..o eggs, two eggs to order...yes?"
Kamat: "Milk"
Acharya: "M..i..l..k, milk to order, yes?"
And Kamat Saheb left it at that and retreated to his suite in a huff thinking that we teachers were trying to pull his stout legs, and pulled out a bottle of Teachers Special from his rack. But we found by and by that Kamat was a dear soul, trying to pick up Feynman Lectures from me and read sitting in my room...he had physics in his B Sc.
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As I was saying, the so-called Faculty Hostel that I joined in 1967 was still a Foreigners' Guest House, in its death throes. And it was late one Saturday evening that I shifted there with my metal trunk that held all my earthly possessions...I had thrown away from my top floor window the couple of cooking utensils and a kerosine stove that served me for a while when I ventured cooking in BF - 4/12 into which I was pushed against my will.
Before retiring to my room on the first floor I asked Rajan, the Manager, if I had any choice in my meals. And he gruffly replied:
"We have what is called Standard Meals with two Special Dinners a week and that would be served to all. And you pay for the entire meals whether you eat it or not"
"What are the monthly bills like?"
"Rs 210 as of now...we are in the process of upward revision"
That scared me stiff. Rs 210 would leave in my pocket a few rupees for my cigarette bill after I sent Rs 250 as my monthly remittance home. No room for extras.
It is another thing that within a couple of years there were all of about 25 poor teachers like me there and the Standard Meals was abolished and we paid as we ate in what we invented as the Skeleton Meal System, and my bill hovered around Rs 100 only. That is a story fit for angels and Prof Acharya from Bikaner who, when asked to take down the menu dictated by our newcomer bachelor NCC Officer, Lt Kamat, volunteered to write down, starting with breakfast, smacking his lips:
Kamat: "Two eggs to order"
Acharya: "T..w..o eggs, two eggs to order...yes?"
Kamat: "Milk"
Acharya: "M..i..l..k, milk to order, yes?"
And Kamat Saheb left it at that and retreated to his suite in a huff thinking that we teachers were trying to pull his stout legs, and pulled out a bottle of Teachers Special from his rack. But we found by and by that Kamat was a dear soul, trying to pick up Feynman Lectures from me and read sitting in my room...he had physics in his B Sc.
Coming back to my first visit to the forbidding Dining-cum-Drawing Room in our Faculty Hostel, on the Sunday morning after I joined it, I entered the hall silently rather late, at 9 AM. I was a late riser those days because I used to read on my bed late into the night...Feynman Lectures between the lines, and Jeeves stories and RKN's Next Sunday again and again.
As I hoped, I found only two gentlemen sitting in the middle, conversing in hushed tones as if the place was a church. They were both suited and booted and tied up, a rare thing among our teachers. In fact none of us teachers then appeared in anything but a pant and a shirt. And I was constantly in bush shirts...they were cheaper than full shirts. Remember that KGP was in coastal Bengal and very humid. Other than Prof GS Sanyal who was always in a tie, none of us were in formals. Indeed, our own Raam-da and Gouri-da and Ghosh-da et al were always in dhuti-punjabi, even when they appeared for interviews.
So I sat at a corner timidly and was glad to be left alone wondering what to do with all those porcelain side-plates with napkins on them and the triad of spoon-knife-fork set that bordered the main plate.
Pretty soon, Laxman, the hefty orderly in his livery arrived and placed an empty cup and saucer and a teaspoon and a bowl of sugar and a tiny jug of milk with a twisted lip and a huge porcelain pot of steaming black tea and another of black coffee and a glass bowl of butter and another of jam.
And Laxman seemed to look down on me, my dress, my hairdo, my feeble stature and my very persona, and asked gruffly in broken English:
"Eggs...omelet, poach, boiled?"
This had me in a sore trilemma since I was till then a strictly vegetarian South Indian Brahmin, having never tasted an egg except once in Vizagh and regretted it then on. But I was too scared to appear a dehati rural sod to a liveried eminence and said unthinkingly:
"Poach"
And Laxman withdrew leaving me alone to come to terms with the forbidding ambiance. The two suited gents pushed their chairs back and left, turning to me and saying:
"Excuse us"
And I didn't know what to reply except:
"Excused!"
But I kept quiet smiling wanly and looking relieved.
I touched my milk juglet gingerly and found it lukewarm with a layer of folding silky cream trying to grace its top. And I wondered what RKN would have said of tepid coffee with cream on it. And decided to try a cup of coffee before Laxman returned. And the coffee grew even colder when I added sugar to it from its bowl with a spoonlet tucked in it and stirred it like in a copper voltameter in our UG physics lab at Vizagh.
I hated it.
Laxman arrived by and by with a porcelain plate full of 4 slices of toasted bread and a glistening side plate from which were peeping what I deciphered were the two poached eggs I had ordered...a sight I had never seen before...two floating and dancing blobs of yellow each with a thin cover of skin on it, surrounded by a big patch of white and brown oily ring with upturning edges.
And I didn't know what to do with them.
First I tackled the poach for what it was worth...and it appeared worth all of Rs 3 of that whopping Rs 210. And tried poking the yellow blobs with the sharp teeth of my fork and they got punctured and spread on to their white background. And I thought Laxman was laughing in his sleeves and left them there till he went back into the kitchen. And tried to lift the yellows into my mouth with the spoon. And they resisted. And when I forced them into my mouth one by one, my shirt acquired stains of glistening yellow.
And they tasted rummy and novel and forgettable...I then saw salt and pepper dispensers at the other end of the table and dealt them unsparingly onto the rest of the poach. And tried cutting the whites into manageable pieces by the knife and found the task beyond me.
And I left the place leaving the mess I made and the 4 slices of bread alone...for tomorrows post...
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