I have an extremely complicated relationship with food. I love food- eating, cooking, reading food blogs, exploring new cuisines, I love all of it. But, I also might have undiagnosed eating disorders. As a child (and as an adult), I find comfort in food. I stuff my face to fill the void; to feel something. When I’m sad, I make myself feel better by eating something sweet. When I’m happy, I celebrate by eating something savory. When I have trouble sleeping at night, I watch Buzzfeed Tasty videos till I fall asleep. My tendency to eat away my feelings caused PCOS and body dysmorphia in high school. When I moved away for college, I was worried that my health was going to get worse. But attending DTU was the best thing that happened to me. Amongst other reasons, because of mess food and mess bhaiya.
Mess (verb) - take one's meals in a particular place or with a particular person, especially in an armed forces' mess.
Sister Nivedita Hostel- the small brown door in the foreground leads to the mess’ kitchen.
DTU has one big mess that caters to all the girls’ hostels. It is this big, open space in the ground floor of one of the hostels. There are long rows of tables with plastic chairs, two tiny wash basins, a water cooler, an air cooler and a soft drinks dispenser (which concocts extremely diluted drinks). There is a raised pedestal where buckets of food are kept and every mealtime, mess bhaiyas stand behind the pedestal and serve the food. There is a wall that separates the mess from the kitchen. On my first night eating in the mess, a friend advised me never to go into the kitchen, or the horrors that I would see would make me never want to eat in the mess ever again. The girls in my hostel, mostly NRIs, stacked up on antidiarrheal and antibiotics in case the mess food ever gives us Delhi belly. I was so nervous and skeptical about eating in the mess the first night in hostel, the mess is not the best model for sanitary, hygienic spaces.
That first meal in the mess almost made me cry. All my fears were unfounded. The food was so good! For four years, I had someone making simple, substantial and scrumptious meals for me, four times a day, seven days a week. It was healthy and tasty and oh, the variety! The breakfast meal roster included pav bhaji, masala dosa, aloo parantha, chole kulcha, chole bhatura, aloo puri and more. The lunch and dinner menu were usually some type of legume and some sabzi dish with rice, roti, salad, raita and mithai. It was a feast! And the dal and sabzis weren’t watered down and congealed lumps, they were hearty and good! The snacks menu was bread pakora, pasta, aloo tikki and other assorted chaat items. We would also get ice creams and biriyanis and chowmein on some days and that was always a special surprise. During exams, mess bhaiya would show up to our hostel at midnight with a cart full of snacks and treats and chai and coffee. Oh, the chai. I was never a fan of chai or coffee and I still am not. But those four years, I gave in to peer pressure. The chai was just that good.
The mess was an engaging, joyous place where friendships were forged, gossip was exchanged, group studying happened, and the hostel cats napped. I met several of my current best friends in the mess. During exams, the mess was where you would get the class toppers to clear your doubts the night before the paper. I had many “mess friends”, people that I only met in the mess but was very close to. You were never lonely in the mess, no one ever ate alone. There was always someone to share a meal with.
**
Nikhil bhaiya was a short, jovial man from the north-east. He was the head bhaiya at the mess. He was smart and kind and would ask me after every meal “achese khaya ki nahi, anbesa?” The mess bhaiyas called me anbesa, which eventually became anbes- a nickname that my dear friends in college call me. My dear friends, who also made fun of and were perplexed by my friendship with the mess bhaiyas. One day, near the end of term, Nikhil bhaiya said that he’s leaving his job and moving to Dubai. He was very excited and asked me all kinds of question about life in Dubai. He said that he didn’t like his job in the mess because it was tiring with long hours and didn’t pay very well. With the Dubai job, he could send money back to his family in the village. I said goodbye to him on the last day of the semester, expecting to never see him again. After the summer when I returned to campus, I found Nikhil bhaiya in the mess. He looked unhappy. On further enquiry, I learnt that he was promised a job at Dubai International Airport by an external agency who, once they received money from him, disappeared without a trace. “main iss passport ka ab kya karunga?”, he rued. A year later, Nikhil bhaiya did leave the mess job. This time, without saying goodbye. (Tbh it wasn’t as melodramatic, and I hope he’s moved onto bigger and better things.)
**
After my grandmother passed away, one of the unfortunate consequences was that I never got to have jackfruit curry again, that was her specialty. And also because no one else knew how to make it. Until I moved to DTU. In my engineering college, in the deep throes of north-west Delhi, one of the mess bhaiyas made a jackfruit curry that tasted exactly like the one my grandmother used to make! There was something so familiar and comforting about it. Turns out that he was also from the region of Bengal as my grandmother, and the jackfruit curry was a common staple in those parts. I remain eternally grateful to him for offering me the familiar nostalgia of my grandmother’s cooking. Its fascinating to me that my olfactory senses instantly made the connection and that somewhere deep within my brain was stored the taste and smell of that jackfruit curry. The jackfruit curry wasn’t a staple in the mess menu. It was an addition that would show up on the table when mess bhaiya felt like making it, and when there was an abundance of jackfruit available in the market. Because prepping and cooking jackfruit is so labor and time intensive, I have not had jackfruit curry since graduation. I low-key wish I had asked mess bhaiya for the recipe. I used to eagerly look forward to the days when he would make the jackfruit curry; I could temporarily feel the presence of my grandmother.
**
Vinod bhaiya was the constant mess bhaiya throughout my four years at DTU. While other mess bhaiyas were temporary fixtures, Vinod bhaiya was always there. He was always in the mess-no matter the time of day. Once when I asked him where he lived, he said that he lives in the mess. He was given a room on campus, but it was far from the mess, he spent the entire day/night working. His day started at 6am to prep for breakfast and ended at 10pm after dinner service. During exam season, he’d be working till 2am. We learnt his name only in fourth year. For a majority of my college life, everyone (including me, regrettably) called him black uncle- an indictment of the deep-seated racism and anti-blackness prevalent in India.
Vinod bhaiya knew everyone’s name within the first week of first year. He knew everyone’s food preferences- if you liked gulab jamun, you would get extra; if you didn’t like bhindi, he’d skip your plate. He used to inform me during breakfast if the sabzi at lunch was jackfruit so that I didn’t skip lunch. And at lunch, he would fill my plate with multiple servings of jackfruit. He was also Bengali and often spoke to me in Bengali. He belonged to a small village in north Bengal, where his family lived. He didn’t go back home for any of the summers that passed by when I attended college.
He was an invisible figure in the mess, quietly presiding over things. Vinod bhaiya made the best cold coffee in the world. The line for it used to extend beyond the mess. Cold coffee was only available in the summer months. So, when that blender was out on the pedestal, you knew winter is over and happy days are here again.
**
After one exam, that went horribly for me, I made my way to the mess all depressed and dispirited. That day we had panipuri for snacks, for the first time. And every student was allotted 4-5 puris. Noticing my sadness, mess bhaiya let me have as many puris as I wanted. Honestly, made my day!
When I was going through my depressive phase and wouldn’t come out of my room for days, mess bhaiya would gently reproach me for skipping meals. During Diwali and Holi and other long holidays, when everyone used to go home and I would stay back in hostel, mess bhaiyas were there with “special festival meals”. When I went back to college after graduating, I didn’t know anyone on campus who I could visit. But as I walked into the mess, I was greeted with a cheery “anbesa, wapas aa gayi”. And even though he’s not supposed to, mess bhaiya let me eat there- the best kadi chawal I’ve ever had.
I was at my healthiest and fittest during those four years. All the dieticians and nutritionists that were consulted by my parents during the peak of my weight gain couldn’t do what mess bhaiyas did. They kept me fed with tasty food and I also somehow lost a ton of weight. (I have since gained all that weight and more back, and I would like to either a) go back to college just for mess food or b) hire mess bhaiya to be my personal chef.)
Over the last two years, since I graduated, I miss many things about college- the campus, the trees, the freedom, the people, but mostly, the mess. My friends think I’m nuts. None of them miss the mess, they didn’t even like the mess food when we were in college. But over the years, I have started to appreciate mess food and mess bhaiyas. It’s nice to have someone cook four meals a day for you, without you having to worry about grocery shopping or cooking or washing the dishes. We survived those four years because someone else was doing all that and ensuring we are taken care of. Being a mess bhaiya is a thankless job, with meagre pay and hundreds of hangry students to feed. Thank you mess bhaiyas for keeping us fed and nourished.
Gifts from The Internet
Here’s a fascinating story about one of America’s only female professional bull riders- this one is a doozy.
Supermodel and former Victoria’s Secret model Emrata has published a powerful and heartbreaking essay about image, power and consent.
An excerpt from the book ‘Fangirls: Scenes from Modern Music’ on the aftermath of the 2017 Manchester Arena Bombing during Ariana Grande’s concert, through the perspective of gender terrorism and men being annoyed at women for singing about sex.
In 2019, the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City held an exhibit where they invited visitors to write about their anxieties and hopes on two sides of a paper. The result was an exhibit with thousands of pieces of paper all indications of private confessions- Candy Chang: A Monument for the Anxious and Hopeful.
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