Thak thak thak thak………chop chop chop….fisssshhhhhhhh….. the cacophony had been imploring itself, the door lay open and a distance darkness spread over the city…nothing decipherable. But still a tint of nostalgia was filling up inside, more of a déjà vu….suddenly everything started being clear, rather more clear- it all turned white….and the cacophony was blurred out with a high pitch tone “BEEP BEEP BEEP” it said…..Hell that was my alarm clock! And this all a freak dream...0530hrs!... and I had an appointment….i ran for it.
Thak thak thak thak………chop chop chop….fisssshhhhhhhh…..apparently the sound wasn’t that vague, here I was listening to it in the great SVNIT ian canteen at six in the morning- that being the time (or rather even before, when I was lazing around) the crew hits the ship, and it prepare its self to give everyone a ride. So here goes some thought which generated itself while I tried to get to know, that what exactly happens behind the counters in our canteen and also in the lives of our feeders!
I got in, and a familiar smiling face –Shekhar bhaiya’s, escorted to me to very corner (or wait, is it ‘middle’?) of the things. 5 men…chopping away at mach 4..making it seem that there isn’t a thing called post sleep dizziness. “there are 15 members in our family here, they begin their work at 0530hrs” informs Shekhar bhai. This time is when the ‘base of the pizza’ (if there is such an idiom) prepared. All the masala’s, chutney , and the other stuff that floods the mouth get prepared. The cold January wind gets out of the way when the big burners are set on fire. And just when I thought that all the vegetable in Surat were done away with, a new gunny bag arrives where potatoes, tomatoes, onion, et all are to meet the same fate on the platform. “This what you see is only 5% of total grocery that gets consumed up during the day” quips Shekhar bhai, yeah right…as I later learned every day we hog up 25 kg of onion, 30kg of tomatoes, 100 eggs, 35 kg of potatoes (“it’s the most popular one” says Hasmukh bhai)…I mean hello? Talk about controlled eating.
“The best thing about our staff is, that there aren’t specialists assigned to a particular job. Everyone in here is an all-rounder” brings in Shekhar bhai…”..and that is a great relief, as during peak hours-the specialist would have been doing shezvan rice, while somebody shouts away for masala utthapa” he adds. Ah… masala utthapa, I learned here that this in particular the dish that takes the longest to get done. Talking about time, I couldn’t resist my self from asking “what actually happens after someone hands out a coin and blurts out an item out of the zillions?”…..to this he replied “…well, technically you hear anand’s top notch sound, with which we all are familiar with, after that…just as the sound wave hits the cooking staff inside..a sort of contraption begins… the base masala gets together in no matter of time…the actual base of the dish gets prepared on the burner…along with the vegetables, all these steps go on simultaneously. And then they are mixed up, layed out…..and you reach again at counter…and hear anand again…hehe…its like a cyclic thermodynamic process…ends where it begins” yeah well, that was one, only that here we actually gain a lot of peripherals. “the process remains more or less the same for all the items” he informs. The fun kicks in when you actually see this happen…its like a rotating roulette. I checked the other room inside..”this is the special ‘dosa’ tawa that we have” I was updated. It kind of is imperative that we have a ‘special tawa’ for dosa. That category begin the most consumed in a day. “Masala dosa tops the chart, with rava catching up” he said, cool stats I must say.
Then there is one more angle involved…more importantly relating to Anand and Hasmukh Bhaiya, they being the ones who guard the ‘windows’ of humanity, looking out through the counters, I bet they must have seen some of the coolest glimpse of our lives. “We have seen couples hook up, break out, friends enjoying, biggest political-apolitical decisions been made, right in front of us…we have seen the freakiest to the geekiest kid in the college, all in his/her’s inner self, do we just love our jobs or what!” so now I get where they get all this energy from. “ every individual coming up the counter is different…. The style with which they order do tell a lot about them, some are party to our fun making….the others unfortunately as much distant, we just want to say one thing- what ever we say- dil pe mat le yaar “. Point accepted. Then slowly as I endeavoured Into their lives, I found another energy sources. “manoj is great singer, he sings for us most the time…accompanied by anand who is great dancer!” said hasmukh bhai… so so so, hidden talents.
Talking of staff members, its like a mini NIT in here, with 15 people all from different places, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Bihar, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Nepal, you name it. “its good they all know Hindi, or else we couldn’t have been serving food at all” jokes Shekhar bhai. Some of them haven’t visited their home town for past two years. “its nothing to be being sorry for, not that I don’t miss my family, but I love it here…I now even have a girlfriend in surat!” lets out karan Bhaiya. They all work like a well oiled machine with their day ending at 2130hrs. Then they generally watch TV, enjoy a chat, and cook themselves dinner! (yeah, they too eat!) “during the day, they are allowed to have anything they want, no restrictions” said Shekhar bhai. “Wow” I thought. Then there is Sunday the day they get up late, catch a movie play cricket, clean the canteen all this while we pass looking at the building with hungry eyes…but OK we understand. For many don’t know that out canteen is operational even in vacations! “its much slower then, with days feeling like composed of 48 hrs or something, we miss you kids’ says Shekhar bhai. Do we even need to reciprocate that in words?... I don’t think so.
So, this is it…the tastemakers of our lives, may we wish their life is as tasty as ours is because of them. And just one request from my side the next time you order something, take the dish away with a “thank you” or even a small smile of gratitude would do.
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