What a Mess!

by Nitish Thakor H3, EE, 1974

No, not the mess I made of my life, NO I didn’t. Life is good, and it has been good to me. I have lived well, and I’m happy. Not the mess I made at IIT. No, those were wonderful five years, incredible character-building, educational and friendship experiences. No, by “mess,” I mean my mess where I ate for five years in Hostel 3.

From being well taken care of with Home-made Gujarati, gujju, food, eating in a Hostel mess was quite a change. Surprisingly, it was a delightful change because it was like eating restaurant food daily versus the same old, healthy, or standard home food. I was so happy that I could get freshly made eggs every morning. And we ate meat, chicken, or mutton for every dinner! That was a very big treat to a gujju eating veg food every day! Tasty and spicy.

Those were also the late teenage years when I had such a high appetite. I would eat several rotis and all the meat and anything given because it tasted restaurant-like, different from home. Alas, as the years went by, that appetite winnowed, maybe some realization that this was just the same old food and wasn’t of restaurant quality. Rotis were dry, and the mutton was chewy. Perhaps it just makes a little bit of sense that we need to eat healthily. Well, by the fourth year, I think, there was a movement in the mess to provide “veg” food (was it the gujju mess?), that is a purely vegetarian mess. Mostly, I recall Puri and potatoes “batakanu shak“. Any change was good since we craved that menu change as the years went by. Of course, now I even craved for home food. I was one of the rare Mumbai-vasi who would stay on campus over the weekend. So, I would go home on Friday, take all my clothes to wash and replenish my food supply, come back after the weekend, and enjoy the hostel life, or, shall I say, suffer through the same mess food.

Over the years, I have wondered whether eating eggs every day for five years was healthy or if I had built up a heavy supply of cholesterol. But going to the mess and connecting with all my classmates and hostel-mates and its social aspects were terrific. The mess was a gathering place. The little lounge outside of the mess was a gathering place. The gathering places were Carrom and Bridge playing rooms and the table tennis room. That was where we had real fun, only to be topped by being in the wing and doing farting sessions with our close friends late into the night.

Well, I relived that experience at our 25^th Silver Jubilee anniversary. We visited our hostel and had the opportunity to have a small lunch and tea/coffee with the students who were there in the hostel. It’s a replica of our experience going 25 years back. That was very nostalgic and touching.

I’m looking forward to revisiting after 25 years. My mess, I miss you. I’m looking forward to whatever the mess will dish out this time.