Food For Thought

By Ashvani Sachdev

On a gloomy morning shrouded in ominously dark clouds, our school principal made an

announcement during the morning prayer assembly which devastated me. It was 1965, the year

that our geographical neighbour, out of brotherly spite, brought our two nations to war,

plunging them both into penury, pain and poverty. Lal Bahadur Shastri, our physiologically

diminutive but psychologically colossal Prime Minister, had provided formidable leadership

during the war and after it was over, set another example by making his family skip its evening

meal daily due to the nationwide shortage of food grains and victuals. After validating the

concept at home, he gave a clarion call to the whole nation to skip an evening meal at least

once a week.

The principal’s announcement that morning, flowing directly from Shastri’s, stated simply

that, thenceforth, all students and staff of our boarding school would forego dinner on Tuesday

evenings. It elicited a loud hum from the auditorium’s ever hungry occupants but for me

personally, it was a bolt, nay a thunderbolt, from the blue. The ashen world around me darkened

a bit more and the sounds around me appeared to dim considerably as my mind, shaken up by

the announcement, numbly grappled with the prospect of skipping a meal every Tuesday. The

fact that the first such calamity was just a day away stood facing me tall, like a dark and

insurmountable wall. The rest of the prayer assembly passed for me like the viewing of an out

of focus film.

Skipping a meal for me had always been something whose prospect itself was enough to send

me into dread. On one occasion before joining boarding school, a doctor, alarmed by some

irresponsible and excessive activity by my digestive system, had prescribed, along with liberal

doses of a carminative concoction, some rest to my stomach by way of a meal or two skipped

entirely. I remember how I had pleaded with my dad that making me skip a meal would be

cruelty to a child, that it would make me sicker, and that indeed, I might even die on account

of weakness. Needless to say, my dad made it clear that he valued the doctor’s professional

advice more than he was moved by my petulant pleas. Tears and sniffles, mostly genuine but

some contrived, failed to move my dad who stood resolute in pursuing my tummy’s return to

normalcy. The incident left an indelible scar on my mind that had been continually revivified

by recurrent nightmares about my being forced to skip a meal.

And now this.

Monday passed like a blur, ending in a sleepless night for me which culminated in my getting

up groggy and with a gnawing hunger in my tummy. At breakfast, I gorged myself as if the

world’s end was near, squeezing in three extra toasts until the gong went to announce the end

of the breakfast period. The walk from the dining hall to the auditorium for the prayer assembly

left me feeling weak and hungry. Once seated, I prayed fervently that the principal would

reverse his decision about skipping meals but the prayer assembly ended without my prayer

being answered favourably. I remember complaining meekly to God and blaming the principal

whole heartedly for the torture I was undergoing. I recall that Lal Bahadur Shastri also invited

choicest invective from me.

The study periods between prayer assembly and lunch passed in slow motion; I was unable to

concentrate in the class, failed to answer questions posed to me by teachers during successive

periods, and ended up in Murga position, a corporeal punishment invented to punish a student

for mental inattentiveness in class. It involves half squatting, looping arms behind the knees,

and holding one’s earlobes, and served to further intensify my hunger pangs. At lunch, I hogged

like there was no tomorrow and, oblivious to what my co-students might think, purloined two

chappattis coated with some vegetable curry, packing them into my handkerchief, and secreting

them into my right trouser pocket so that my satchel would hide the bulge from the mess

warden’s hawk eyes. Once in my room, I stashed the package under my mattress, ensuring the

bed linen showed no signs of any poking around.

By evening roll call, I was feeling famished and, when no one was around, took out the package

from under my mattress and, holding it as close to my nose as possible, inhaled deeply. The

smell gave me intense pleasure with anticipation of consuming it at dinner time, thus cheating

Lal Bahadur Shastri and the principal. Time passed real slowly through the study period

between roll call and dinner time when we were asked to go to the dining hall. My slim hope

of finding dinner waiting for us was dashed to the ground when we entered the dining hall to

find, in lieu of dinner, one banana and one glass of milk laid out at each seat. I gobbled up the

banana and gulped down the milk, all the while the smell of my curry-smeared chapattis

keeping me from falling into despondency. Once the dinner end gong went, I rushed to my

room before others reached there, retrieved my package and hurried out to a secluded spot

behind the dormitory. Alas, onions and the spices in the curry, after bacterial assaults since

lunch time, had turned rancid, the smell nauseating. All my delightful expectancy turned into

bitter disappointment, and the principal was the object of my ire for some intense moments.

The night that followed was a memorable one, rendered so by the pain only a foodie like me

can experience when deprived of food.

The meal skipping routine that I dreaded continued for many months but I just could not learn

to ignore the rumblings (real and imagined) in my tummy and to overcome the anticipatory

pain all week before Tuesday dinner time arrived. When the school term ended and I went

home on vacation, I complained dolefully to my dad about the “torture” I was undergoing at

school. Dad was silent.

The very next morning, he asked me if I would like to go for a walk with him. He took a narrow

street that tapered further as we moved along it. And suddenly I saw them. A row of barely

clothed, skinny, unbathed children --- boys and girls, ages ranging from 4 to 7 --- squatting on

the floor in a row. A young man stood next to them waiting expectantly. My dad quietly took

out a Rs 10 note from his pocket and handed it over to the young man. The kids smiled at dad

and turned their eyes towards the young man who walked into a shop and purchased some

biscuit packets for the kids. After he had distributed the biscuits to the children, he walked over

to us.

“Thank you, Mr Sahni, they had not eaten since lunchtime yesterday when a kind gentlemen

brought them some home cooked food.”

My dad was silent on the way back. So was I. Miraculously, in one clean sweep, dad’s

pedagogy cured me forever of the fear of skipping a meal.

By Ashvani Sachdev