A lunch with the Arons

My father called up to tell me that he saw my blog today. He was happy with the overall content but he had some corrections to suggest. Dwaraka, he says was not in the least affected by the Pakistani shelling. The destruction was almost nil except for a shell landing on the railway line. This was owing to a protective shell around Dwaraka, cast by the presiding deity, Dwarakadeesh, is what the people there believe. The migration of ACC employees from Dwaraka to other parts of the country came over a year later, owing to losses in the ACC Factory there. Sorry for the error.

MCC had a big playground on the northern side and a large garden on the southern side. In between both, the school building stretched East-Westwards. It had three floors. The High school was on the top floor. Students from the ABL Colony normally went home for lunch like we used to do at Wadi. Students from ACC colony or the Bajaar, normally had their lunches in the school campus itself. Cycling was a popular mode of transportation both for the students and the teachers. We Wadi students, stuck to our own kind, partly because of the stigma of being poorer cousins from the south, and partly because of the Ghetto mentality. The garden mostly consisted of golden oleander shrubs, casuarinas and pines. Our lunches were carried in stainless steel tiffin boxes, inscribed with our names. I mostly carried curd rice and a pickle or what we used to call Thayir molagai. As soon as it was time for lunch all the boys of our class from Wadi (Me, JC, Santhanam and Sriniwas and sometimes Hariprasad, Sriniwas’s brother) assembled under a particular oleander shrub (each group of 4-5 had their own shrub under which they had their lunch). Unlike these days, I was then stick thin, weighing about 35 kilograms.

There were occasions when we got to eat out sometimes. Though our mothers never tired of cooking and packing lunch for us before we left for school in the mornings, we sometimes begged for money from our parents. For 10 rupees we could have a royal meal or Poori Subji in Nandavan Hotel. There was a shriveled old woman whom we called Nani or Buddi depending on our mood, who sold soaked salted and roasted grams (chana) for 5 paise. We bought that sometimes. Mostly we had about 25 paise in our pockets. Sometimes our classmates from ABL colony felt for us and invited us for lunch. It happened rarely, but I remember one occasion, when one Rajat Mohan Aron, the son of a Manager (remember there were several in ABL) invited all us Wadi guys for lunch one day. Please Please do not ever get the feeling that I am disparaging the event, but it was a novel affair for us kids from Wadi to say the least. We were served in bone china crockery on dining tables, and had to eat out of bowls with spoons and forks and things. We learnt of a dish called Raita, which is what you get when you cut vegetables and mix it with yoghurt. Frankly we all had eaten better Raita at our homes, calling it Kichadi or Thayir pachadi or Koshimbiri depending on where you came from. Raita in Kannada meant a farmer. This meal was, I believe our first introduction to Punjabi or North Indian cuisine, what with phulke, alu dam, sookhi sabziyan, tariwali subzian, dal makhni and the rest – not to mention chawal and raita. Also novel was the concept of servants serving us, with Rajat’s mother supervising. Till then, at our homes, servants were never even allowed to see what we were eating. This was another kind of education on its own. An Iyer boy from Wadi could not have done so well in Delhi High Society without such educating experiences. Thanks Rajat wherever you are for this. Thanks to you I can acquit myself honourably today if I am invited for lunch by the Prime Minister of India. Thanks Rajat too, for your thoughtfulness, whereby you thought us guys from Wadi fit to be invited for lunch at home. We had lunch in the houses of other friends like Ramprasad and Prasanna and D M Murali and Ramarao later but they were routine lunches like we had at home. While they filled our stomachs they didn’t contribute towards training us in etiquette.