Mess Chronicles 001:

I arrived from college at 2:20 in the afternoon...accompanied by a roomie and a demonic hunger in my stomach. It was owing to the fact that our morning meal of rice was swapped for 'luchi' without any former announcement. I know to most of you here, that wouldn't count as much, but when you are living away from home the only rice meal of the day holds a special place in your heart and appetite. Anyway, we were supposed to have rice in the afternoon when we returned. So with expectant eyes we peeptoed to auntie and asked her if lunch was ready. She dissapointed us saying that the 'pulao' was still on the stove. I almost skipped a heartbeat. Having Pulao-chicken meant a hike of Rs.10 on the meal, not to mention the extra calories (considering the luchis that were forced on us for breakfast). Moreover, I saw the housemaid plucking at a plate of rice. If the rice was still uncooked on the plate...who knew when it was gonna go into our bellies? Anyway, we kept mum.

At about 3:30...another roommate returned, who then was sent (as per custom) to auntie to enquire about the status of the food. By then, we already had a million mice running in our stomach.
Answered to with a rude 'no'...we did the only thing we could do. Wait. When our 4th roomie arrived, she also went to knock at the door asking for some food. It was already 4:13 then. By that time, we had clenched our stomachs, fought amongst ourselves for the last morsels of a forgotten packet of 'chanachur', sang songs to the goddess Annapurna and made plans to go out for some grub.
Uncle answered the door with a loud roar (yeah, exactly that. A roar)...that gave us (peeping from the staircase) into a heart attack. Our brave martyr stood there and whispered meekly, "Uncle, is the food ready yet?" Much to our astonishment, he replied in a fearsome voice "What have you girls started? You won't get any food now...it will be ready at 7 in the evening" and shut the door on her face. We got bloody angry on receiving such behavior from him, when we had done nothing except to ask for our rightful share of food. We stormed back to our room and started getting ready to go out. We were extremely pissed off and gobsmacked! Just then, at about 4:30 in the evening...that is 8 and a half hours after breakfast we were served lunch (if you could still call it that).
GOD, I so wanna go home. Its so irritating that inspite of paying enough we have to endure such insults and stay hungry for so long after a tiresome day at the college....>_<
-Aamen.