The Canteen: Heavenly Respite for Devilish Hunger

I don't need to quote some fancy study to tell you that you can generally judge what's going on at a given place once you've seen what the people present there are wearing. It's common sense. But what of a place where every other group of 4 or 5 seems to be dressed incoherently? Such assorted crowds are usually seen to gather at places like malls, theatres etc. And our canteen.

The canteen at IIIT-H starts serving food at noon and goes on till midnight. As is common with food serving joints, the volume of the crowd varies with time. At noon, it's usually students during their lunch break, who're enjoying a nice meal to break the monotony of everyday mess food. As time passes on, the crowd's assortment increases: More sports garments and more night suits. Yes, you read right, night suits. You see, IIIT-H has this culture of different sleeping cycles for a large bunch of individuals. Moreover, with my limited interaction with students of other colleges, I also believe this culture to be somewhat unique. The times at which these individuals (who shall henceforth be referred to as owls) wake up, varies between the time periods of 4-6 p.m and 9-11 p.m. Official mess timings are : 7.30-9.30 a.m, 12.30-2.00 p.m and 7.30-9.30 p.m. Here one can clearly see that apart from a 9.00-9.30 p.m window, the owls have no choice but to head to the canteen. Not that they'd mind either, the canteen food is pretty decent.

For the record, I've had my owl moments, particularly in the previous semester. It has its own benefits and the fun involved is immense, but I'll leave that for another post. Back to the canteen though and one of the main reasons for its crowd influx is the juice centre. It trumps epic. From Grape to Pineapple, Banana to cold coffee, it has it all. Juice has become an integral part of our life and I honestly can't imagine my time here without those divine glasses of juice. Particularly during birthday celebrations, the person in charge has a field day as the juice served goes perfectly well with the multiple kicks in the backside being given to the same person who ends up paying for the juice.

All in all the canteen is a place where different people come with different intentions. But at the heart of everyone's path to achieve their goal lies a simple solution: Food and Juice.