Everybody.....SHAAVA SHAAVA!

I thought my life wouldn't ever be the same again after I left Xaviers after finishing the 12th. I was really sad that most of my friends would be continuing there and I was going to another college. The thought of being without them scared me.

Then, IHM Mumbai happened. Infact, one of the best things to have ever happened to me.

As a fresher, I remember my life being inundated with rules, rules and more rules. Don't wear this, don't wear that, no makeup, no jewelry, no loose hair....why, it was like going back to school all over again! Why, we even had a uniform! And my day now began at 7am and got over at 5pm, sometimes 6pm. It was crazy. I had never in my life imagined college to be so tiring. To top it all, getting through each day, dealing with difficult teachers, lectures, monthly unit tests, practicals....I had my hands full.

It took sometime getting used to the fact that I was part of a class with a strength of 53 male and 12 female. Dealing with ogling seniors was yet another skill I picked up. It was kind of new for me, being surrounded so much by the male species, giving that I attended a girl's school and my class of 110 at junior college comprised a hundred girls. My new friends were really nice people. Turned out we had common friends in Xaviers and so we got talking. I would get to meet my  old friends only once a month, if I was particularly busy, then twice a month. I would be very jealous when they would call me up and ask if I wanted to join them the following day for lunch; and I would say in a small voice, "No, I have college". I missed them terribly.

Gradually, as time passed, I began seeing that however gruelling it was, I was having a lot of fun. After all, there aren't many places where you come to class wearing a chef's uniform and learn how to bake bread and make cakes :) We would go mad trying to perfect the recipe for mayonnaise and bechamel. Handling meat and fish was a different story altogether. Stuffing your stuffing-filled hand "up a dead bird's ass" (as Phoebe Buffay rightly says) wasn't exactly appetising. We were taken once to the slaughterhouse to see poor little animals breathing their last. Educational excursion, we were told.

However much I cribbed and griped, I waited for college to start every Monday. I liked it there now. And my friends were the best.

I didn't only cook, as people may think. I cleaned tiles, sinks, floors, wooden doors, brass thalis, silver spoons, nearly every kind of surface on the planet. We said it was free labour for the college. I didnt understand at the time, but it was their way of teaching us to overcome the queasiness of doing odd jobs. Sometimes I would be so tired that all I wanted to do was go home. But to watch a chef writing 10/10 in his markbook after tasting a roast chicken that you and your partner worked hard to make, was something that made it all worth it.

Then came the second year. Quite simply it was a BLAST. We now had juniors! And no one admonished us for our hair or clothes anymore, which was the best part. I, for one, was very happy.

Quantity kitchen was another source of great joy for me. We had now moved on to Indian cuisine :D and cooked food for the entire college there. The kitchen would resemble a community center with everyone peeling, chopping, cooking, ladling and stirring food that cooked in utensils the size of small bathtubs. I miss those classes, echoing with our songs and chatter. We had a ball during our last day. The most memorable incident there was when we had our hands burning from deseeding chillies. They were burning so badly we had to take a half day from college and come home!

I'm a changed person now. IHM transformed me. To be able to wittily retort to a comment was something I could never do. Now I can do it without batting an eyelid. IHM is, in my opinion, as close to the big bad world as one can get. Survive here; and you can conquer the world.  My new self laughs at my old self and wonders why it wasn't on the scene a few years back.

As we temporarily leave college for Industrial Training, I just wanted to say that I'll be missing college and you guys a lot. Tanya, Tanvi, Sid, Biggie, Trevor, Shweta, Urvashi, Zahabia, Vinayak, Shubho, Shrutika, Taha, Delmer, Nachu and so many others....I had loads of fun with you guys. Thanks for everything :)

SACCHHHIIINNNNNNN!