[Note: Fictionalized personal account. No claim of historical accuracy is implied.]
For a man running a mess, he was strikingly lean. His daily routine was immersed in food, yet it was almost as if he didn’t eat any. That deficiency seemingly left him with a slight hump and an anemic face with sunken cheeks that made his already sizable nose loom even larger. Those who watched him walk the aisles, holding his left elbow with his right hand behind his back, head cocked forward, wouldn’t be mistaken if they glimpsed a faint avian aura. His voice aided that perception. He spoke in a high-pitched Tamil accented mixture of English and Malayalam, which grew increasingly nasal when he got irate at the servers and cooks. No one knew his real name. He was simply called—Catering.
Catering had an impossible job. He had to feed 400 odd teenage boys, morning, day, and night on a budget that was as inadequate as it was indifferent to inflation. The meals had to be balanced and nutritious and served simultaneously at the appointed hour without fail, seven days a week. The cooks, cleaners, and servers deployed to do the work believed it to be beneath them. Rallying around this shared notion, they eventually unionized, compounding Catering’s management burden.
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| Balanced meal (Photo credit: cookinglight.com) |
Yet, against these insurmountable odds, Catering succeeded. Spectacularly. Not a meal was missed year in year out. The menu was varied, appropriately portioned, and struck the right balance between protein, carbs, and greens. Vegetarians were entertained, as were a curious category of eggerians. On special occasions he threw buffet luncheons, serving up three-course meals on white tablecloth. And over the years he expanded the menu, introducing idli, dosa, and skirting custom, pork. He even opened a pig farm, saving some rupees by recycling discarded and uneaten food. The stench from the farm rendered the entire northeastern quadrant of the campus unapproachable, but the pork proved to be a hit.
How did he do it? That’s how management books get written. As far as one could tell, he had no formal college education. He was quite simply a natural. He had an easy facility with numbers, a quick wit, and the instincts of a cutthroat CEO. In his corner office equipped with the ubiquitous olive green Godrej furniture, he kept meticulous books tracking stocks, flows, and expenditures. He cut procurement costs by striking up special deals with wholesalers in the Chalai market. He slyly played the workers, pitting one faction against the other to wring manual labor out of them. He enforced strict portion control, watching like a hawk the servers dole out the ration. Four slices of bread, a dollop of butter or jam, never both. Students jockeyed to sit close to the head of the table where the instructors sat. Occasionally the instructors failed to show up, whereupon their plates were up for grabs. Unfortunately, I sat a few seats down the row and never got to share this fortuitous feast. But learning portion control early can be a good thing as I now know, even if, in the moment, I wasn't happy with it.
Among his cost-cutting strategies, what took the cake though was how he ruthlessly sacrificed quality and mercilessly compromised taste. Except for a smattering of items such as bread and omelet, the rest bore only a passing resemblance to their recipe. Sambhar, that culinary mainstay, was a mangled jumble of mixed vegetables, masala, and water, with some lentils thrown in for the appearance. Occasionally you would encounter half-cooked drumstick that once must have had a succulent past. If you saw brinjal, be sure to find a dead worm nearby. Pieces of tomato bore holes out of which residents had crawled out under the incipient heat.
But sambhar and other similarly compromised vegetable dishes were gastronomic delights compared to the venerable uppumavu. To call what Catering served under that label a vegetarian dish would be a gross mischaracterization, if not plain injustice to the maggots that had made uppumavu their cozy habitat but now suddenly found their life cycle curtailed. They were plentiful, so much so that it would allay any concerns about uppumavu being a high carbohydrate dish; it was well balanced with insect protein. It is for good reason that I mentioned Catering served nutritious meals.
Treats and desserts were not spared from Catering ditching palatability on his cost-cutting crusade. One of his fearsome creations was a cookie served with the afternoon tea. It was dubbed carborundum by the diners. Carborundum, you can look it up, is a mineral “used in applications requiring high endurance, such as bulletproof vests.” Well, the wag who named the cookie carborundum hit the mark. Eating it taxed the consumer’s teeth to the extreme. The students persisted nevertheless because the sugar sprinkled on the top made it too enticing to pass up.
And therein lay Catering’s insight. He understood he had two things going for him in his pursuit of a balanced budget: monopoly and hunger. The students were captive to the mess for food. They just had to eat what was served. Excursions outside the campus were prohibited and even if one did venture out, the offerings in the surrounding 19th-century hold-out villages were even worse than the mess fare. The school’s demanding physically active schedule and Catering’s portion control ensured the students were at the edge of hunger by the next meal. Ergo, they ate what was served, concerns about quality, taste, and dental health notwithstanding. Demand met supply, the books balanced, and Catering delivered on his promise time after time. His wizardry grew into a legend, stoking rumors that he was skimming a portion of the budget, proving success never fails to bring jealous detractors.
Catering, though, wasn’t just a one-dimensional wonder. He was multitalented. He was an exceptionally good conversationalist. If you were successful enough to befriend him, that is. He knew to keep his unsatiated customers at arm's length lest they clamor for concessions. Now, I am a poor conversationalist, I will readily admit that. But I developed a rapport with Catering in my final high school year. He must have known that I was cozying up for seconds of some of the tastier side dishes. He didn’t show it and indeed allowed some extras after the mess closed. What’s memorable to me though are the wide-ranging discussions that ensued. He talked with clarity and command about the Indo-Pak war, moon landings, the energy crisis, and the strange repetitive music selection that played in the mess hall.
But what came as a shock was his take on Indian politics. At first, it made no sense and was unbearably frustrating. What happened later, however, was transformational: it changed me from a pliant believer to a hard-nosed skeptic for the rest of my life.
With India still under Emergency, Indira Gandhi declared general election. The opposition united under the newly formed Janata Party to challenge the Congress party rule under Mrs. Gandhi. It seemed everyone wanted Indira’s defeat, bringing an end to the unbroken Congress hegemony. They hoped for great things to come under the Janata rule. Not Catering. He had no faith in the opposition. To my horror and disappointment, he stuck with Mrs. Gandhi and refused to give hope to the youngsters yearning for change. Change was in the air though and the opposition won a decisive victory. Indira lost her parliamentary seat. Yet, Catering didn’t give an inch of ground. When asked, he gave a penetrating analysis and, I can clearly remember this, said: “This is a claptrap coalition. I don’t give it more than 2 to 3 years. The Janata government will fall. Indira will return!”
I finished high school and left hoping Catering will be proven wrong. I never met Catering again.
In 28 months, the Janata government under Morarji Desai fell. In 34 months, Indira Gandhi swept back to power.
That was Catering, a most interesting man.
