
The ubiquitous Dhaba…just outside your hostel“Mani!!! hey, get up man” shouted Subhas, “Abey, mess mein khana hai ya nahin?” Studies can be bad for one’s food habits. You generally study so infrequently that when you do get around to some serious ‘book-warming’, you try to finish a substantial amount of work(backlog, really) before you put the books down. That is mainly because you know that you don’t know when you are going to pick up a book again. However our Mani was not studying, he had been doing something much playing the “Age of the Empires” – probably the king of computer games among college going students(especially boys staying in hostels). As expected, Mani and Subhas got late and the only food that remained in the mess was the last of the chapattis, the daal minus the daal(only water) and some remnants of the other unrecognizable things that were cooked in the mess and somehow eaten by those who ate to live.
Mani and Subhas headed for their usual dinner hangout, the roadside dhaba just outside the hostel – which was more the ‘hostelside’ dhaba as almost all of its business came from the students of the hostel. This is a uniform behaviour across all colleges and student populations through India. So much so that, there are legendary dhaba waalas spread across the country – each specifically related to about one college - with a very strong following among numerous generations of students that passed out of that college. This eateries generally, totally, run by a single man who is the manager, cook and accountant, all rolled into one, cater to as many as 500 – 1000 students everyday and night depending upon the strength of the college. Handling numbers such as these is really commendable, more so because quality of the food(or the taste, one should say) never goes down … or changes. There have been instances when people visiting their colleges have gone and eaten in the same places after decades of passing out. That shouldn’t be a surprise really, won’t we also go to the same Ramu Da or Kallu for “his” brand of tea and paranthas / Maggi if we were to come back to college after having passed out of the place?
Let’s try to estimate the number of followers an average hostelside dhaba. If we take a college with student strength of approximately 300 in one batch and there are four batches of students, then there would be 1200 students at any given time in the college. Considering that any of these dhabas would be around for at about 10 years, we can conclude that at present the average dhaba would have more than a 100 thousand followers.
Chedi’s @ IIT Kharagpur
This is one of the most incredible places in the premier institution. Thronged by the hostelers day and night, Chedi’s is known to be open 24X7. It is more than 30 years old and is perhaps the first of commercial joints in India to remain open through the night. There were times, though, when Chedi’s had to close down – the emergency. Then again in 2001 there was a murder in the locality, so it used be closed from 12 in the night to 3a.m. It was noted however that between 3 and 4 o’clock, there was heavy rush. Then again it restarted opening for the whole night, and has continued to be a 24X7 place thereafter. Such has been the craze that when Chhedi’s used to be closed between 12 and 3, quite a few students were ready to wait till 3 in the morning to have dinner, rather than go to the mess. Students, past and present, have even made internet communities in the name of the dhaba(there’s one on orkut, which is also the source the of the above photograph). Kharagpur is a small place without too much of a modern commercial life. In such a situation, a place like Chedi’s is just what the student population would want around …. something that could support the, nocturnal, student life.
Satya Niketan @ South Campus, DU
So that was about a very different kind of place, which might just have added to your general knowledge. Lets now look at a place that's not really a dhaba and could be more central in location but is visited only by students. This is, talking about the eateries in Satya Niketan, in the South Campus area of the Delhi University. The area, which also provides residence to a few thousand of the students in various colleges in the South Campus, is where the students famously loiter around most of the time. The eateries here, a Kent's and a few dhabas, though eateries, are not necessarily used for eating at. They are just the kind of place where you do not have to order anything to sit and chat. But this does not mean that the food is not good; do check out the cheese omelette at Kent's (that's a new one they have started). For the old timers, the connection would be greater with the Hangout (now most of the similar shops in that lane are called "Hangouts") that used to serve the Banta (an indigenously manufactured, bottled and sold lemon drink). The Banta has been the survivor's favourite in the North Campus as well.
this ain't over yet, there'll be more about different dhabas ........ (the writer would appriciate if the readers contribute to this article by telling about the dhaba experiences they have had in their colleges)