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I was part of the cooking committee today and so had to wake up a little earlier than the others. Cut vegetables for breakfast and lunch. This was also the first day of yoga being taught by the instructors of Ambika Yog Kutir. Missed the yoga class because we had to make breakfast for everyone. (ouside body: <gloom>, inside body: <gleam>) Believe me, I've never been happier making breakfast for anyone, leave alone myself. We got about 6 million warnings from Karishma because we were being too loud in the kitchen and apparently the other thirty people outside were getting disturbed while grunting their way through the
asanas.
Anyways, we made
poha, the best breakfast of all time (or so we thought!). The remaining volunteers left for field work after eating. We decided to cook
alu bhaji for lunch. With a little help (read: she gave all the instructions) from Mudita Dixit, we pretty much managed the best lunch of all time as well. I made
chappatis for the first time ever and they turned out strictly OKAY. I also decided to wage a war against those chickens and hens. No more cute little birdies!
This is a good time to let out a secret as well. We just had two stoves in the kitchen. So it didn't matter whether the rolling of the dough-balls into flat chappatis was done by five people or ten; only two could get cooked at a time. With this imbalance in the kitchen, the only option was to arrange the rolled out chappatis on the floor. At so, at one point when we had spread out around fifty-sixty of them, our beloved hens and their chickens, having just stepped out of a gutter somewhere (because I'm sure I saw black bird-feet), decided to race across the kitchen, obviously making sure they ran over most of the chappatis!
You cannot imagine how frustrated I was. I looked at my fellow chappati-rollers. Our eyes met. And we knew. We knew what had to be (not) done. So on that day, if any of you did happen to see bird-feet marks on your food and dismissed it as an after-effect of too much field-work under the sun, I apologise.
In the evening, we waited and waited in vain for the principal of JSM college to turn up. Other volunteers played dumb charades while we cooked dinner. There wasn't any vilager's activity either. Dinner was Sambhar Chaawal along with a surprise item - 'Jungle mein Mangal' (read: some paneer salad). Actually in the evening while making tea, the milk got spoilt and so we made paneer which obviously led to a debate as to what we could do with so less paneer and concluded with strictly one spoon of salad per volunter. Yeah, we were pretty much a step away from jail-food. Anyways, the name was suggested by Ira Jhangiani who has since then moved on in life to attend graduate school and what not.
Volunteer activity tonight was to prepare a one-act-play-with-a-social-message. I should probably mention that I played a Eunuch
*. The plays were funny and did little to improve our acting skills. Needless to say, at bedtime, Karishma and I laughed endlessly for no reason. Forgot to add: Mudita Dixit and JP left sometime during the day. <rejoice!>
Editor's Note: The following lines may er....aah.. seem a bit filmy. What must be kept in mind that the author was a young and inexperienced writer then (not that much has changed). The literature could obviously have been altered but that would have defeated the purpose of showcasing original work. Digs at the author will not be tolerated beyond a certain extent.
Lesson for today:(i) When you're in a group, anything's possible. All of us in the cooking committee were actually tense about how we would cook because none of us had actually cooked before. But as the compliments came by after every meal, I realised that it was only team work and nothing else that reflected in our effort and nothing else.
(ii) The camp is all about interacting with new people. Until, now I didn't really interact much with people I didn't know at the camp. But today, I befriended these two really beautiful people,
Sumitra and Veena, and all thanks to Rajeev and Karishma who forced us to participate in the one-act-play despite protests from us that we were really tired.
* pronounced as
Yooo-nuck as opposed to
Yeeeooonch as some people do.
