Panneer Butter Masala!!!

I had applied for admission to the M.Tech programme at IIT Kharagpur and was called for counseling in the month of May, 2006. I was very pleased when I saw the reservation chart at Madras Central on a bright Wednesday morning. The ticket to Kharagpur fthat had been booked in a two tier A.C compartment had been upgraded to first A.C due to a dearth of seats in the former. I was all alone and learnt a little while later, that the only other passenger who had a seat reserved in that cabin would board the train at Vishakapatnam – a healthy twelve hours of seclusion. So, there I was, trying to derive the best from my only pastime on the train – a collection of novels by R.K.Narayan. I should admit that I have never read like that before and was amazed at how a little loneliness could cause such changes in me. The tinted glass permitted little visibility and I was longing to get out from that cabin and look at the vast expanse of greenery that characterized the route. I was happy for one other reason, in the entire trip. I was able to regain the little fluency I had, in conversing in Hindi, though my accent would deny me the recognition deserving of a person who spoke the language as his mother tongue. Then started the real test – something that gave me a taste of hell on earth.

I ordered for lunch to be served in my cabin. I asked the guy who came to take the order, for the menu. He poured out a list of items, of which only one was vegetarian. All the rest had some contribution from an unlucky member of a poultry farm. I had but few things to choose from and the order was made – fried-rice and panneer butter masala. I was left to be myself for about three hours after placing the order. This was punctuated by reading, a series of messages to my dad and of course, my favorite afternoon siesta. The server brought the “food” in. I was famished by then and my mouth watered at the thought of panneer. I opened the food and found to my astonishment, that I still had to learn a lot of lessons in economics. Fried-rice was only “fried” rice and there was no sight of any vegetable amidst that. I hunted for a vegetable and finally succeeded in finding a small pea struggling for dear life amidst a cluster of coriander leaves. I was happy at the small game of treasure hunt that the Indian Railways offered to its elite passengers. As if all this was not enough, I opened the other box that was said to contain the side dish – panneer butter masala. And lo! It stood before me in all grandeur and in a color that would put the setting sun to shame. I repented for not having taken sunglasses with me. In that viscous, red, ‘gravy’, was a solitary piece of something close to panneer, in utter confusion in opting between exosmosis and endosmosis. It took more time to digest the thought that I had eaten that thing completely, than digesting the actual food itself. But it was done and I was happy that I was vegetarian because the very thought that I should have taken non-vegetarian dishes of such high quality put a population of butterflies in my stomach.