The student messes and eateries of Vijayawada

 

I write this as we end one of the hottest summers in 2024.  I usually lose weight during summers not only because of sweating but also because of lack of appetite – my stomach twists and turns just merely thinking of heat, and a lot of times I just want to skip lunch or have something light and cold.

Now imagine eateries so good that they can revive your appetite or make you look forward to lunch even though its peak summer.

My fate and life has been such that I hate heat and have stayed and worked in some of the hottest places on earth. One of those was Vijayawada where I did my college and my first job. Vijayawada was called blaze-wada by the British because of its heat.  The rub being that not only was it hot (around 44 degrees C) it was also humid thanks to being on the banks of the krishna river. It had a lot of hills too which absorbed the heat during the day andreleased it during the night. We knew because our first house (during my college days) was  just at the bottom of a hill and nights were equally unrelentingly swelteringly hot.

My parents moved to tiruppur when he was transferred, leaving their three sons in Vijayawada.  We brothers moved to a small flat organised by my dad and we had two other room mates. Even though my parents had left implements like fridge a small kerosene stove etc. we never used them. We didn’t even employ a maid.  We always and only ate at eateries outside.

And while restaurants were tiring – you really cant eat at any udipi restaurant for three days in a row, no really – be it the best one in Matunga, Chennai or Bangalore. Which is how we discovered students messes.

Now this belt in the Krishna district – Guntur, Vijayawada etc. were also known as student towns where a lot of educational institutions as well as coaching institutes had sprung up. So a lot of students from the interiors and neighbouring towns would come and stay in makeshift accommodation hostel or rent a room for a year or two in preparation of entrance exams like medical, IIT, engineering etc.

This in turn created an ecosystem of students messes.  Most of these students didn’t have cooking facilities and the hostels also didn’t provide much, so there were enterprising households that started catering to these for lunch or dinner.  The big difference here was that this was not the industrial cooking done by restaurants but instead was home cooked food, made by the couple and and their servants. We thus got both health and taste from this food.

I initially got a little uncomfortable when we first started eating mess food as they never appeared like a hotel or restaurant but instead were homes. So, we usually sat down on the floor on a mat, in a row and the food would be served. Very rarely would there be a house with a table and chair.

There were so many, the one I liked most was a small hut outside and opposite the PB Siddhartha college. There were many more in that area that I have forgotten. But this one was the best and people figured out because it became real popular and was super crowded.

To know how popular this was – just imagine for lunch there we had to walk nearly a kilo meter in the hot afternoon sun to this mess (did I say Vijayawada was super hot?). And inspite of being super sweaty and tired, the food would not only be greatly tasty but also revive us.

This mess was special because he didn’t use steel plates or banana leaves but instead leaves made from a plant that produced circular leaves, and serve food on that. The plates I think gave a special flavour.

Each day he would make a special pachadi – chutney that was freshly ground and my mouth waters as I write this. Typically this would change day to day, but the common factor was that this was always tangy. I have earlier written about Andhra food in my blog, being the only cuisine in India that can produce like ‘00s of different variants of tanginess that no other cuisine IMHO does.

So normally we would immediately mix this with rice when served – which was served in bailful using a plate from a big vessel by the man who ran the mess. After this there would be some curry and of course a tangy spicy rasam, maybe sambar and usually pappu (or dal). In all I think we invariably ate like two to three servings or courses of rice.

Why I also liked the mess was that in this simple fare if I remember right (perhaps because oil was expensive) it was quite rare that he would make something deepfried like the most popular curries in Andhra meals are where peanuts or a small vegetable is deepfried like in Chinese Manchurian.  Even on occasion when he did, it wasn’t the most dominant curry.  Instead if I remember right, this mess was always full of flavour and vegetables. If I visited this mess only a few days in a week, I would have eaten at least six different vegetables in addition to different grains.

There were other messes around Vijayawada that I visited occasionally if I happened to be in that part of town and one of those in the circle would pull us in. On one occasion we were in a remote part of Vijayawada and my brother says its time for lunch lets visit this guy who makes great food. This was like a very closely guarded secret and not exactly a publicly open mess unlike others. So we visited this part of town which had all those art deco buildings and jam packed streets of houses with no compound trees like Ulsoor in Bangalore. My brother rings the bell of a house and speaks to the man of the house in Telugu asking if lunch will be served. I can see the man of the house who looks like a temple priest, a pujari with marks on his forehead an body after he’s completed the prayers, and in his mundu/dhoti. He recognises my brother and says he is willing to serve us food as there are only two of us. We go in and sit on a small table he has for customers (but not more than 3-4 places to serve on the table, and the house is super cramped. He keeps going to the kitchen which seems to be many rooms inside, and bringing out small vessels of different curries to serve us. It is clear this is a small operation only to handle not more than I think maybe 5-6 additional guests, and may not be his main occupation – which I think was doing religious ceremonies. But we were lucky he was at home and cooked food. This food was quite different as it was spare, had the mildest flavours and seemed light and superhealthy. I think also there were not many courses and got over real fast, but we enjoyed it immensely and a very different experience from the regular students messes that I ate at.

The other regular ones I remember are a makeshift small tents which served food. There was one opposite my house which made food on the roadside and had put a small canopy and had benches and one or two small stools, and used to make the most awesome idlis – this was their staple fare, and think the only food they prepared, but they always got it awesomely right. It was opposite our office and we usually had breakfast there before we went up to office. Other was at the end of the same road which offered more variety especially dosas. The difference between them and the hotels were clear because you could eat many dosas which were light llike home made dosas normally are and didn’t have that filling up like quality like industrial dosa dough used in restaurants does.

The one which I remember very specially has a nice history to it – it was open when the rest of the messes had shut down. Yes none of the publicly known messes were open at this time and let me tell you why.

One morning my elder brother who was doing his MBA at Nagarjuna university but spent most of his days at our apartment here and not at the university hostel, woke me up. Our parents had left a TV which received Doordarshan (cable had started but was available in only a few neighbourhoods and those days it was seen as an indulgent luxury, so we didn’t have it). Anyways he woke me up in the morning and tells me Rajiv Gandhi has been assassinated.  The news announcement on the national channel doesn’t give much details but the second item after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination is “Vijayawada is under curfew”. Yes Vijayawada made it to the national news and there’s a reason for that.   About a year back one of the local politician leaders who was doing a hunger fast dharna on the road side had been assassinated which led to riots in Vijayawada.  When this had happened we were staying with our parents and I walked up to the terrace and it was like watching what we’d read about the partition and the delhi riots.  The place where the riots were taking place were nearly 10 kms from where we stayed but we could see thickplumes of smoke coming up and loud explosions (or gun shots) and we were scared AF.   The businessmen in that central street where all the shops had been looted and set on fire decided not to rebuild the shops as a reminder and whenever we visited that area we would see these decrepit, burnt buildings in shambles kind of like what we’d seen in photos of Hiroshima after the bomb, or air raids during WWII.

Anyway coming back to the morning of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, the news was that Vijayawada was under curfew with section 144 imposed, but more scarily the CRPF had been deployed in the city with shoot at sight orders.  (Strangely both our roommates were not to be seen – it is amazing how information was shared in the era before mobile phones, and we didn’t even have a landline – but both were not to be seen, and they hadn’t bothered informing us).

The pressing concern was that we didn’t know how to cook and hadn’t stored any ingredients but none of the outlets we normally depended on were open, as the shoot-at-sight orders seemed to be serious. Strange that what we take for granted disappears and is unavailable and therefore nothing is certain in life.

We hadn’t been feeling hungry.  There was a young boy who knocked on our door and I couldn’t identify him. He was the younger brother of one of my elder brother’s friends. My elder brother had a huge as in a humongous circle of friends, the best part being they were from every social class – from the hovels to the rich.  So this boy was the younger brother of a friend who had joined the air force as a young cadet as he couldn’t afford college or higher education. So he’d called up his family (they stayed in a shack in a hovel nearby and I think he knew the STD booth guy). Strangely he thought about us as we were a bachelor pad and he knew how useless all the three brothers were when it came to cooking. His younger brother walked in with a steel vessel that had piping hot upma and he narrated this. We were both touched as well as embarrassed and concerned. After eating the breakfast we gave him a nice shouting asking him not to get any more food and definitely not step outside home as there were shoot at sight orders. We would manage somehow so please don’t worry about us. (Its hard to imagine how now with mobile apps, delivery services,packed foods, instant ready-to-cook, ready-to-serve foods – this simply wouldn’t have happened. In fact we would have loaded the fridge with foods to the brim today – unlike the fridge which was bare at that time.)

What to do? We were monitoring the news and there was no let up. When we saw outside the window of our fourth floor apartment we could see jeeps of CRPF with their jawans holding guns doing the rounds regularly and definitely didn’t want to step out.

Suddenly the bell rang and in walked my colleague from office (yes I was working while my elder and younger brother were both studying in college).  He also was concerned about us.  He told us that the best thing to do was go to Eluru where he was from for a few days – as all offices would be closed. He was resourceful and would hitch a ride with a lorry or truck walah. But before he left he wanted to help us out. So he says let me take you to a secret mess which will be open now. There was no way of knowing as there were no phones, nothing, but we had to take a chance, so we stepped out and he asked to stay close to him. We walked in the byelanes in the sun and went into those narrow by passes between buildings, where the jeeps of the CRPF were unlikely to come through. We then started walking up the slums/ hovels in one of the closest hills (Vijayawada had a lot of hills) – strangely I don’t remember many people milling about – most doors and windows were shut. We walked up narrow paths given how cramped houses were, and he finally knocked on one of the doors. The guy opened the door, and there was barely any discussion. So my colleague and us three brothers sat down and had a meal. We walked back to our apartment and my colleague left.

I think later on it was easier and they let up the curfew and we managed the next day onwards. But that morning and lunch was crucial. 

I am sure this has changed dramatically and the food scene is very very different. But for me, Vijayawada’s most remarkable food memory is something that might not be accessible to all visitors and I am not sure most of where I ate even exist now (the property market of Vijayawada was the most overheated one in the last few decades). But I am grateful for these messes that provided sustenance and care to us, at an affordable price and also looked out for us. This is something none of the hotels, restaurants and regular food outlets could do.