12 Months 12 Adventures Part 4: Hunger Games

April 2015

So, because the month before this was the “do-the-project-month”, so let’s just call this one “finish-the-project-month”! April was merrier than March in a lot of ways, especially because Akanksha and I were winding up our final-year project, getting good results (ones that we could publish in a scientific journal), writing reports and giving presentations about our progress. We had an enjoyable time even though we gave our sweat and blood into it. We had (scientifically) proved that plant roots can naturally clean water. Our professors loved the work we’d done. But for Akanksha and me, it was not the project that got us closer. Even though we had known each other for some years, we discovered that our “love for food” and the amount of food we can consume could humiliate the biggest foodies around. Also, I concluded the following about human hunger in general –

1. Hunger is truly psychological. Humans can eat an insane amount of food in one sitting. There are eating competitions around the world to prove this, but I know this first hand. Since the food in the university wasn’t worth walking all the way back from the lab to our rooms, I ate cheap meals from outside the university campus with Akanksha and realized how much I can actually eat. She introduced me to ‘VERY good’ vegetarian food, which is an adjective I never thought I’ll ever use.
2. Hunger depends on the company. The amount of food I consumed with Akanksha was something I would’ve had even thought about eating when I was all by myself. This is because she hogged on great food too. Now picture this: Two 13-inch-pizzas, four servings of garlic bread, four glasses of Pepsi and two servings of salad. This was lunch on a normal day. This would be followed by dessert too.

Selfie with the Professors after the project (April 30, 2015)

Just as I thought the Riviera party was fizzling out, our professors asked us to organize a Thanksgiving Dinner for all teachers and staff who contributed towards its success. It seemed to be a very straightforward task: give out invitations to all university staff, arrange for certificates and mementos for all of them, order dinner for about 600 people in audience and design, sell and release a Riviera 2015 souvenir. It seemed to be a piece of cake at first but proved to be a lot of work in the end. Less than a week before the Thanksgiving, the dinner menu was not decided, souvenir design was not ready, certificates and mementos weren’t ordered and all the invitations were not sent out. The dinner was a huge success even though it was a bit of a hustle towards the end.

The ‘very’ expensive dinner at the Riviera Thanksgiving (April 16, 2015)

Towards the end of April, I visited my cousin brother (Rony) and his family in Bangalore. It was three days of home cooked food, swimming pools and proper family time. It was the last of the many times I had gone to his place for some amazing Bengali-style prawn biriyani. And on the day after I came back from Bangalore, the pre-final year batch of my church group in VIT gave us (the graduating batch) a beautiful farewell. It included a small get-together at Emmanuel Sir’s house, followed with lunch, some small games and a round of sharing and thanksgiving. It was a beautiful gesture from their side as they continued a long tradition and made it their own. I shared to them how grateful I was to the church and the people there, and how much had I learned in the four years I was associated with them. My last trip and the expressions of gratitude and goodbyes by the juniors got me into a mode that made me think and reminisce. Throughout the previous months, even though I had a blast, I didn’t think that it was ever gonna end. I was excited about leaving Vellore and start working in India’s largest construction company. I had the idea that my best friends will be there, around me for the rest of my life. I thought that I had the option of eating cheap food outside the main gate every single day with Akanksha. I didn’t think that the project will ever end. I didn’t think that in a matter of weeks, I was gonna be all alone in the world (yet again, metaphorically). That evening, it hit me. It hit me, that I was really leaving the place I had called home for four years. I couldn’t sleep that night.

Me, Rony Bhaiya and Joyce (April 22, 2015)

This was Part 4. Links to the rest: 1, 2, 3. 
Read Part 5 HERE.