Mirror Magazine

Mirror Magazine

Added flavour
One packet of rice. Six girls. Two spoons, a fork and three hands dig into the packet. Each person gets a total of three mouthfuls. If you’ve been to school you’ve been through this. That’s communal eating. Part and parcel of school life.

During the early years of schooling children are not quite comfortable or used to the concept. Very often you find them sitting at their desks, serviettes neatly laid upon the lap, eating their snacks. Some even go to the extent of creating a fortress around the lunch box, with lids, books and pencil boxes. (There’s no saying what will happen if someone spots your grub!) Once the inhibitions start wearing off the sharing begins. Slowly but surely kids start coming up with ways to cross the boundaries.

I remember a time when I tried the hinting tactic. I would go upto someone with toffees and say, “I weee…sh I had some toffees,” hoping that the person would get the drift and offer me some toffees. More often than not this plan failed, leaving me toffee-less and embarrassed. Directly asking the person for a toffee was of course not an option as this would be way too “forward.”

As you get older the ‘sharing concept’ becomes a must, after all you can’t be part of a clique if you don’t share your food. Refusing to share can actually be quite a blow to your social life. Lots of people have had major issues with friends because of their inability to share food. “I once refused to share my drink with a friend,” says 15-year- old Tania, who explained that she has problems with sharing food or drink with people. The friend, according to Tania was more hurt than angry and actually didn’t talk to her for quite awhile. “For me it’s not the hygiene aspect, I’m just not used to it,” she says.

Many people have this kind of problem with sharing, not because they want all their food to themselves but because they find the method of sharing somewhat disgusting. “I can’t bear to eat with a crowd, sharing spoons and straws…” says 16-year-old Shemani. As a result she’s left out of many a feast. “It depends on the crowd you hang out with,” she smiles.

Only a very few people actually have the guts to stick by their feelings, many grudgingly give in for the sake of popularity. Luckily the sharing theory works the other way around as well. Bring a special treat to share at school and voila, you are the star of the day.

Strangely enough taking good food to school may be more of a curse than a blessing. Once you have been noted as the “kid who brings tasty food” you will always be the first to be attacked. At the beginning you are politely asked for a bite of your food and a few days later you have to ask for a bite of your own food! “When my mother used to make pasta, I had to take four boxes of it to school,” laughs Anisha, “having a good cook in the family can be quite a personal loss!”

“Walking into the prefects’ room in my school means sharing your food,” says 17-year-old Asha. Having no choice about sharing can sometimes be rather frustrating, particularly when you are starving.“Once you’re in there, there’s no saying no, so the only solution is to evade the prefects’ room,” she says.

Though the rationale is still in question the result is final: food tastes better in school. Once you are inside those gates you are stuck with whatever the locality has to offer. Maybe its this sheer lack of options that makes you appreciate pretty much anything you get in school.

When that interval bell rings the stampede heads towards the canteen and after minutes of breathless, death defying struggle you end up with a tiny packet of… let’s say chocolate balls, which at that point is the most delectable treat on earth. Irrespective of who actually paid for the food it is an unwritten rule that the buy is for the entire gang. More developed cliques however have systems of splitting the cost to make sure that everyone pays for their share.

The most popular way of dividing food is of course the “one for you, one for me” system. In a more advanced version of this, everyone stands in a circle while one person carefully goes round and round handing out one chocolate ball to each person.

Due credit must be given to management of school canteens for the simply undetectable disguises, which make even the most disgusting food look mouth-watering. A hot dog for instance would on the surface look like a regular hot dog. If you dare to look deeper you’d find that, what you thought was a full sausage is actually one quarter of a sausage. What you thought was a salmon bun is actually a bun filled with onions and a two-inch piece of salmon. Then of course you get the occasional hair or fingernail, or even worse, a fly or two. The strangest part is that once your used to the sorry excuse for food, you actually start liking it and even crave for it.

Does it ever end? I always thought that it was just another one of those things that you pick up in school, but is it? Go to Viharamahadevi Park and you’d find families picnicking Sri Lankan style… sitting around eating together, feeding one another. Go to any educational institute in Sri Lanka and you’ll find yourself reunited with the onion buns and gravy sandwiches. Go to an office and you’d find everybody sitting together during the lunch break, digging into each other’s lunch.

Like it or not communal eating is just another part of the Sri Lankan lifestyle. It brings people closer, makes you more comfortable with others, and is undoubtedly a form of bonding. Luckily most of us have 14 years to get used to the concept.

I guess school does prepare you for the rest of your life… in more ways than one!
* Names have been changed.

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