When it comes to the free food which was given on a daily basis, I assumed that it would be the cheapest and simplest of grub. It’s not as if we were currently under pressure to donate anything. Here they could clearly just end up losing money. I did joke around with friends and family saying that I hope they had a buffet and that I could eat as much as I wanted. This was an absurd suggestion but humorous and ideal to consider. It turns out that it wasn’t such a crazy mental hope. We did actually have the ability to eat as much food as our stomachs’ could handle. It was unlimited AND delicious. Morning time and we would have fresh mangoes, apples or pomegranate with porridge, idly, and a special Indian dish which is a strange yet delicious in-between of couscous and finely cut potato.  The lunch consisted of a traditional Indian thali, which is rice with a mixture of different vegetable and curry sauces, some curd and chapatti to dip and enjoy.  This is the classic meal which I learnt to perfect eating with my hand (due to the fact that most cheap dingy restaurants don’t actually own cutlery). However, most of the girls whom I sat with in the dining room were either Westerners or living in Bangalore (a more sophisticated and cosmopolitan part of India) and so I believe I was only one of three who would actually be eating with their own body cutlery. Though I had started it and it was quite some time which passed before I noticed this, so I decided to continue eating this way throughout the rest of the time I was to spend in the premises.

The dinner ‘snack’ was my favourite of them all. There were always two bowls consistently placed on the table; one containing puffed rice with peanuts, the other a potato rice with peanuts. I would get a mixture of the two and ensure they were separately mixed thoroughly so that the salt from the peanuts were spread among the meal. I would then slowly and mindfully remove the peanuts and eat them one by one, starting with the potato rice and finishing with the puffed rice. The puffed rice was my favourite, which I would always end up going for seconds, thirds and sometimes fourths. I decided to take full advantage of this ‘snack’ and demolish any slight chance of hunger for the rest of the day. The puffed rice became my salted popcorn substitute which was strange given the fact that it gave me the biggest remembrance and childhood memories of eating Rice Krispies except with salt rather than sugar. It brought back such lovely memories that I even decided to place my spoon into my cup of warm milk, sprinkle some salted puffed rice on top and eat it like a cereal. Delicious!

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