Handful insights..!!!: Pizza ‘hut’ without Pizza..!!!

It is a work of non-fiction and while reading, please tolerate the anguish on me for writing this piece of ___..! I m sorry, I can’t help it..!!

When I mention ‘hut’, it’s not a fancy ‘pizza hut’ where one can add few pounds of flesh around ones waist. It is about a local hut which can be found in south India mostly in rural places where the menu is restricted and follows strict timings unlike Kentucky. It can suffocate if being outnumbered, when one is ready to occupy every space possible inside it by leaving the cash box table, T.V which is the only noiseless and plays reasonable part (not in peak times), refrigerator which contains year old chutneys and rusty coke bottles. By leaving above places to their misery it can accumulate 30 members when closely packed. We often face rusty nails clamped onto the supporting woods where the whole hut stands. The purpose of nails is not served most of the times as the customer feels that his canines are strong enough than a opener of a bottle and the other reason in he is lazy enough to not move his ass while watching the bloody disguise show on T.V.

Apart from customers, the ‘hut’ consists of a guy who counts the bill and one who serves and the aged person who always smoke and feels going away from cash box in a greatest sin in his life and the lady who do things and we failed to understand ‘why she is doing?’ along with two kids and a couple of hens which reminds us every time we went in that it too can dump wastes from her body like humans and they differ with us in not bothering about the publicity. Their living place too attached to this hut and it is the next segment of the hut.

Many people like Vivek, Likith and sandeep haven’t visited such huts in our pre-life of GMRIT, and assuming the reason that air dragged us towards it or the hostel food is keeping its distance to us by pushing towards hut. We have 3000 people overall, by leaving sathis, pathis and girls, it comes to 1000. I strongly feel that all these thousand members visited the hut once in the year and gets habituated it. Some are forcibly invited to it like me and gets attached to it like one does to drug. Surely they are making a fortune out of it.

I remembered one day in my second year of graduation: there were the days we three visit our hut for breakfast, dinner and snacks. After getting attendance at the canteen for the first two hours by eating every possible shittiest piece they make, we decided to take mob of 6 to 8 of our friends to our prestigious hut for lunch. Therefore, Vivek ordered for all the 8 members although the menu is restricted, ‘this guy Vivek will do something such that they even cook their heart and kidneys and serve us as gratitude.’ Assuming that we haven’t eaten any such till now and he ordered 50 idli, 50 dhosa and 50 puri. (Vivek is fascinated to idli, me to puri, and it’s literally wastage of space to talk about Likith favourite food as he eats anything forgetting whether it is eatable or not). So we can map Likith to dosa as he gave privilege to assume any dish as his favourite.

What happened is we called that hut guy and gave order at 11 A.M. As usual Vivek and I skipped classes, even though we are interested to attend but nature won’t allow us to sit by bringing something while going to class. We along with our friends and faculty habituated to our absence only in class. As the dinner time is approaching, we waited for Likith and our friends and there came the crises: Our mob is not interested in coming leaving we three behind and we started walking towards it by managing security (vivek..!!!!) and entered the hut like the three musketeers who are ready to take out the whole clan of army (here it is idli, dosa and puri) and started our task by not considering the number of items we have ordered. We have observed the hut guys anxiety and tension that order may waste (as 3 persons to 150 items, the ratio doesn’t make sense to him I guess). We haven’t considered his anxiety and started consuming slowly and the slow pace is picking up and consuming heavily without much focus on what and how we are eating, who are the people staring at us and not minding their inner comments “who the hell are those three dinos??” This guy Likith is unbeatable; nothing can stand in his way..!! Slowly the number of items started decreasing with our rage. I guess some people even left during this whole process feeling it as a symbol of extinction of human race and humanity. We stayed there for nearly 45 min. and the hut guy prevented the other orders, he wanted to witness the whole act going on there...!! and yes..! We successfully completed almost everything and left some as a gesture of modesty. While the hut guy signalled us to not to bother about left over’s, we returned our plates to bin and cleaned our hands with a little dissatisfaction.

The counter guy genuinely counted the left over items in the bowls rather counting how many we ate. He may felt that math is easy by calculating like this. The whole amount summed up and dedicated to Viveks account (as he maintains a debt account and used to clear whenever the cash inflows are high..!! merci heavens for sending such a gracious kid). Everything went straight apart from the whole hut people witnessing this glorious event, daily customer’s astonishment (2 to 3 flies may get inside their mouth). Some people astonished, some surprised, some feared for extinction, some cursed, some regretted, some wondered. But we three walked normally as usually by cruising and laughing at everything and behaved like nothing strange happened.

The whole thing went quite apart from one spot. Right from our phone call to summing amount was witnessed by my local friend. He never mentioned about this seriously in that year, but I dunno what happened to him. Lately, he started mentioning and narrating the whole incident whenever, wherever we meet without considering the situation, time and place leaving me no other option apart to keep my mouth shut and enjoy the feeling of embarrassment while laughing along with their aaws..!!!!.

After my graduation, just a day before this post, we local mates went to some place to eat and reminding all such pretty things and he suddenly asked the whole mob to sit quite and I was eagerly waiting what made his look this much anxious and waited along with others.

He started narrating “In our second year while I was sitting in the hut, the hut guy got a call from someone asking for a bulk order of 50 idlis, 50 puris, 50 dosa, and we thought our hut is also developed and hosting parties. Then they entered, these three brats Vivek, Likith and sandeep, they ate everything without leaving anything to us apart from the leftovers: couple of puris and dosa ..!!!”

I gave a mild nod of acceptance and tried explaining the reason for our beasty performance that day, but restrained the thought as they are in no mood to listen and started mocking me. The entire mob knew about the crazy hut experience previously but they all behaved and laughed feeling it still fresh. I thought I may carry one or two dead bodies if they laugh a little more...!!!! huh..!!! naive morons...!!!

P.S: Nothing to say apart from nostalgic and mentioning you two..!! Vivek and Likith..!!