I was always given a packed lunch from home. Boiled eggs, bread, noodles… that sort of thing. When the lunch bell rang, all the girls would rush towards the canteen, and I often joined them. Who wants to eat home-cooked food every day? I’d run with them but never bought anything because I didn’t have any money.
In 1995, Fakruddin the cook sold singara for 1 rupee and dal puri for 1 rupee. By 1997, singara was 2 rupees and samucha was 3 rupees. Occasionally, after a lot of begging, I’d get 1 or 2 rupees from my dad.
After school, the girls in the school bus would buy 1 rupee worth of am sattwa, amra, 1 rupee worth of shon papdi, and a 25-paisa pickle. I didn’t have any money, but I really wanted to eat those things too. My parents never understood. How could they? In my 10 years of school, I doubt they even went to school with me for 10 days.
Back then, a Coke ice cream (lolly) was just 5 taka. I had to save up for weeks to buy one. Oh, how I craved that orange lolly and Coke ice cream! Even when I didn’t have money for school tiffin… When I started college, my mom gave me 5 taka every day… For 5 taka, they used to sell a small piece of bread with a tiny bit of kebab cooked on a tawa in the canteen. That kebab-paratha was my favorite food. We would push through the crowd to buy our tiffin from the Vicarunnisa canteen. Tiffin time was only 20 minutes, but the canteen was on the other side of the field. It took 25 minutes just to push through the crowd and buy tiffin… I would somehow gulp it down and rush to class!
Fakruddin baburchi used to sell biryani every Sunday. A whole box of biryani was only 20 taka! Can you imagine??
Every Sunday, as soon as the tiffin bell rang, the classrooms would be filled with the aroma of biryani! Oh, how I wished I could eat it! But I could never bring myself to ask my parents for 20 taka.
20 taka! Was it even possible? The girls who ate biryani on Sundays with 20 taka… We, the ones who couldn’t afford it at Vicarunnisa, thought of them as princesses! We didn’t know how wealthy they were!
In 1995, I was in class one, and I attended day shift. One afternoon, as soon as I entered the school, I heard that there would be no assembly today. Everyone had to stay in their classrooms. A funeral prayer would be held on the field. For whom? For Fakhruddin, the cook of the Vikarunnisa Noon School and College canteen. Standing in our classroom, we paid our respects to Fakhruddin’s body, which was laid out on the field. Soon after, the sky turned dark, and a heavy downpour began.
At that time, I used to wonder when I would become a princess and when I could save twenty taka to buy a whole packet of biryani on a Sunday.
Now, I wonder, thirty years later, what is the price of a twenty taka packet of biryani made by Fakhruddin at the Vikarunnisa canteen? Is it still possible to get biryani every Sunday during tiffin time?
