A short lunch break

There was this kid back in high school. He was the only one in our group of 8 that used to carry a ‘short break’ (I mean that lame 10 minutes break that we got in school that seemed to serve no apparent purpose). The rest of us ate our lunch in the short break and played terrace football in the lunch break. It came as no surprise then that this kid would turn up for the last 5 minutes of the football game in the lunch hour and end up being the goal keeper.

I say this for a couple of reasons. If you look back at school days, there were always these few odd people whose lunch habits were bewildering and fascinating.

So this kid that I mentioned earlier (the short break kid) – on one particular day opened his box for the short break. There were potato chips in it. But there was chocolate cream sticking on the walls of the box. We wondered how chocolate cream came out of salt chips. And then he clarified that he had got a chocolate pastry the previous day.

There was this other kid whose Mum used to pack 2 rotis in the first tiifin box, 2 rotis in the middle tiffin box and yummy Ladies Finger (pun intended) in the third dabba. The chap would munch up the 4 rotis dry and run it down with water in ten minutes of the short break. In the lunch break he would eat the ladies finger palya.Whoa! Call it a strategy.

Kid number 3 used to bring one sweet, one pastry and ONE CHIP for short break. And a spoon to eat them with. Lol!

But my pick of the lot is the kid number 4. Kid no.4’s mom used to pack the three-storeyed-tiffin-carrier and send it by lunch time through the ‘Automan’. This kid would pick up his basket and run up to the class and lay it out on his table. And this is what he found on some days: Top box- Tomato rice. Middle Box- Tomato rice. Last Box- Tomato Rice. And he would wipe them all clean without complaining! There’s a winner.

Well, as for the rest us, we played terrace football.