The old man and the mess

The mention of hostel mess doesn't give me pleasant thoughts, atleast not when the food is concerned. It gives me nightmares even to think of having lunch or dinner from our hostel mess, though there are exceptions some days. But this post is not about how I feel about my hostel mess. It is about an old man in our mess. Since I don't know his name we will call him Mr Hero (since he is the hero of my post). Now our Hero is a mess staff member. As far as I have seen and experienced, he is not into cooking. His expertise lies in arranging washed glasses on all the food tables and to make sure the water jug on all tables is constantly full. So why is he the protagonist of my post? Well here goes.

Hero seemed to be have issues with other fellow staff members. At the rate of atleast 2 fights per day, he makes sure that he covers all the mess members in one week. But though his fights are, in general, not against any one person, he does have a special "liking" to a particular old chap. Let's call him Mr Villain (since he is the enemy of our Hero). He leads the fightback of the remaining mess members against Hero. On days when Hero is on a "date" with Villain, it is a feast for eyes for we students. It's not everyday that one gets to see a proper fight. Once they almost came to blows. If the students had not interfered, we could as well seen a great granfather fight. Never had a chance to see one till now.

Very often when we are having our food, our Hero comes near us, and starts blabbering about things which make anything but sense. If there is an empty glass on the table that no one is using he comes over and shouts

"Yee tumhara glass hei?"
(Is it your glass)

"nehi tho"
(No)

Continues in his loud voice.
"Phir yaha pe kyu hei. Andar kyu nehi rakha?"
(Then why is it here. Why is it not inside.)

PS: Used utensils and glasses are supposed to be deposited at the washing area after we are done with our food.

"muche nehi maloom. Mera nehi hei"
(I don't know. It's not mine)

"Kaha kaha se aate hei log"
(From where all does people come from)

Often it happens that even though mess timings for dinner is till 9 pm, we come five or 10 minutes after 9 pm. So what do we see when we go inside? All the food is over. But not so for our Hero. We see him leaving the mess with a bag full of something. We always had a suspicion that the bag must contain the mess food. In keeping with the supreme human tradition of blaming anyone other than oneselves for one's faults, we find it easier to put the blame on him for the mess food getting over rather than our coming late.

2 days back we were having our dinner in the mess.
Suddenly we heard some noise behind us.
Aha Hero and Villain are at it again. Great, let's see what happens...

Hero takes 2 ladoos from the sweet container and keeps it in his table.

What does our Villain sir do? He snatches those ladoos from Hero's plate and keeps it back in the sweet container.

Hero glares at the Villain. This time he takes 3 ladoos and puts it in his plate.

Villain gives a even bigger glare and snatches it back.

Our Hero being the typical bollywood type, doesn't give in. He stretches his hands to take "his" ladoos back.

This is when Villain jumps into action mode. He just lifts the entire container in his hands and starts running around the mess with our Hero in hot pursuit. Villain knows as long there are ladoos in the container, his life is in "danger" from our Hero. So our Vllainji goes to each table and asks the students to take one ladoo each. The students were more than happy to oblige. Usually we guys have to play hide and seek with the guy who guards the sweets container against anyone taking extra sweets. Today the very guy is begging us to take an extra one. Man, how times change.

Hero keeps following Villain. He will not be satisfied until he got his "heroines". As he keeps following the villain our poor Heroji keeps shouting

"Baaki sab ko 4-5 ladoo de rehe hei, muche ek bhi nehi de raha hei"
(He is giving 4-5 ladoos to everyone, but he's not giving even one to me).

This kept happening for sometime. Villain running around with the sweet container distributing sweets. Hero following him with a heavy heart. We students and other mess members were having a great time seeing this.

Even after giving an extra sweet to all present inside the mess, some sweets were still left.

"Now what?", thought the Villain.

Then someone shouted from among the other mess members
"Ab TV room mei jaake sab ko baato"
(Go to the TV room and start distributing sweets to everyone sitting there)

Our poor Heroji must have been devastated on hearing this. Now whether he really got his ladoos or not, I don't know. But we guys surely are looking forward to the next "encounter".