Not all colleges have great canteens but that doesn’t stop the students from keeping the conversation going.
They say canteens are the hangout areas where all students spend the best part of their college lives. Well, I would know about this good life only if I would have got to experience it! Sadly my college didn’t have a ‘canteen’ or a ‘hangout spot’, not even a small bench to sit on! But does that mean I didn’t enjoy my college life? Hardly true!
I studied in M.M.K College of Commerce and Economics, Bandra West, Mumbai (full name: Mithibai Motiram Kundnani College) more popularly known as the one behind National College or the one next to TSEC. So basically, the college is a small society-type building between Nationals and TSEC and has no space to call its own. The institution does own a canteen but it’s more like a makeshift joint where there are few tables scattered around with a green parapet covering the top. We called it our very own Mars planet!
I studied in M.M.K for five years including junior college but not a single great moment was spent in the so-called canteen. In fact my friends and I used to sit around National College’s canteen just to have a place to sit around. The other usual spots were Ravi’s Chinese which was right outside the building and Los (Loved Ones) which was around the corner and that’s where we shared our awesome moments. During junior college, McDonalds served as my second home and I confess I gave more attendance to my French fries than studying French. But in all of this do you think I missed sitting with a group of friends in a coveted spot like the ‘Canteen’? The answer is no.
Canteens are known to be the haven for lovers to spend quality time with college crushes, for the popular kids to make new fans and also for those nerdy ones to show off how much they scored in latest tests. Bleh! But my friends and I did all this in our usual spots and never let the phenomena of canteen affect us. True, when I first joined in I too like the rest of the newbies cribbed about the lack of space and felt awkward standing around Ravi’s stove while he cooked Chinese but slowly we got more lost in our conversations than surroundings. And slowly that became our very own canteen.
Related Tags: canteen diaries, college life, M.M.K College of Commerce and Economics, National College, TSEC, Bandra, McDonalds, canteen life, Ravis Chinese, Loved Ones, hangout spots, student life, students
