Being an out-station student isn’t easy, especially when it comes to compromising on food. Let us look at the role the college canteen plays in a student’s life.
Good food is probably on the top in the wish-list of all university students. However, most of the students don’t have access to the heart warming home-cooked meals. After a long and exhausting day of sleeping during lectures and wrangling in society meetings, we all long for comforting meals. But, where does one find them?
After discussing about this issue with lots of students at a personal level, I found out that most students resort to the college canteen for their meals. A very small proportion actually carried lunchboxes. Even the hostellers and PG-dwellers prefer the canteen over their promised, paid meals.
“Being a PG student, the lunch that I get is usually iced coffee or bread butter everyday. Although I don’t prefer eating food from canteen daily but I have to rely on it. If I were a Delhi student, I would never consider food from canteen. Also being a PG student, I am broke more than half of the time so it’s real struggle deciding what to do about lunch. So although I don’t love canteen food, but it has become my lunch everyday,” says Avni Dhawan, student of Kamla Nehru College.
Deewanshi Vats, a resident of the Under Graduate Hostel For Girls (UGHG) says, “Though we have a 4 meal package in a day, the quality of food is pathetic. You literally have to search for dal in dal which is just nothing but water! We don’t get nutrient rich food like sprouts and dry lentils at all; also no curd! Salad (only cucumber) provided is usually stale. Quality of rice and other vegetables is really low.”
With the poor quality of meals provided, most students have no choice left but to fall back on the canteen food. This affects them both financially and health-wise. Spending good proportions of monthly pocket-money on unhealthy, and often not very tasty food is not the ideal preference of any student. This is where students cherish home-cooked meals packed in lunch boxes the most.
“One thing you miss more than home is homemade food! It’s quite understandable that you cannot get the same ‘ghar ke khana ka taste’ when you move to a different city; and for a while will enjoy eating fancy food and junk, but there is this saturation point where you will miss basic daal and roti and then no other food will be able to satisfy your tummy!” commented an out-station student of Daulat Ram College.
It truly becomes a sorry state of affairs for the outstation students when it comes to the matters of food. But there is one ray of hope for all the outstation students. With the end of the semester around the corner, one can comfort themselves with the loving thought of returning back to home after the exams are over and enjoy the warmth of those homely meals to their hearts’ fullest content. It almost seems like the delayed gratification, worth all the while.
Feature Image Credits: The Outlook
Aditi Gutgutia
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