My Name Was on the Board. My Food Was Already Gone.

Our smallest kitchen: a hidden kettle, a corner, and us.

The kettle had to stay in the corner.

There was a plug there, and a bit of wall that gave us somewhere to hide from the cameras. We weren’t allowed to cook in our rooms, so this little corner became our kitchen.

At night, we made Maggi there and ate it together.

We had proper meals. We had a dining routine. We also had absolutely no intention of letting those things come between us and a kettle full of noodles.

That probably tells you something about our boys’ hostel.

But to explain how we got to the secret Maggi, I should start with the milk.

A delivery from home. For somebody. Technically.

Every morning, the school bus came along the route from home. Our parents would send bottles of milk with it, and the bottles would be handed over to the warden.

Sometimes, something better arrived: food from home. A special snack. The kind of thing you couldn’t get in our little school canteen.

The warden would write the student’s name on the board, along with whatever had come for them. Everything was kept together in a room.

A sensible system, you might think.

Parents send something. Student sees their name. Student collects it.

There was just one small detail: anybody could pick it up.

There wasn’t a strict handover where you had to prove that the bottle or packet belonged to you. It was all there, collectively, waiting.

And we were schoolboys with a small canteen and a very strong interest in other people’s snacks.

That board became essential reading.

Your name. Our snacks.

If we got back to the hostel early, we checked the board.

Somebody’s family had sent something special? Excellent news.

We picked it up, went straight to our rooms, and ate it. The person whose name was on the board didn’t necessarily feature in this process.

The board told you who the food was meant for. It did not tell you who was going to eat it.

I wish I could describe myself as the innocent boy who always waited politely for his own things.

I was checking that board too.

Food from somebody else’s home, a room full of friends, and something good to eat—sometimes that was enough to make the afternoon.

And sometimes, of course, it was your own delivery that everybody else found interesting. That was hostel life. You couldn’t enjoy the system only when it worked in your favour.

Our parents were sending little pieces of home to us. We were doing a remarkably efficient job of distributing them around the hostel.

Your name on the board. Everybody’s interest in the packet.

Four boys. Four almirahs. One everyone trusted.

Sharing didn’t end with food. We wore each other’s clothes too.

Back then, we were just getting interested in fashion. Somebody had a good shirt? Naturally, other people wanted to wear it.

Whose shirt it was and who was currently wearing it could be two completely different questions.

It wasn’t a big deal to us. Borrowing clothes was part of living together. Keeping your best things available when you wanted them, however, required some planning.

There were four students in my room and four almirahs. Three had the usual kundi—the latch you secured with a lock. One had an internal lock.

The one with the internal lock was the cupboard we trusted with the good stuff.

Good clothes went in there. Good food went in there.

The ordinary clothes and everyday food could stay in the others.

We were happy to share. We also understood the value of protecting a particularly good shirt or something worth saving for later.

Both things could be true.

The room had four cupboards, but everybody knew which one mattered.

Four roommates. Shared shirts. One cupboard for the good stuff.

Our group chat was an actual room.

We didn’t have personal mobile phones at all.

Every weekend, on either Saturday or Sunday, the warden gave us the school phones so we could call our families.

Five to ten minutes. That was your window.

Enough for a quick conversation with home. Or, if you chose, a call to someone else.

Whoever you wanted to talk to, you had to decide where those few minutes were going.

During the rest of the week, if you wanted to spend time with your friends, you sat with your friends.

So we did.

We crowded into a room, talked, gossiped, teased each other, played around, and enjoyed ourselves.

There was always somebody to talk to. Somebody to bother. Somebody ready to make a joke at your expense.

You could become the evening’s entertainment without volunteering.

There wasn’t a need to organise a catch-up. We lived together. A perfectly ordinary afternoon could turn into everyone sitting around and talking for ages.

At the time, this was simply what we did.

Looking back, it’s one of the things I remember most fondly.

The timetable, and everything we fitted around it.

Our days had a routine.

After school came refreshments, then time on the ground. Football, volleyball, cricket—there was plenty to keep us occupied. Then PT, dinner, and studying in the separate study room.

That was the official shape of the day.

But when I think about the hostel now, I remember all the things that happened inside that routine: checking the board, borrowing clothes, gathering in somebody’s room, teasing friends.

There was a girls’ hostel beside ours too, but it was separate. These are memories from our boys’ hostel, where even a packet of food arriving from home could become an event.

The school gave us a timetable. We filled the gaps.

Which brings me back to that kettle.

The smallest kitchen in the hostel.

Kettles weren’t allowed in our rooms.

We brought them from home anyway.

We sneaked them in and kept them hidden. Having one was only half the problem. There were cameras in the rooms, so we couldn’t just stand in the open and start cooking.

That corner near the wall, with its plug, was useful for a reason.

We plugged in the kettle there and made Maggi at night.

After all the schoolwork, sports, PT, dinner, and studying, we still had enthusiasm left for secret noodles.

Of course we did.

It was food we wanted, made somewhere we weren’t supposed to make it, with friends who were equally interested in the result. A very convincing combination.

For all the excitement we gave it, the setup was tiny:

A hidden kettle. A corner. Some Maggi. And us.

That was enough.

Just a glimpse.

When I say I miss those days, this is the sort of thing I mean.

Milk bottles arriving on the bus. A name on the board and food that might already be gone.

A shirt making its way around the room. One almirah holding the things we actually wanted to keep safe.

Friends sitting together with nowhere else they needed to be for a while.

And Maggi in a corner that had somehow become our kitchen.

It was messy, funny, and very ordinary to us then. Now, even these small things feel worth writing down.

This is only a small glimpse of my school hostel days. There’s a lot more to tell.

The one big AC room we all had to share in summer. Hiding in the washrooms to escape morning PT. Five hours in the study room where laughing was not an option. And birthdays, which nobody survived with dignity.

More memories. More nonsense. That’s for the next chapters.