The One where We dream of Vanilla-Butter Cookies and Plot to Sneakily Eat Brownies.

Quite the spoilt one, I am, I should think. The mess food is pretty damn decent and the different-dessert-with-every-meal scheme they have during the winters is a stroke of fucking genius. Four rasgollas with lunch and four jalebis with dinner? Yes, I see one very happy fatass waddling into the girls' hostel. But you know, their baking is not up to the mark. Their baking, in fact, is non existent. Efforts in this direction are restricted to the buying of crumbly yellow cupcakes with disgusting tutti frutti bits within and oily plastic wrapping without, from local manufacturers, no doubt, who'd be unable to tell their muffins from their mawa kachoris (sidenote - YUM.) Hell, I'd be unable to tell their muffins from their mawa kachoris.

Here, then, is the reason I dream about my mother's sunny yellow vanilla-butter cookies the diameter of my palm and the taste of a hundred happy vacation mornings (and afternoons and evenings and midnight snacks and after-breakfast-but-before-lunch snacks and so forth.)

I could, of course, go down to Uncle Sam's Pizza, the Jodhpuri abode of surprisingly good kimchi and pizzas infused with the delicate taste of cardboard, where, for the princely sum of thirty five rupees they will pack me a slab of THE BEST BROWNIE EVARRRR, which I will hold to my heart and protect with my soul, all the dusty way back to campus.

And which I will sneak quietly into my room, without bringing to the attention of fellow resident hyenas that I have in my possession an edible of the chocolate kind (the smell draws hostelites like blood draws sharks.)

And which I will eat sneakily and quietly, crumble by crumble, nibble by nibble, quiet as the proverbial dead man, on my bed.

And whose evidence I shall dispose of with speed and efficiency by springing in two graceful (and ninja-silent) leaps to the floor-dustbin, thus completing my crime.*

I think I may be just a little hungry right now.

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* hostels usually follow the Communist Approach to food. Alternatively known as the Pulp Fiction rule (mi casa su casa.) Unless it is bad food. Then it's all yours.