Food Wars

Have you ever seen a food contest? Lots of people, stuffing food down their belly in a gruesome manner. That is no way to eat. I’ve been a foodie as long as I can remember. Sandwiches and pizzas are my favourite. You can shape the recipe in way you want. Chicken, mutton, salami, paneer, vegetables, you name the item and it can be put on a bread.

A week ago, me and my friends finished our final exams and decided to have some fun. There were several plans thrown about. One that received most attention was drinking. We wanted to go to a nearby bar and drink our worries away. Vodka and whiskey were the favoured choices. Everything in the plan was thought about, budget decided and then settled. We decided to go to a bar and drink.

While we were having this conversation, our friends Karan and Saras were having a different argument all together. It was about who could eat more. It wasn’t a violent argument, but definitely had a lot of boasts.

One said, I can eat 6 chapatis in a sitting. The other one said I can eat a plate full of rice. This way, the whole argument lasted for nearly 15 minutes. Neither wanted to give in to other person’s arguments. Infact, by this time, the arguments were beginning to be quite stupid. Karan said he could eat 10 boiled eggs in a sitting. Saras said he could eat 2 litres of  milk at a time. There was no way to compare who could eat more from their arguments.

At the end, Vicky came up with a solution. Sandwiches. One veg sandwich costs Rs.20 in the bakery. So, he said that we should  buy 20 of them and then have ourselves an old fashioned eating contest. Who could eat most in 5 minutes. It seemed like a good way to test our two friends.

But one problem existed. How were we to pay for all that?

The answer came quite quickly from Saras. He suggested that we gather 10 more people, all close friends and pitch this idea to them. Each person can pay Rs.20 and using that, we would buy the sandwiches.

Surprisingly, it didn’t took us much time to come up with 10 more people willing to pay Rs.20 for some fun. Most of them were people from next wing who played football with us. It was certain that the contest would be quite fun. Also, fun would be their faces when they would be done. I’ve seen some eating contests on youtube and I gotta say, contestant’s faces always look funny when they’re done.

In the evening, I, Tarak, Anil and Vicky went to the bakery and placed an order for 20 veg. sandwiches. The people around us, along with the bakery owner gave us a surprised look. Nobody orders 20 of the same thing ever. It was definitely a record and I felt a little embarrassed with all these eyes on me. Anil and Vicky chuckled. A few people around asked us what we were gonna do with so many sandwiches. We replied we were having an eating contest. They looked surprised and amused at the same time.

In some time, our order came and we went to our corridor. We decided to have the contest in the middle on the corridor so that nobody’s room got littered. We opened up all the sandwiches and placed them on a Saras’s table which we had brought outside his room and placed in the centre of the corridor. Two chairs were placed on the opposite sides of the table where Karan and Saras sat. We called everyone who had paid. We were all eager to see this contest. It was not a matter of who would win that had driven people here. It was the fun that would come when you watch 2 people gulping down food as fast as they could, smearing some sauces on their faces.

About 5 minutes before it started, Sumit commented: “I should try it out too. I am a foodie.”

Only Sarvesh heard this comment and started to laugh loudly. When we inquired, he told us about Sumit’s statement and it made us all laugh. Sumit was the kind of guy who would have two cups of dal for lunch and one chapatti and would declare that he was full. He ate so less that sometimes he made us all wonder how he managed to stay fat.

After a good laugh that made Sumit’s face contort in a fashion that showed he was furious but trying desperately to look amused, we began the contest.

Karan and Saras, both moved their hands and mouths as fast as they could. Saras sipped water after every bite to ensure that the food went in fast. Before that contest, we had assumed that there would be some untouched sandwiches which would be shared between the group. But the way these two gobbled up the sandwiches, we started to worry that none would be left when they were finished. Vicky kept Saras’s score while Tarak did the same for Karan.

After a few quick bites, Karan stopped eating and looked up, panting and smiling. I don’t know what it was but we all started to laugh. Saras looked at people laugh but refused to stop. He kept eating, unconcerned with the surrounding and his competition. Within a few seconds, Karan went back to work. He started to stuff his mouth with two pieces of sandwich at once in a comical fashion. The tomato ketchup was on his nose, his cheeks, hands and chin. It was a comic moment, one that definitely ensured that my Rs.20 had not gone to waste.

When 5 minutes were over, Sarvesh called a stop to the contest. There was 1 untouched sandwich and 2 half eaten ones. Vicky announced that Saras’s score was 9. Tarak announced Karan’s score to be 8. At the very moment, Saras jumped us, both fists in the air and started thumping his chest like King Kong.

It was an amusing site. We all laughed. Karan accepted his defeat graciously, laughing and making jokes that his stomach was about to burst. In all the commotion, the final sandwich disappeared. We still don’t know who the sandwich thief was. So, we now call him simply sandwich thief.

Later that night, all 20 of us went drinking and eating. Except Karan and Saras, all had dinner. Since I do not like the medicine like taste of Whiskey, I had Vodka. Not all of us drank. Few just ate and had soft drinks. None of us were hammered that night, but we still behaved like drunks. We laughed and sung aloud, joking and making fun of each other, and especially the faces of our two competitors.

Somersaulting Football

How many of you like football? You see, in my college, people are crazy about it. There will often be shouting matching about which club is best or which player should win an award. I personally support a club for which I don't really need to fight a lot for: Bayern Munich. Since that club doesn't have much competition in Germany itself, i don't need to participate in screaming matches as much. But when the competitions between clubs from another country like Real Madrid or Barcelona take place, I have to enter to defend the honour of my great club . I'm just kidding. I never enter these pointless competitions. I mean, does anyone's shouting at the top of their voice that Aston Villa is the best make it the best? Ofcourse not. If that would be the case, screamers would be ruling the world.

But you see, these screaming matches are actually nothing compared to the ones we have while playing football in the hostel. In the campus, there are a three grounds available. People play football, hockey and cricket in them. I don't really like cricket as its quite dull. Only two people play actively while other just sit or stand hoping the ball would come to them. And hockey, well that's just downright scary. I mean you run half bent among people carrying wooden sticks and a ball hard enough to smash skull three times over. Just a little false move and the ball or stick could end up in any part of your body. Only the goalie is safe. With that heavy armour and padding, I bet the guy could stop an AK-47 bullet. Just kidding. See, these fields are always crowded so we play in the space provided in the hostel itself. These are a few small fields with volleyball and badminton nets present. According to the authorities, we are not supposed to play anything else in there. But who listens to them anyway? So we play football there. Nobody plays volleyball of badminton in there, which I actually find quite nice. See, in my mind, volleyball means hot girls in bikini playing on the beach. Now if I see some sweaty dudes play it, I'll have nightmare for the next few decades.

This is a narration of one of the most horrific football we ever played. By horrific, I mean a lot of shouting and curse words. So this one day, my gang except Sumit and 5 other guys from nearby corridors assembled in one of the small fields to play football. We divided into teams of 7 each and started the match. My team consisted of me, Tarak, Karan, Garv, Vicky, Shaurya and Anil. Shaurya is a guy not from our wing. I played right back. First few minutes were quite normal. No one scored any goals but several attempts were made. Then, one of the guys named Arnav charged towards the goal from my right. So, I ran to intercept him. As I came infront of him, he tried to cross me by going left. I extended my feet and caught the ball with my leg. Due to his momentum, he tripped over the ball and fell down. I kicked the ball to Karan, who was playing centre forward in our team. But then, Arnav started to shout at me. He started to say that I had committed a foul and that it was a free kick. My whole team defended my saying that he fell down tripping over the ball and it was his fault, not mine. Few players from his team joined in too. He did not take that quite well.

He said, “Fine, play with fouls. You guys don’t know anything about football.”

None of us lost our cool and we continued the game.

After about 20 minutes, we were up by 2 goals. Until now, Kartik has been their goalkeeper. But that changed now. He came in front and Saras substituted him. Now I have mentioned that Kartik is quite non-violent and peaceful. But all of that doesn't apply when he plays football. He plays defence and is extremely aggressive. It’s now that he hits people or fouls a lot. It’s his running style that scares the shit out of even the best players. He runs towards the enemy player like the mad bull runs at the matador. If I see him running towards me, I just kick the ball in general direction of my teammates. I am really scared that if he hits me, I’ll lose a few ribs.

Vicky started charging towards the opponent’s goal. Seeing him with the ball, Kartik charged at him. Now Vicky is a guy of small thin built. So I wondered in how many pieces would he break if Kartik, with is sturdy body and his mad charge hit him. I guess Vicky went through the same thought process. But he did not panic. He increased his pace and ran to meet head on with Kartik. This looked like the scene in Fast and Furious 7 where the Deckard Shaw and Dom speed their cars towards each other and then ram them. Just once thing was different in the whole scene. At the very end, Vicky moved towards the left quickly, dodging Kartik and his tackle and went ahead to score a goal. We all cheered loudly, obviously happy that we now had a 3 goal lead. But when Vicky turned towards us, his face looked like he had just escaped death. Well it was understandable. My whole team broke into a laugh.

Towards the end of the match, while we still were maintaining our 3 goal lead, Arnav charged again, this time from the left. Tarak was defending this position. He is a very good defender with a powerful kick and sturdy build. When Tarak approached him, he held out his hand, pushing Tarak away a bit so he could move smoothly from the area. But this was an obvious foul and Tarak called it. But Arnav did not agree with him and kept moving forward. The reply that he gave was, “Don’t be a wuss.”

Judging by what happened next, I don’t think Tarak took that reply well. He put out one of his legs infront of Arnav, who tripped over it and went somersaulting down on the ground. Boy was that a sight! It was hilarious and I and Karan laughed really hard. Few of us were worried he might have broken something but gladly, he hadn’t. Once he recovered from his fall, the guy got up and went ahead to hit Tarak, shouting all kinds of swear words he had learnt in his lifetime. It was no surprise that a fight would break out. But Karan and Vicky interfered at the right time, pulling Arnav and Tarak away. Arnav still kept trying to hit Tarak until two of his wing mates, Shaurya and Gautam took him away. But that did not stop the verbal wars. All kinds of insults flew from both guys. Some of them were horrible, and some were outright funny. Tarak called Arnav boiled flat blob and cry baby while Arnav shouted bloody drunk pig and wimpy moustache. While the fight was serious, I Anil Karan and Sumit couldn’t stop ourselves from laughing. He insults were hilarious. Arnav has never played with us ever since. But Gautam and Shaurya sometimes join us. We always have a good laugh remembering this game.

The Paint War

Violence is a tricky thing. On one hand, we condone it publically. Children are punished for quarrelling with their siblings and friends and adults go to jail if they break some bones. So many laws are present which tell people: do not fight or else the consequences will be grave. People sit in their homes and watch news on wars in middle east and Africa and then say “Why the hell do people need to fight. They are all stupid in that country”.

But even when we make all these laws and rules against violence and march in protests, we actually enjoy is quite a lot. Games are made about killing people and look how great they sell. So much money is earned by their makers because people like to kill stuff or just beat the crap out of something. WWE, UFC are a few examples which show that the same people who condone violence actually love watching it.

Me and my gang had our own little violent fun a few weeks back. Test series had just completed and we were bored out of minds. We had no clue what to do. Sun was too hot and bright to play football or basketball and there was no new game on computer to enjoy. So, we started to plan an outing. Lots of options came up. Most suggestion involved going to a restaurant, eating and coming back to college. It didn’t sound appealing at all. Don’t get me wrong, the mess food here is horrible and I would love to eat out, but I needed to burn off some energy, and so did the others, except Sumit. He likes to stay in his room and study than to play football. Even I have been staying a lot indoors, but that’s mostly because we play football here like we’re waging our own war. There are fights, angry rants, and a lot of fingers go up. Also I got an injury in my foot that prevented me from playing and put a lot of fear in me about football shoes.

But by this time, I was getting agitated staying indoors. We thought of going go karting once again which Tarak liked a lot because of his love of cars. But most of us were not into it, mainly Sumit and Anil because of what had happened the last time.( Read previous post)

Just when we were thinking that there were no more good ideas, Anil came up with one: Paintball. I’ve never played it in my life but it sure seemed like fun. All of us quickly agreed to go. So we decided to bunk classes on Thursday and go. Since it was a weekday, there would be less people. I’ve always been anti-social and therefore this seemed like an impressive idea to me. Garv needed a bit of persuasion as  he prefers not to bunk classes. But after some time, he agreed too.

On Thursday morning, we took a bus at 10 a.m. in the morning. The thickly packed bus dropped us near the railway station of Secunderabad. From there, a 20 minute auto ride took us to our destination. We fit into auto in three groups. I, Sumit and Saras packed ourselves in one and other seven divided into two groups. While my auto left first, we didn’t get there earliest. We got in last. I think it’s because all three of us has a good round belly.

The Paintball studio was pretty huge. It was compound surrounded by a brick wall. We entered through a glass door and were hit in face with cool a.c. air. It was refreshing after being cooped up in an auto. We bought our ticket, which gave us one 40 minutes in the field. The open area was divided into 6 regions, surrounded by cloth and wood polls. We got field 2. When we reached the gate, we were given our guns, a body armour made of plastic, and a helmet. We were advised not to shoot each other in unguarded regions. 

We divided ourselves in groups of 5. My team included me, Anil, Tarak,Vicky and Kartik. We took the left side of the field. The field was covered with plastic obstacles like walls, plastic mountains and a few plastic bushes. The mountains were about 3 feet high and provided excellent cover.

A guy who worked in the studio stood near the gate and whistled, signalling the start of first round.

The first three rounds that lasted about 20 minutes were a lot of fun. Vicky and Anil proved to be quite good shooters. My aim was not so good. I often ended up hitting the obstacles instead of people. However, Kartik played the worst in our team. It was not because he was bad at shooting or anything. He just didn’t want to shoot people .Since the paint pellets hurt when they hit, it was against his non-violence ideology. I was kind of pissed. We had lost two rounds and the fourth round did not seem to be going too good either. Anil and Tarak were out and they still had 4 people left. I had already given up hope but then, Kartik came out with a nice idea.

I started to shoot from behind my boulder, forcing their team to hide. Only Garv was hit by my sudden attack and he was out. While everyone went to cover to avoid my rounds, Vicky started to move left, hiding behind plastic to make sure he was not seen. When I stopped firing, Kartik ran towards right. The other team saw this and shot a barrage of paint pellets but it missed Kartik. I fired again, driving their whole team behind a boulder. Vicky moved further left and ran towards their line, trying to flank them. Amazingly, they took no notice, almost forgetting that one person was not firing. As I stopped, Kartik ran again. They fired but Kartik was able to get in behind a wall and he returned fire from there. Sarvesh, Karan and Sumit; their three remaining players fired towards Kartik, thinking it was a flanking move. But this had been just a diversion. As they fired right, Vicky moved up from the left and shot all three in the back. I shouted  loudly as the plan had worked. I could not remain angry anymore at Kartik. His plan had equalized the scores.

The fifth round began with both sides exchanging fire while hiding behind. I had made up a technique by this time. I fired without seeing, just holding my head up and shooting in the general direction my friends shot at. It had been a good technique for suppressive fire but had not done any real damage. I was counting on my three hotshots: Vicky, Tarak and Anil to beat the other  team.  They all started to flank while Kartik remained with me, firing at the mountains and walls . Vicky moved from left while Tarak and Anil moved from the right. But by this time, the other team knew of this manoeuvre and they counted by flanking us. Intense firing broke out on the the flanks. Tarak was pinned behind a wall. Intense firing forced him to stay there and so Anil went to his help. He squeezed fired suppressing rounds and came behind Tarak’s wall and told him to move.  As Tarak started to move, he saw Karan getting ready to fire. Immediately, he held Anil by shoulders and moved him infront. 4 rounds hit Anil as Tarak, using him as a human shield moved behind a mountain. This pissed  off Anil and he shouted a whole lot of swear words before leaving the field.

Tarak now tried to take advantage of laughter and shot Sumit 3 times. He had left cover and was standing laughing. 2 of my rounds landed on his chest as well. Tarak now tried to shoot Sarvesh but he ducked in time. While he tried to run to another cover, he was shot by Saras and was out. I, Vicky and Kartik tried to fight back, but no more tactics were left. They were using our own tactic against us. I took the right while Vicky took the left. I was shot by Sarvesh while Saras shot Vicky a few seconds later. Kartik was given an option to surrender and he took it. This made the score 3-2 and we lost. I left a little sad but it had been a fun match. There were just two minutes remaining in our time and so we called it a day. We went to McDonald’s and had lunch. Anil was angry at Tarak the whole day. Next day however, a chocolate fudge ice cream made it up and lightened Tarak’s wallet by Rs 40.

While the violence is wrong, this had been a fun experience and can’t wait to shoot some more.