Of chips and teenagers

This one is ‘dedicated’ to that soul who put up his status message on Google Talk as “Kovai A1 Chips…Yummy!!!” – You know who you are. Hope you get the loosies from OD-ing on those chips.

With that out of my system, I can now move on with what I want to say now.

While Lovedale was a lovely place – peaceful and calm, safe and secure, paradise on Earth etc., - to cut a long story short, it was the perfect place to grow up. Nevertheless, there was one major gripe I had with the place – the lack of eateries. It wasn’t possible to sneak a visit to a nearby restaurant to grab a tasty bite, heck, there wasn’t even a decent place to buy snacks apart from the school Tuck Shop, but I couldn’t go there because Joe Uncle, the Tuck Shop manager was also the local ration shop keeper and in that capacity was good conversation terms with amma, worse still, he would go straight to appa, the Dean of the School, and spill the beans about my snacking exploits, leading to a money laundering style enquiry on where the money was obtained from and why I was wasting it on such frivolities as snacking, so that was a no-go. The only other place was Pitchies below Prep School. The risk with that place was that to sneak down to the shop from Prep School, I had to pass by Mrs Vaidyanathan’s house or if I took the long winded route from behind Prep School, I’ll have to pass Raghavan uncle’s, Jadgeesh Pandey’s, and finally Ms Virk’s house, all of which would for sure lead to the enquiry mentioned above.

So here I was, a boy in my early teens with hormones or plain hyper activity making my ravenously hungry all the time with just 3 square meals a day to look forward to (5 if you include morning and afternoon tea). Yes, I know it sounds shallow, what will people not getting 1 square meal a day and all that, but try that argument with a hungry, spoilt 14 year old and you’ll be amazed at the power in those little arms as they give you a fat lip.

That’s not to say there wouldn’t be snacks at home – appa would stock up on snacks like there was not tomorrow, but they didn’t feel the same as buying your own on the sly (though this didn’t really prevent me from stuffing my face, it’s a question of satisfaction, you see). There was only one exception to the rule – banana chips from A1 Chips in Coimbatore. Appa was not only the Dean, but also head of the school’s purchasing committee and that capacity resulted in him having to go down to Coimbatore ever so often to buy provisions for school. Each time he went, he would come back with A1 Chips (approximately 1kg each trip) and it would last, on average 2 days in the BBC household (appa’s nickname in school).

The only time I did OD on those deliciously crisp, yellow fellers was when I finished an entire kilo in one sitting without sharing. Needless to say, the following two days were spent in the immediate vicinity of a toilet.

Now, I can only dream of those chips for I have searched high and low in London and just cannot find any crisp that can hold a candle to A1 Chips. I miss them and just when I think about moving on in life, I have the status message “Kovai A1 Chips, yummy…” staring back at me, I want those chips!