As I sit down to write about the 5 chair
hotel, a lot of striking, closer-to-heart emotions rip through and the
recollections take me back to the most precious years in school, just after my
adolescence. The school is Regional Engineering College in the inconspicuous
city of Trichy, a Southern Indian non-metro.
The campus is not lush green with buildings
of architectural excellence. In contrast, the campus is a dry, barren land with
buildings of modest outlook and sufficient facilities for the activities of a highly
technical educational institution.
There were a couple of cafeterias, a
shopping complex with a juice centre and a few more shops where anyone can get
a quick bite. Though these joints are still in my faint account, the 5 Chair
Hotel comes across strongly as a treasure to cherish.
Everything revolved around the 5 Chair
Hotel for most of us in RECT. The Restaurant was, and most probably still is,
in the Trichy-Tanjore main road. A stone’s throw from the main gate, the 5CH was
strategically located to attract the hungry youth in the hour of need –
typically around and after midnight. The business hours are between 10:00 p.m.
and 03:00 a.m. The menu includes delicacies with eggs, chicken and roti, among the
other chef’s specials.
The ambience boasts unconditional air with
open space as dining area and a small roof made of dead plants. The seating capacity
is for five - equipped with wooden chairs, some with lay back comfort. The
restaurant does not have an official name (other than unofficial SamFox). The
tax authorities did not require one – the owner used to tell us. It is the
number of chairs that influenced the identity process and later would become as
a legendary name for the restaurant – the 5 Chair Hotel. The owner loved it for
the sheer rhyme to that of a five star hotel.
The recipes for most of the bill of fare
are kept secret. However, the food preparation is done right in front of the
hungry youth for dosa, omelette, bull’s eye and muttai parotta. More like the
style practised in Japanese restaurants minus the usual gimmicks with knives
and sticks. And certainly, the master chef does not throw pieces of muttai
parotta in the general direction of student guests.
The making of muttai parotta is an art that
involves the skills that of a mathematician, sculptor, architect and a
musician. The batter is divided into small globes and every globe would
eventually become a parotta. I would fail miserably to describe the process
which turns the battered globes – made of flour and water – into parottas. Let
me just say the globes are stretched into thin layer as outlying as the shape
could hold. The single layer is folded into multiple layers in a spherical
shape and then fried with oil until golden brown. I strongly recommend the
reader to visit 5CH to see and listen to the music that is orchestrated when
the eggs and parotta are mixed together into small pieces using a metal ladle
atop greased tava. My feeble attempt can best describe the music as ‘Tangtanang
Tanangtanang Tangtanang Tanangtanang’.
Everything revolved around the 5 Chair
Hotel, I told. The mid-night tennis ball cricket games, last minute
preparations for the examinations (bi-weekly, internal and the semester exams),
the late night walks for better health, the late night walks to spoil health
(the 5CH boasts a varied collections of cigarettes as part of the dessert menu),
the expeditions to the local touring talkies, the rehabilitation counselling to
the Devotees Of Perfect Eternity (the user group of narcotics – DOPE) and the
bedtime story telling routine - judiciously practised as a round-robin, among
the special interest groups.
Everything
revolved around the 5CH. Everything was scheduled between 10:00 p.m. and 03:00
a.m. The favourite dialogue among the friends,
along with the morning news, used to be about the Chef’s special they had at
the 5CH the previous night. Due to the unconventional business hours, the 5CH
invites only the male guests. The unwritten rule expects that the guests are
engineers OR pursuing to be engineers. The owner frowns upon the trespassing drivers
and probably charges them more to discourage using the academic facility.
The time was 1991-1994. After two decades
and half, and after a few memberships with star hotel chains, I
still openly yearn for a late night walk towards the 5CH in the dry, barren
lands of my Alma mater – to savour the chef’s special of the night.
