TT: Thursday Tales- School Lunches

*Opens the door and peeks out* Anybody there? Hello!!
I am bacckkkkk! Done with the exams and back in my haven, Riyadh. Alhamdulilah 😀
So, hows everyone? Hope you all are doing just great. inshaAllah 🙂
I had so many things in my mind to write about summer, india, general elections, my summer love-Mango, cricket and the ghaleez indian garmi and what not.
Every night before my exams, I would virtually type everything in mind, words just flowed like a gushing stream of water and now I am blank, pata nahi sab kahan ghayab hogaya, kuch yaad nahi. I hate this.

Khair, as I was surfing wordpress today, I saw this post in which the blogger gave few topics that you could write on and one of them was childhood lunches.

As I am in Riyadh, I miss my school days like hell and friends toh poocho nahi aap.
School is where you make billions of memories, make your first and faithful friends for life and enemies for life till you get akhal phir as you grow you cherish them as your school mates for the rest of your lives. Cry out of grief, tears roll down your cheeks coz you laughed too hard with your friends and the lunch breaks aka funtime!

We weren’t shareef to be silent in the class, we used to chatter all through the day but lunch break was the time when all hell broke loose.
We would literally go crazy. We used to do countdown for 10:10 am, thats when our break started, ( our school started at 7:30 am) and the moment bell rang ,That was our RedBul moment, we flew out to the ground.
No one really brought lunch from home, except one or two,in our friend circle, unless and until we had something special at home.
My lunch included mango juice with pulp, which I LOVED and sometimes chips alongwith it. That doesnt mean I didnt have a good lunch, what are best friends for? To provide you with yummy lunches. My friend here, religiously got lunch to school. She hardly ate any of it, before her we finished it off. Sometimes it had shaami-paratha, kabhi yummy talawe chawal ( I MISS IT BADLY) with laisan (garlic) ka achaar( pickle) and other times nuggets and fries( jo lunch se pehle khatam hojate the zyadatar). Bechaari usko bahot kam milta tha.

We were a group of 8, now this was hardly enough for our big lot, so we survived on canteen food.
Canteeen food had a constant change in its taste but we loved it. Our favourties were chana paratha and chicken sandwich ( jismein chicken dhoond dhoond ke khana padta tha-that was the task).

Two parathas were distributed among
8 with almost 2 bites( max.-4)per person and that was more than enough. Because more than the food we had other stuff jissey pet bharta tha.
We would enjoy sun-gazing, go gaga over some crazy hot news. Have gala time at the expense of others or just rant about the classes or school.
One would share her stories and others made jokes about them and laugh till stomachs ached. Tease each other, cry with each other and had zillions of “joke of the millenium”.
As I am writing , I remember every stupid,corny,lame and funny joke from the goldendays. Sunheri yaadein. I would love to share lekin agar likhdoon toh it will lose its essence. Maza nahi ayega.

And if we were in a sportive mood, we played poles. Racing across the ground to catch a pole, not wanting to be left behind as a catcher, we ran more than our stamina could afford and if we couldnt run and were last, we sat in the far end of the ground,that was an indicator equal to the white flag,so others would run upto you and the last to Come was the catcher, but being the cunning persons we are, we would cheat and as they ran towards us we ran in the opposite direction towards poles.
Hahaha such were the carefree days. *Koi lauta de mujhe wo pyaare pyaaare din*

There were days when we didnt feel like going out to bask in the sun, so we would sit in the classroom and be obnoxiously loud such that at last we had the classroom to ourselves. 😛

The real lunch was always at home after school but we used to be so tired that we would just rush through the lunch and hit our beds for a nap. But they were fun as well, we all talked about our day, informed Ammi ji about school, teachers, tests, friends and pulled each others leg, which always led to one of us getting mad ( usually it was me 😛 ). If we could keep our eyes open we watched T.V, anyone remember Disney time on starplus or Hum Saath Ath hain? The corny family comedy show and Main aur Tum? Starring Faisal Qureshi and someother guy, naam yaad nahi aara.
(Update: AIJAZ ASLAM!! YAAD AGAYA :D)

That was what my childhood/school lunch was all about.

*Sobs* someone get me a time machine, I want to go back jab zindagi asaan thi, koi jhanjhat nahi tha, the only tension was to get good marks bus. I would do anything to get back in school.

*Background song: “Bas yaden, yaden, yaden reh jati hain–
Kuch choti, choti baten reh jati hain…”*

*Deeeep thandiii Sigh*