All students will agree that the canteen is one of the most important places in college, perhaps more important that the academic building itself. Everyone has their own special relationship with their college's canteen, whether it be one of intense passionate love, loathing, or anything else in between. The CBIT college canteen has been around for ages and has been through many avatars in that period of time. Like everyone else, I have my own relationship and stories with the canteen.

The most famous and sought-after food item there is easily the frankie- the glorious, versatile frankie. It's been my go-to food because of the way it's filling and mess-free. I remember the countless times I had to rush to basketball practice with me running across the campus, munching a frankie in my left hand and my phone in my right. It is also what I eat for a quick snack (Snack, ha!) after college while walking to the ground where the buses are. The frankie guy is nearly as big a fixture in college as the canteen itself. You go up to him and no matter how busy he is, he lets you customise your own frankie; "Anna, onion takva veyyandi", "Mirchi veyyakandi", "Anna, paneer koncham ekva veyandi", he does it all.

However, on hot, sweaty days when the frankie will only make you hotter and sweatier, the fruit juice stall in the corner of the canteen is the star. They offer a fairly varied list of fruits to pick from; grape, mosambi, banana, muskmelon, watermelon and sapota, among others. They make it right away and you can ask them to not filter the pulp out (if you're into that sort of kinky stuff). The delicious coolness combined with the fresh feeling of the fruit makes you want to sing out the chorus of the angels.

The more serious items on the menu- the 'lunch items'- like the meals or the vegetable biryani admittedly aren't dishes I've eaten a lot, but they still hold lot of stories. When the hunger takes you, and where you need solid, honest-to-god rice, the meals which comes with curry, dal, curd and papad is like a breath of life. The vegetable biryani with raitha blew away my skepticism four bites in and seemed like a warm hug from home. I remember sitting on the stairs inside the canteen with a friend who insisted I eat only rice, since I was tired, and me reluctantly ordering the biryani. She was right.

For those who need a really, really quick pick-me-up, there is a snack bar right beside the main counter that sells chips, candy bars and all sorts of drinks ranging from Maaza and Paper Boat to Coke and weird jeera drinks in packaging that looks suspiciously like beer bottles. This is the one I hit when I innocently accompany a friend to her lunch and get drawn in by all the junk food out on display. I actually asked a friend to grab me by the collar every time she saw me moving in that general direction. 

The canteen did give me a lot, and I'm not just talking about calories.