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Boxey Walla Boxey Wallah One of the regulars in our afternoon Fern Hill [senior boys’ dormitory] life at Mt. Hermon School was the box man or ‘Boxey’ as he was known to us. He was less than five feet tall and must have been in his late forties when I was in school. In retrospect, I sometimes wonder if he was from Afghanisthan. He had gray hair and a well-groomed gray moustache and beard of the type I have since come to associate with Afghanis in India. He was stocky and came walking down the hill [with his box of goodies on his head] along the main road that led from North Point all the way down to the Rangeet Valley. From the south-facing Fern Hill windows we would see him approach. He would get onto the path that wound around below the school workshop and walk up to the little shed near the southwest corner of the building. He usually got there around 4pm. Any boys who didn’t have games would wander down to the shed. Before long there would be several boys standing around eating stuff that they had either bought from him or taken on credit. It was against school rules to eat anything that he sold and anytime there was an outbreak of diarrhoea it was blamed on Boxey. In Chapel, a stern reminder would be given to the boys of Fern Hill [did'nt the girls ever eat Boxey grub?] that Boxey food was strictly off-limits!! In actual fact, however, I’m not sure that anyone ever got a stomach bug specifically from eating Boxey’s wares. Also in actual fact, I should be ashamed to say that these stern reminders had little impact on us except that we would all hassle Boxey about the diarrhoea that his food was causing the next time we saw him and we would tell him that he had to lower his prices because of the risk we were taking by hanging out with him and eating his food! Looking into the inside of his box was like looking into a dreamland. School food was very monotonous. I ate school food as a teacher, too, years later, and while I can say that it was not bad, I have to add that it tasted better to us teachers because we always had the option of walking up to North Point [to “Badi’s” or “Freedom”] or going to town and supplementing. Except on special days like the School Birthday, Sports day and Swimming Gala and the Farewell Dinner [when the food was so incredibly nice] the meals were predictable and often unappealing. As a result we were always on the lookout for a good change in the menu – wherever it came from. I remember one year some of the workers associated with the school planted corn on the Western slope that led down from Fern Hill to the tarred road that went down to the river. Around September the corn started maturing. Some of the boys immediately spotted the possibilities. They were from villages where corn was grown and knew ripe corn-on-the-cob when they saw it. I suppose it prompted memories of roasted corn on the cob or something. All of a sudden one evening after night study Fern Hill was filled with the aroma of roasting corn. Someone had a little electric stove and they started roasting the stolen corn. Next thing anyone knew there was corn-on-the-cob to be freely had for anyone who would step down the slope and help himself to some. Needless to say, there was roasted ‘Bhutta’ in Fern Hill every night for about a week. I’ve always felt bad for the people who planted and tended the crop. I know now how heart-breaking that must have been for them. They never made the same mistake again in all my years at Mount Hermon. Another memory I have of a change in the menu was when the boys all came back to the dorm from their Puja Vacations in 1970. Thentok Lachungpa walked into our class X dorm in Fern Hill after dinner the day after the Pujas and said one word, “Grub!”. Such had been our disillusionment with the dinner earlier that evening that in two seconds flat every boy in the dorm was around a small, closed black trunk that Thentok was standing over. When everyone was around he opened the trunk. Packed from top to bottom were these little green apples. “Raw apples?, I blurted out. “You brought raw apples for us from home?!!!” I got one of those withering looks that Thentok reserved for the truly ignorant of the world. I think I almost didn’t get any apples that night. After he started handing the apples out and I had taken my first bite, I realized that I was eating the sweetest and juciest apples I had ever eaten. He said that they were from his home orchard in Sikkim and pointed in the direction of “Tabletop Mountain”. What I didn’t realize was that I was probably eating the sweetest and juciest apples anywhere on God’s Earth! He handed them out till there were only about a dozen left and those he kept for Kesang Thendup [ a.k.a.Yak], Tshering and some of the other ClassXI boys who were his friends. We each got eight or ten. I can still feel the crunch of those apples as I bit into them. I can still hear the sound they made in my mouth. I can still taste the sweet-and-tangy juice trickling down my throat! Long live Sikkim Apples!! Anyway . . . the top level of Boxey’s treasure-chest had mostly dry and sweet biscuits and cookies, Indian sweets and the like. Most boys waited patiently while he opened the lid and expounded on the various items on top trying to sell us on their virtues. We listened patiently [sometimes not so patiently] as he carried on about how good one or the other confection was and how we should really try a couple]. Actually, we couldn’t wait to get to the real stuff on the lower level. Under the top tray was where he kept the dal-pooris and the aloo-dum and the kofta curry. The real stuff!! There might have been other things down there like samosas but the focus was on the dal-pooris and what went with them. That’s what was going to fortify us against the inevitably insipid dinner after evening study. I always went for the dal-pooris and aloo-dum because I didn’t trust the meat he used to make the Koftas with. He would give us three or four of the dal-pooris and slap a serving-spoon full of Aloo Dum or Kofta curry on them. As soon as we got the stuff in our hands we started eating. It was a furtive meal, fraught with the fear that one of the Wardens [Bill Moore, PC Matthews], or Rev Johnston [‘Johnny’] would catch us in the act. If you wanted to see serious ‘Speed-Eating’ all you’d have to do was hang around Boxey. I forget what it all cost – possibly because I seldom paid as I ate. Most of us would wait for Town-Leave Day and then, when we had our money in our pockets, we would pay him where he lay in wait for us outside the school gate as we walked up the road to the taxi-stand at North Point. Old Boxey brought a lot of happiness on many a dull afternoon to us down in Fern Hill. I don’t think anyone ever died eating his food. I think that even if school food had been of a much higher standard we would have hankered for a change and gone running to Boxey every time he showed up. Why, for that matter, even when I was home for the holidays in Calcutta I would be running off down the road and grabbing a quick ‘Kaathi-Kabab’ or some ‘Phuchkas’ [Pani-Puri] or ‘Alu Kochuri’ every now and then – just for a change. The lasting memory I have of Boxey is a sad one, though, because I know that some of the boys who signed their names against IOUs in his book never paid him. As they went whizzing past him outside the school gates on Going-Home-Day there would be shouts of, “See you next year, Boxey – we’ll pay you then”. He was a hard-working man and a kind soul to let us take advantage of him like that even though he probably couldn’t afford it. I remember you Boxey – and I wish you well! By : Robin Sengupta Graduated : ISC 1971; HSC 1973. Date : 14/5/2002 16:8 |
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