CANTEEN BOYS FROM CANARA ( With utmost respect to the specie)

(The purpose of this post is just to amuse and entertain and not to hurt or evaluate).

If you scratch some of the Officers and employees or even executives of banks, in particular the Karnataka based ones, you will find innocent looking, half pant clad, ‘Back Street Boys’ from Ballard Estate.

These young boys from distant villages around Mangalore like Karkal or Mudbidri, hailing from economically under privileged families, descend in Mumbai even before their teens, seeking shelter and security in ’Shetty Canteens’ and ‘Sadanand Cafes’. Ill equipped in Hindi and English, with Tulu alone to turn them around, yet, inspired enough to survive and sustain themselves, these twice-born boys, begin their second life in Mumbai.

Condemned to slog from dawn to dusk, serving endless cups of tea with bread, butter and biscuits to supplement in Office canteens, ensuring that the employees do not snore away their hours in their seats, these young boys use night schools in their neighborhood as a platform to progress in education. On holidays, they spend their time in playing football with tennis balls in the by lanes of Ballard Estate, Bazaar gate and Bora Bazaar Street. One group, soon realising that SSC certificate would be proving elusive, change the channel to suit the situation by switching over from Sun mica tabled Shetty Canteens to Rexin and Foam Restaurants, serving Medu vada and Mysore Masala – certainly a graduation from Masala tea with measured sugar. The left over at the Shetty Canteen’s ambition would be to take over the joint or to start similar one, elsewhere and the supply chain from Mangalore would continue. The Mysore Masala lot’s mission in life would be to start a Sadanand Restaurant in any street corner, preferably a busy one and meander towards ‘Bar-attached’ facility and reach Nirvana thereafter.

The brighter ones, collect their SSC certificates from the night schools and continue studies in morning colleges. As their aspirations are limited, to cleanse themselves of office boy image and to become officers instead, they devote their leisure hours for studies. Thus, atta -grinding boys (no disrespect meant) would progress towards Adam Smith and Ricardo’s Rent Theory would reverberate in the minds of Rexin cleaning boys. It is this group that meets the needs of the Banks and the group looks after its less fortunate brethren in the dingy canteen rooms and nearby restaurants, with warmth and well wishes.

Till the introduction of Konkan Railway, Ballal Transport and Britto’s buses were inseparable from the lives of these Mangaloreans. One could see daily, hordes of them behind Rallis, at Fort and in front of Hanuman Café at Sion Circle. During his high days as a militant Trade Union leader, George Fernandez was their icon as he hailed from their neighborhood, was easily accessible and he championed their cause.

One certainly can trace striking similarities between these canteen boys and yester years’ Palghat boys, who raised ‘degree coffee’ to dizzying heights and stirred our souls through softest idlies in their Ambi’s Cafes, be they at Trichy’s Theppakulam or Chennai’s Broadway. They distanced themselves from the Uttaranchal boys, that man the Company guest houses in Mumbai and who specialize in pouring over Patiala Pegs, peanuts and pakoras.

To escape from penury at home, these canteen boys from Canara, showed an inspired willingness to work in any conditions and moved ahead, and distinguished themselves. One shudders to imagine a situation when the supply of Gattu look-alike would cease. Offices would starve of canteens, street corners would be severely short of restaurants, Banks would be bereft of Managers in the making and Mumbai, meal less in Midday and young minds everywhere, deprived of examples to emulate, leaving society to degenerate and decay.

Let the Canteen boys from Canara continue to deliver us.