Firangi Paani: The Indian School of Business
The Canteen Chronicles
“Thomas, can you come with me off campus?”
“Sure, where are we going?”
“Visa Venkateswara Temple, I’ll explain on the way”
Knowing I had a US passport, I think he wanted me there with him in hopes it might provide him a slight edge. Then came enthu cutlets, senti toppers, timepass gyaan, 3 Idiots, mugging up, chalta hai, arbit CP, fundas, faffing, chatur, Five Point Someone, backbenchers, chindi, bhindi, and that was just the first day.
So began my introduction to the Indian School of Business (ISB), where I showed up sight unseen in March of 2009. It’s a day I remember well for lots of reasons, and by chance I arrived on campus a few weeks early on what happened to be Holi. Although I had traveled across India for close to a year in 2006, I hadn’t passed through Hyderabad and even if I had, ISB was worlds away at the time. But here I was, going to business school in India, no turning back now. Having navigated from the airport to someplace called Gachibowli, I plopped my things down in a dorm room and set out on campus for the first time. I heard music and a lot of commotion off in the distance and I followed the trail to a block of dorms known as Student Village 3. There I stumbled into a scene of stunning chaos, and within minutes this oddball firang was covered in gulal with what was probably a doctored lassi.
I can state unequivocally that ISB was easily one of the most transformational periods of my life. Situated in what was then the fringes of Hyderabad, and what is now the heart of the city’s ‘Financial District’, it remains a special and nostalgic place. Having recently been back on campus for my 15-year reunion, I was reminded of the sentimental magic on those evenings when the warm wind whips through the Atrium rustling papers and occasionally sending the furniture skidding across the room.
Opening a bank account, getting a SIM card, navigating the intricacies of the FRRO, taking the shared auto from the main road into the city, the first morning wake-up from the campus peacocks, understanding the importance of birthdays in India, my first trips to Paradise, Shadab, and Charminar, all of it happened in the first few days. Not long after I’d come to appreciate why it helped to have a Marwari CA in my accounting study group.
There was a running joke around campus that, during my time on the trains, I’d probably seen more of India than a good portion of the batch combined. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, but I certainly didn’t understand India. Yet, I remember how many classmates asked to travel with me during our term breaks. They wanted to visit the places I’d gone—places they hadn’t really thought about—and it struck me then that in a country as vast and layered as India, you don’t have to stray far to be a tourist in your own land.
It’s true that we often take for granted what’s most familiar, and I’m certainly guilty of it myself. When something is part of the daily backdrop, it can feel ordinary even if it would be extraordinary to anyone seeing it for the first time. So many of my recollections and things that are etched in my memory aren’t necessarily profound, and they seem ridiculous now. I remember the first time many years earlier I saw bananas being cut off a stalk, because bananas didn’t grow on stalks, they grew in bunches of five in supermarket aisles with a sticker on them, or so I was led to believe as a child. Not knowing what should be embarrassing is freeing, and if nothing else it provided good fodder for my classmates who would often cast me in scenes for student projects: “Kutte kamine, tu mujhse bachkar nahi ja sakta. Main tera khoon pee jaoonga.”
There was a More store on the ISB campus that sold all kinds of sundries. I would stop in on occasion for a Thums Up, but I had a standing bulk order of Kinley soda and would have the store manager order cases of it for me every few weeks. I liked drinking seltzer, or sparkling water, on ice and would often go through a bottle or two a day, occasionally with a splash of kokum concentrate or mixed in with aam ras. One day I went to inquire about a couple of cases I had on order and the manager saw me and asked me to wait a moment. He then made a phone call and requested that I wait five more minutes. I poked around the store until one of the assistant deans of the school came in to greet me.
He pulled me aside: “Thomas we’d like to speak with you, we’re very worried about you.”
“Yes sir, happy to speak, worried about what?”
“The store has informed us that you are ordering cases of Kinley on a regular basis.”
“Well, yes.”
“Thomas, we are worried about your drinking problem.”
“Sir, what do you mean? I have barely been drinking at all this year.”
“Well then what are you doing with this much Kinley?”
“I drink it, sometimes with juice.”
He looked at me wanting to believe that I was in fact not putting away a few bottles of Old Monk and Royal Stag every night, and after some more back and forth and a laugh, I think that he finally did. I think about this story a lot, because while it’s funny and I found it quite endearing, it’s been a constant reminder of how we can reach two wildly different conclusions about something so seemingly innocuous depending on the starting frame. What felt so routine to me was simply inconceivable to everyone else, and that learned experience was worth its weight in gold.
Once the first term got underway, I ran uncontested for the student body position of Head of the Food & Beverage Committee, which probably should have been a fairly obvious signal as to why no one else wanted the job. I would receive dozens of emails a week about canteen grievances: the food is too spicy, not spicy enough, too oily, too repetitive, too much bitter gourd, not enough veg, not enough non-veg, too much biryani, we should have biryani more often, for what we’re paying we should get three rotis instead of two, and so on. This topic, as you know, runs deep, and every month I’d take my notebook with collected suggestions to meet with the catering department to try to make sense of the seemingly contradictory comments. The one that was pretty consistent was that people wanted an easier, quicker lunch option, and while I am hesitant to celebrate my achievements, for this one I do take credit for as an enduring contribution to ISB’s culinary legacy—the mini meal. We turned the small side canteen that largely sold puffs and samosas into a meals joint, and we bought the compartmentalized trays and rolled them out as a trial. Two rotis, rice, papad, dal and veg, pickle and curd for fifty bucks. What a legacy to have left behind.
I arrived at ISB with the vague notion of building a career in India but wasn’t sure exactly how I would get there. Somewhere along the way, what once felt foreign became familiar and then more like home to me than anywhere else. If there is a lesson that has lasted, it is that understanding comes from showing up, getting it all wrong, and letting the world nudge you in ways that don’t feel obvious at first. There are few things that feel as comforting to me as landing at Shamshabad, driving past the National Fisheries Development Board (which is itself shaped like a fish), and arriving back on campus to while away time in the Atrium as the warm breeze whips through and the placards go flying.
Ghar lautna, khud se milne jaisa hota hai.
Haha thanks for bringing back ISB Tom