The Wet Stuff

Controversial title...eh??? If you are a Josephite; especially a boarder(lived in the school hostel), you would know what I am talking about, And If you are reading this because the title caught your attention, then we know what your state of mind is!

In St. Joseph's Convent, Kalimpong, a Catholic school for girls, run by the Sisters of St Joseph of Cluny, we lived to eat! It's not like we were not fed. We were!!! Four times a day:
07:30am- Breakfast
11:25am- Lunch
03:30pm- Tea & Snacks
07:30pm- Supper

Yet the wave of gluttony was never satiated. The sly geniuses that we were, we had perfected the act of smuggling  food  through the mesh, which encompassed the border of the school compound. Whatever time of the day, If opportunity found us or be found, we indulged in that particular "sin" with no second thought. The Boxie Bhaiya (the only Male,the girls looked forward to every day ) with his box of  heart-burn inducing( and sometimes the Diarrhea causing) goodies  with a very questionable hygiene,was too tempting to resist. He must have made a small fortune and is probably retired to his new three-storied mansion by now. I highly doubt he consumes his own creative culinary  (mis)offerings.

Coming to the Wet Stuff..., both origin and intent of the words evade me.
For us, those two words combined were the equivalent of  the "happily-ever-after" fairy-tale. Although we referred to food as  the Wet Stuff , not every edible was called hither.The Wet Stuff menu was short and comprised of :
Momo
Alu-Thukpa
Phambi
Shya-Phale
Alu-Phale
Lay-Phing
Shapta
Ting-mo
Tai-po
Fried Rice
Chowmein
etc....
(If you are a Josephite, you are probably salivating right now)

And this was how it worked: We would coerce enough "pocket money" from our parents after the holidays.We weren't allowed to keep any money... But have you ever heard of Obedient Girls in Catholic School? If you have,It definitely did not include us! Anyway, we always had a good and close day-scholar friend or two(or more...) who lived in or about the town. And so ,after a thoroughly debated menu ,the math (including the carrier's commission) was done and the funds provided (in accordance to quantity of consumption) began the long and trying process of waiting . What happened after that or how the accomplice procured the objects of our affection, didn't really matter as long as they were delivered . The smuggling of the prohibited food into the school premises were performed skillfully, without creating much chaos or suspicion.(except on those few occasions when the strong and delicious aroma of food would make a few authoritarian eyebrows rise ; And like bloodhounds ,they would track down the smell and apprehend the guilty. But that rarely happened)

The bliss and satisfaction that we got by consuming those items, is vocabularily indescribable. You should see the size most of us were, back in school. We ate like there was no tomorrow! We ate like we had been starving for years! We ate like someone had paid us to eat! We were a bunch of greedy, ravening, gormandizing stomachs and all we cared about was, what to eat the following day!

I guess all of us have grown up now and left those barbaric, swinish days behind; But even today, to mention "Wet Stuff" to a Josephite would be like Pavlov ringing his godforsaken bell much to the disappointment of the dogs! Therefore, I think I speak for all my girls when I say; Our first Love will always be The Wet Stuff.