Prologue
People often ask me, “What’s a chicken day?”
I don’t know, really. It depends. It is a multifaceted term, something best experienced rather than explained using adjectives. In the school I grew up in, it was a highly-revered thrice-occurring weekly phenomenon. In the realm outside, it would seem little more than a made-up word. What I do know, however, is that it meant the world to our table captain.
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So big was he, the table captain, perhaps the biggest in our house. From where I stood, I believed it would take even an adult five karate kicks to put so much as a scratch on him. That size gave him an edge over all of us. It gave him authority. He entered the school’s dining hall like a lion ready to nab little creatures who broke the rules of his forest. Oh, and nobody dared to touch the edibles in his absence. The fragrant fresh finger chips, yellow paneer curry, gravy, boiling hot soup, delicious juicy brown chicken pieces floating on the surface of steel bowl. Until the captain was seated comfortably, though, nobody dared touched any of it.
For students on other tables, chicken days must have felt like national holidays. I know. We heard their cock-a-hoop stories all the time.
Yesterday, our table captain did not want to eat Rushvari. So he gave it to me. How generous of him!
Four guys at our table have not returned since the leave weekend. Our table captain has planned something special for tonight!
Even though tomorrow is a non-chicken day, our table captain is going to treat us. It is his birthday.
Well for us, our table captain was unpredictable; our table itself no less than Hitler’s bunker.
