IT is lunch-time at St. Joseph�s Convent, the all-girls boarding school on Panchgani�s slopes, and the girls are waiting in orderly groups for Sister Alphonse Mary to finish saying �Grace� before they can rush into the dining hall and attack the food. It is an unwritten law in boarding schools that food is meant to be attacked, as if the students had been starving and this was their first meal in days. And girls, who are less boisterous than boys on the playing fields, are not shy to follow this law in letter and spirit.

Now all of St. Joseph�s 165 boarders follow Sr. Alphonse�s lead in saying, �Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord, Amen.� Then, they make a hasty entry into the dining hall and to the large tables allotted to each class. Sr. Alphonse follows at a more sedate pace. St. Joseph�s has divided the dining hall duty among its staff. Sr. Alphonse has drawn lunch duty. Other nuns supervise the girls over breakfast and dinner. Not that they need supervision. Once the food is placed before them, they dive into their meal.

Other boarding schools have the lunch laid out like at a buffet, and students, as they file into the dining halls, help themselves. In St. Joseph�s, it is more homely. The food is brought to the table in huge dishes and kept and the girls serve themselves. The daily menu is decided by another nun, Sr. Mary Adelia, who is the kitchen in-charge. She is a veteran of the St. Joseph�s kitchen, but cannot herself cook. Sr. Mary has three cooks and three helpers in the kitchen. She tries to make the meals fun for the girls because otherwise, it is difficult to push the food down! �They are so used to eating rubbish outside, and we have to keep their meals nutritious, yet interesting,� Sr. Mary said.

So, St. Joseph�s gives its girls puddings and custards and jellies every night for dinner. Ice-cream is on the menu once a week. And it serves fish thrice a week and chicken twice. The main courses at lunch and dinner are pretty simple. Rice, a side dish, a fish or chicken curry, a vegetable, and dal. The girls are fond of puri-bhaji. Sometimes, as a break, they are served cutlets or even bhajiyas! Lunch is at noon and dinner at 7.30 p.m. Breakfast is served to the girls at 7.30 a.m. and is a substantial breakfast, meant to kickstart the day, with eggs on the menu daily. There is porridge at 10 o�clock. And for afternoon tea, the boarding school classic, bread and butter and jam!

Rumana Bombay-walla, not quite the Naughtiest Girl in School, remembers St. Joseph�s fondly. �It was my home away from home for nine years,� she said nostalgically, �especially the Refectory, which is the dining hall, where I spent considerable time and where I fussed a lot over food. I remember the nun whose sole charge was planning the menus and overseeing the cooking, telling me once that it was not easy to provide food for more than 265 students aged between 9 and 15 according to each one�s likes and dislikes.�

But yet, St. Joseph�s did an admirable job of it. �Bread was baked fresh daily and the meals were simple and nutritious. The main courses also included roast potatoes with tomato sauce, which was my favourite, and a daily dose of healthy leafy and greeny vegetables. A lot of the girls grumbled about the way the vegetables were cooked, but that only brought more attention, and individual supervision, to make sure the meals were properly eaten,� remembered Rumana.

All of the girls� wants and cravings were made up for by tuck. �Tuck,� explained Rumana, �was what we called the goodies we brought back to school from home and were allowed access to four times a week. It included anything and everything except chewing gum.� But St. Joseph�s Convent has discontinued the old tuck system. �The girls used to hide food and rats would get at it. Or they would eat at the wrong time and often fall ill,� said Sr. Mary. So, there is a compromise. Four times a week, after the afternoon tea, Sr. Mary doles out chocolates and chips and biscuits as tuck.

Are the nuns great disciplinarians? �Not during meals,� said Sr. Mary. �The girls are a disciplined lot of students. There is a lot of talking at the dining table, but then they are also eager to finish fast and go out to play sports.� Rumana agreed. �Lunch was usually eaten in a hurry so that we could get the most out of recess. And at 10 in the morning, we would run from class to line-up for biscuits. The days we got chocolate or strawberry cream biscuits were the best. Afternoons, at tea, we would mix flavoured milk powders into a cup of milk. And if the snacks were not interesting, we would make chocolate sauce out of these milk powders and eat it with bread.�

The four houses of St. Joseph�s would take turns at cleaning up the Refectory after dinner each week. �The smaller jobs of wiping and setting up the tables were given to the juniors, whereas the seniors were assigned the charge of washing up the crockery and cutlery,� recalled Rumana. St. Joseph Convent�s also prides itself on its dormitories. They have neatly made beds, dressing tables with a young lady�s toiletries, photo-frames of parents and the family dog, a folding chair by the side with clothes draped across it, bathroom slippers beneath the bed, and the school trunk into which all of this must fit at the start of the holidays and the end of the term.