The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Daytime.

If you ever find yourself alone in a university campus, and all your friends have left for home, the best thing to eat is dream cake. What is dream cake, you may ask. Dream cake, my friends, is packaged cake with cream in it.

My university has a number of canteens. Quite a number actually. They're not all dingy and some are quite pleasant. But the only one with an elaborate menu was the dingiest one. And I was seeking adventure. So I ordered myself chowmein - some spark of oriental wisdom suggested it might be a safe option. The chowmein was given to me, thin and heaped, and I found myself an empty table. Now this dog comes along, and he looked friendly enough, so I didn't bother shooing him away. So he lolls for a bit, sniffs around a few others, navigates the underside of chairs and tables strewn about the place. Then he stops by a table, puts his paws up, and shoves his nose into someone's leftover food.

Now, my concern obviously was not the leftover food. It was, in fact, the reusable steel plates this beast was licking. "Bodi!!", yelled fellow consumers. And the Bodi (sister in law in Bangla, and a term commonly used in place of the more North Indian Aunty or Behenji) lept from her chair behind the wooden counter. She bellowed, and then her cooks bellowed, and then a few others, till it was quite a riot. Wet cloth was thrown at the dog and chairs shaken at it.

Naturally, I chose to leave. I would have left even if i hadn't seen crows pecking at food on another table.

The taxis in Kolkata are very shiny. I've seen them being scrubbed clean by their drivers myself on occasion. And I mean scrubbed. The rain helps of course. Nature's very own hose for unwashed cars.