St Joseph's Convent KGF - - Some Nostalgia - Buying Tuck - Green Mangoes, Jig Nuts, Borums etc

Some nostalgia about St Joseph's Convent KGF - Buying tuck from the Tuck Women

Our school, St Joseph's Convent, Champion Reefs, KGF,  didn’t have a Canteen or cafeteria. Every child had to carry her own packed lunch to school. My mum usually packed chapattis or sandwiches for us in plastic Tiffin boxes. Chapattis with butter and sugar or jam was our favourite choice for lunch. We had our lunch in our class rooms or we ate it sitting on the benches under the huge trees in the school garden.

 Besides our plastic Tiffin boxes, we also carried our own water to drink in brightly coloured plastic water bottles with long shoulder straps. Some times when we didn’t carry our bottles to school, we just drank water straight from the taps in the school compound and didn’t worry about picking up any germs from the tap water!!!

 Our school didn’t have a tuck shop either so to speak. However, the cooks in the convent kitchen made delicious ground nut toffee for sale almost every day. We had to stand in line to buy squares of this toffee every day after lunch, through the Trellis of the Convent Kitchen. The Jaggery toffee with the chunks of roasted groundnuts in it was delicious.

 Some of my most memorable and happy memories connected with my school days at St Joseph’s Convent are of buying the forbidden tuck from the Tuck Women who always sat on the road outside the school gate with baskets of Green Mangoes, Borums, Gutty palams, Pani Chakke, Pattani, boiled Groundnuts etc.

 We were actually forbidden from buying anything from these Tuck Women, but their wares were so tempting that we just couldn’t resist the temptation. The thrill of disobeying the teachers and nuns to eat the ‘forbidden fruit’ was a great ‘high’ for us.

 For just 4 annas or 25 paisa, we could buy tuck such as green mangoes, green tamarind and guavas (which we ate with chilli powder and salt), Borums and Gutty palams (I don’t know the English word for this fruit but they were small purple fruit the size of small plums), Luckily we didn’t suffer from any tummy upsets or illness after eating all this junk.