Canteen Counter

Updated on: Friday, February 03, 2012

College canteens are usually spaces for sitting with your buddies, ordering economically priced delicious meals, chattering-gossiping-rebelling and an outlet for the eccentric in you. What they have also become is a double for libraries.

More and more students have begun to prefer catching up on their notes in the canteen area for the simple reason that there are no restrictions. Periodically checking your mobile phone, jumping up to meet a long-lost friend, screaming across the place for that extra tissue, its all permitted. Then theres the additional luxury of enjoying a stimulating cutting chai while tackling an unusually difficult math problem. Canteens have a laid-back, no-pressure air to them. Theres no librarian watching your every move or worse, half-a-dozen braniacs at your table knowing the answer to every hesitant and ill-phrased question of yours. A library is a formal setting. You cant speak out, brainstorm, use phones or contact friends. In the canteen, you dont know where your answer comes from. In the library, there is food for thought and in the canteen there is food! quip Jeet Ashok and Virajas Kulkarni, students of Usha Pravin Gandhi College of Management.

There are some that still prefer the old-school method. Yash Thakoor of St. Xaviers College feels, Somehow still, the books behind dusty shelves and dented windows, make more sense to me than otherwise but there is a stark trend of migration from the libraries to the foyer. I think it's the chatter. It's warm, and incredibly effective for the quick mugging before exams. And with all those friends learning by your side, there's a high chance you'll overhear something really important for the test.

The canteen is a familiar arena. The place most visited in the college premises by the student community in all its entirety. Even amidst all the hullaballoo happening there, it doesnt lose the advantage of being the official comfort zone for students. The canteen has now been ushered into the spotlight for reasons other than frivolity; it is rapidly becoming an intellectual interface.

Courtesy: Myeducationtimes.com

Times of India

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