Not a home at WB, but a disappoinment
Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, August 01:
Next time if you happen to stay at Manipur Bhawan, Rowland Road, Kolkata don't be taken back if your morning tea is bought from a road side tea stall by one of the staffers and served in a used mineral water bottle.
Because that is the way the short stay home for the people of Manipur coming to the metropolitan city has been functioning for the last many years.
Interestingly, this is inspite of the fact there are two canteens, one on the ground floor and the other on the fourth floor of the Bhawan.
With the functioning of the two canteens in disarray, the staffers are more than willing to walk the extra mile to fetch a cup of tea or snack, of course, with a premium for the service rendered.
A visit to any one of the two canteens in the Bhawan would suffice why the staffers voluntarily come knocking at each and every door of the rooms inquiring the needs of the occupants, whether it be the morning tea, newspapers, afternoon snack, lunch or dinner.
Apart from the unhygienic condition of the canteens, the quality of the food being served to the visitors is questionable.
The maintenance of a road side dabha (eating joint) would be definitely more enticing than the awful smell emanating from the kitchens of the canteens while waiting at the greasy table for the food to be served.
While one of the only two boys managing the kitchen of the canteen on the ground floor came across groping inside a dark room which passes off as the kitchen trying to kindle the kerosene stove for making tea, a woman with a wailing child on her back was found preparing food on the gas-stove of the canteen kitchen on the fourth floor.
When asked for the menu of the day, one of the two boys, managing the kitchen of the canteen, on the ground floor nonchalantly maintained that it would depend on the number of diners.
It was also a frequent sight to see the young kitchen managers dashing off to the market to get an ingredient required for preparing a particular dish when the diners started trooping in.
Any new lodger who does not want the prospect of spending the night on an empty stomach rolling on the rickety, stained and bug infested bed, should invariably have to give prior information so that their shares can also be cooked along with the others.
About the maintenance of the Bhawan as a whole, the less said, the better.
It appeared that the floor of the rooms and the corridors have not been swept for ages with pan-stained and cigarette buds filled waste baskets at every corner.
When confronted with the state of affairs prevailing in the Bhavan, one of the staff, simply pleaded to highlight the matter through media back home.