Convinced that I would soon become weak-boned and painfully thin, he made me swear that I would eat everything that was set before me without making a fuss.
I have very religiously followed the dictum except when it comes to potatoes (way too much carbohydrates), beef (been off it since the Mad Cow scare) and prawns (yew!).
Breakfast and dinner are served in the hostel, but I have to look for lunch elsewhere.
I had no issues with that in the beginning but soon got tired of the Chinese food in the college canteen and after two disastrous experiences with burgers, I quit having lunch there.
For some reason, I find food in Mumbai unpalatable though millions of people, better connoisseurs of food than I, will tell you otherwise.
My average 'lunch' for two months consisted of tea and toast.
Maybe it's Bollywood with its 'size zero' obsession, or just that commuting in such a vast city takes its toll, but in Mumbai, every other person you'll meet is atrociously skinny.
While the rest of the world fights the battle of the bulge, folks in the Maximum City try to cope with minimum sizes.
I woke up one day to the horrible realisation that I needed a wardrobe revamp because all my clothes were many sizes too big for me.
It was high time I found a good place to have proper lunch, because my parents were convinced I was starving.
While on the hunt for a restaurant that matched my standards of hygiene and lighting, my friend and I decided to go to the Phoenix Mall to pick up some clothes and some decent food.
Figuring out railway lines is difficult and springs surprises for newcomers in the city, as we discovered. Once on the train, I kept a watch for the Hebrew inscriptions in a Jewish cemetery to tell me that we were on the right track.
It never came and as many unfamiliar stations flashed past, I realised with a jolt that we were on the Harbour Line, which I had never taken before.
We got off at a queer little station called Reay Road that I had never heard of. As we stepped out of the station, I had one quick look at the surroundings, before I screamed.
It was a scene right out of Slumdog Millionaire and worse. To our left, we saw tottering piles of garbage that stretched to infinity and to our right unending columns of slums. There seemed to be no buildings and the hutments were right on the roads.
"Let's get out of here, now", I said, dragging my friend away from the road.
We hailed a few taxis but none of them agreed to go to the mall or return to the suburb where I lived. Then it slowly dawned on me that they were refusing because my suburb might actually be very close.
You never see any slums in the main city, they grow neglected in the shadows of skyscrapers.
I discovered later that the station was named after a Lord Reay, sometime Governor of Bombay in British India. The ironwork, made in England and assembled here, has weathered countless monsoons and is a Grade One Heritage site, which I found hard to believe.
The slums house a very large Bangladeshi immigrant community that is subjected to a lot of discrimination. The far right wing party Shiv Sena, which claims Mumbai for Maharashtrians alone, has launched a vicious campaign against them.
There are allegedly 20 million illegal immigrants, a figure denied by Bangladesh. The Indian government, fearing terror infiltration, deports those who lack documentation.
Unfortunately Bengali-speaking Indians and Bangladeshis who have been here long enough to acquire citizenship are also sent packing. They leave behind their wives and children to fend for themselves in the big city.
These stateless people, not wanted by either country, try to make their dreams come true in the shadows of Mumbai. They live in the dark, fearing persecution and raids, hiding their identity and staying away from the mainstream. Nobody known to me has been to Reay Road or heard of it. I wonder at times if it really does exist. It doesn't in the world most of us live in. We could be across the street and yet two worlds apart.
¥ Jennifer is a former Bahrain resident now studying in Mumbai. Her family still live here.
Copyright 2010 Al Hilal Publishing & Marketing Group
'Road to a Hidden World of Misery', Gulf Daily News, January 22, 2010, Jennifer Gnana
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