I can write a song for food. It’s not just food; it’s muse to me. I can serenade my platter, and I really think that my taste buds can speak the rest on my behalf. So, of course, the students were thrilled to welcome Eatstory’s Neeru Singh and Gurjas Bal.

The entire auditorium welcomed Neeru and Gurjas like vegetables in a boiling pot of water. They jumped from their seats to say ‘Hello.’

Someone said ‘Hola!’, and then came a ‘Hey!’ followed by a ‘How are you doing?’

I especially liked the Friends reference. After the bubbly meet-and-greet, Neeru and Gurjas took over to talk about the most important thing in the world: Food.

For Neeru, it is pure, unadulterated passion. Gurjas, on the other hand, loves everything chocolate. Ah, I completely get it, Gurjas.

Neeru talked about what places to blog about depending on the kind of food you like. “If you love street food, and only eat street food, you might not like the taste of a five-star, so it won’t be the best idea to review it, ” she said.

Neeru then asked the students to prepare a garnishing. Not literally. She gave them a line, “I had my lunch today.”

The participants were to garnish the line with beautiful words. Oh, and the adjectives they used! “Succulent, juicy, scrumptious, decadent, foodgasmic, food porn.”

Neeru advised them to be very careful with the words “foodgasm” and “food porn,” because very often when people are searching for ‘porn,’ they land up on your website, and we don’t really want porn searching followers, do we?

Neeru then introduced them to a really cool activity. “I’m sure all of you love Maggi noodles. Today we’re going to pretend to be a noodle. I will start a story, and you have to create a logical trail behind me that looks like a noodle.”

“An onion had never cried in his life.”

“But, then he met a lady’s finger, and he rediscovered happiness.”

The trail went on, and the onion broke up like twenty times until ultimately, “The Onion and his brother, spring onion, lost in Kumbh ka Mela, were chopped off by a chef in a restaurant. Then they died. The end.”

“Ah, you must be really fun at parties,” I said to the guy who killed the onion.

Gurjas introduced the students to photography lighting and a little bit of styling. “Natural lighting will always give your photography better colors, and the picture will be more impressive. Your presentation matters a lot. While Neeru styles the food, I take care of the technical stuff. Let’s see how you can blog about your food and click a beautiful picture of it. Take a few minutes, go to your canteen, and experiment.”

Here’re two of my favorite posts:

“If injecting yourselves with calories was a sin, you would have a bounty on your head for devouring on the match made in heaven; that is this burger and fries.

The college canteen serves burgers with a twist – burgers with a pink sauce made with mayo and cheese. The liquid, gooey sauce makes you wanna hug Alok bhaiya, the architect of the monument that is this burger. The classic fries served alongside the burger are no less of a mouth-pleaser as they are golden and crispy on the outside and soft and juicy on the inside, precisely how they are supposed to be. With a tinge of chat masala on top, the marriage of the burgers and fries is bound to make your tongue go on a roller-coaster ride.

The ride is not for the faint-hearted, and so woman up and dig right in!”

Wow, beautiful isn’t it?

Another one reads: “Munching on the streets of Jaipur with grumbling stomachs and craving hearts, we came across the lesser celebrated street content across our college campus. Everything looked delicious but what got our attention was freshly fried Papri served with spices and sauce, garnished with warm smiles. The aroma of the papri was so mouth watering that we forgot the papri chaat in the making.”

Thank you, Team Eatstory, we can see the students learnt much from you.

Photo Courtesy: Pallav Bhargava