This piece was written by Riddhi Rajeshwar Swami (Batch of 2022), in her very first month of Law School. We hope for this piece to be a sweet sip of nostalgia as you think back on your unjaded first-year days.
“Let’s chill at Chetta”. The phrase I’ve heard most repeated by first years after “Are you done with your projects?” At least we’ve got our priorities in order. Now, Chetta opened about 2 weeks into our time here at Law School. We, first years, had already been so hyped up about how we were absolutely going to love it. So when it finally did open, I was underwhelmed. Ever since, I’ve been trying to figure out what the hype was really about?
To be fair, Chetta isn’t terrible – it’s a fairly decent shop with a variety of everything. But the ice cream tastes like… well, ice cream. The Maggi isn’t long enough to slurp, and they don’t have Piknik. So I’m here wondering, why is everyone in love with Aiswarya bakery?
If I were to think as a student of Economics I, I would think that it’s the theory of supply and demand. There is absolute scarcity of places that will supply you with an ice cream sandwich without the considerable effort of going outside campus, therefore we are all drawn to Chetta for our daily dose of happiness (read: junk food). Additionally, there’s the positive network externalities. Chetta is where the entirety of gossip from all over law school makes its way to, so to stay in the loop you have to be there. Also, at any given point in time if you’re suffering from boredom or anxiety, Chetta will have at least one person from the first year batch who also cares more about jam buns and lemon tea than the impeding project submissions. However, economics fails me in that whenever I go to Chetta – I seem to forget about my budget constraints and cease to be a rational consumer. A rational consumer would not be broke a month into law school. After all of this analysis, I should hope that I don’t have to give an economics repeat but it’s still very likely that it will happen.
Economics did a fairly decent job of helping me understanding the hype, but often, I still don’t understand the surge of love everyone in law school has for Chetta. However, some cold evenings eating hot cheese maggi, some nights singing “happy birthday” and stuffing our faces with cake, sitting in Yamuna past midnight when you hear people laughing and singing like they don’t have a care in the world … on such days, I get the hype. For most Law Schoolites, Chetta is more than just ‘Aiswarya bakery’. It’s the unending supply of chocolate when you just cannot stop crying. It’s lemon tea, music and friendship. It’s warm coffee and laughter. It’s comfort food; and God knows, we need all the comfort we can get, so far away from home.
For me personally, Chetta is a safe space less than 200m away from the library but miles away from the hassle of books and projects and first trimester in general. It’s a place I won’t find someone reading Carr, automatically sending me into panic mode (Disclaimer: don’t talk to me about projects at Chetta). It’s a place that gives me solace in knowing that midnight Maggis aren’t exclusive to home.
So, despite the PDA and wobbly benches, maybe, even if I did have abundance of choice, I would pick Chetta.
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