There’s a strange phenomenon that no one warns you about: during exams, everything tastes better. Maggi becomes gourmet. Hide & Seek biscuits taste like a hug. Even chai — that humble roadside brew you’ve had a hundred times — suddenly feels like an elixir crafted by monks in the Himalayas. I don’t know if it’s the stress, the sleep deprivation, or just the raw desperation, but food during exams hits differently.
I first noticed this in college — in the suffocating heat of May, prepping for my engineering semester finals with a textbook in one hand and a Vada Pav in the other. Normally, I’d complain about the soggy pav or the stingy chutney. But that day, sitting cross-legged on the hostel terrace, notes flapping in the breeze, that Vada Pav was perfect. Crisp, spicy, gloriously greasy. The kind of meal you remember years later, not because of the ingredients, but because of the moment it saved.
The Midnight Nibbles Economy
Exams also invented their own cuisine — part nostalgia, part necessity, entirely unbalanced. There was the sacred 2 AM chai from the canteen, the packet of Parle-G dunked into overboiled tea, the emergency Nutella on toast (or on a spoon, let’s be honest). There were Marie biscuits dipped in milk while trying to memorize compiler theory. Leftover samosas from the mess reheated on an illegal coil stove, which always tasted better with the pressure of failing math.
It wasn’t about the food, really. It was about the permission it gave us. To pause. To breathe. To feel something other than panic. When you’re six hours deep into a subject you barely understand, a slice of bread with ketchup can taste like redemption.
The Psychology of Taste Under Pressure
Looking back, I think exams create the perfect storm for heightened taste: you’re tired, emotionally fragile, and craving anything comforting. Your brain, desperate for dopamine, turns every snack into a sensory event. Even that watery canteen dal had a strange kind of warmth when eaten between chapters of Digital Electronics.
There’s also the ritual of it. The planned breaks. The quiet joy of sneaking into the mess late at night and finding a lone banana or a leftover dosa. In those moments, you’re not just feeding your body — you’re feeding your sanity. Food becomes more than sustenance; it becomes structure, a way to mark time in a blur of formulas and fear.
Shared Food, Shared Pain
Then there was the communal eating — the borrowed biscuits, the shared bowls of Maggi, the collective ordering of Chinese food from the one sketchy joint that delivered at midnight. We passed around food like a lifeline, each bite part of an unspoken pact: we’re in this together. You could tell how close someone was to breaking down by how much chilli powder they added to their Maggi. The spicier it got, the worse the subject.
I remember once, during a final year project submission, someone brought boxes of idli-chutney from home. Cold, slightly dry by the time they reached, but those idlis were gone in minutes. We didn’t even sit down. We just ate standing up, in between editing PPT slides and fixing code that refused to compile. It was one of the most satisfying meals of my life.
Now That It’s Over
These days, I don’t eat Maggi as much. I live in Austin now. The nearest Indian store is a twenty-minute drive, and somehow Maggi without stress feels… bland. I still buy a packet sometimes, especially when I’m missing home or feeling overwhelmed. But it never quite tastes the same.
Because the thing is, the food wasn’t better. I was just more present. More raw. More open to comfort. In a time when everything felt uncertain — grades, careers, sleep cycles — food was the only thing that made sense. It asked for nothing but gave you everything: warmth, salt, sugar, hope.
So yes, food tasted better during exams. Not because of what it was, but because of what it meant. A tiny, edible rebellion against burnout. A bite of courage. A spoonful of borrowed time.
Born in Mumbai, now stir-frying feelings in Texas. Writes about food, memory, and the messy magic in between — mostly to stay hungry, sometimes just to stay sane.
Born in Mumbai, now stir-frying feelings in Texas. Writes about food, memory, and the messy magic in between — mostly to stay hungry, sometimes just to stay sane.
