I like X’mas. I like the way Bandra lights up to welcome this festive season. I like the small cottages with decorations and cheer around them. The malls and shopping arcades turn into hubs of frantic activity but more than anything, I like the X’mas sweets that my neighbour sends us year after year.
This year too, she’s sent a plate with the best home-made goodies.There are kal kals, chocolates, plum cake and awesome marzipan.
So here we are, the sweets and I, alone…
Doveye: Yummy sweets
Marzipan: Thank you
D: D’uh! Did someone say something?
M: Yes, I did. I’m Ms Marzipan.
D: What the #$&@! I think I’m having a sugar rush. I shouldn’t have had all those chocolates.
M: Aah, I don’t know but you could take a bite of me too.
D: Ok! Enough! This is creepy! I know I need sleep n I’ve been hogging way too much…lemme put on some music. I didn’t thinka day would come when food would talk to me.
M: Nice idea! I want to listen to George Michael’s Last Christmas
D: FINE, FOOD! FREAK ME OUT!
M: Relax! How were the kal kals? You ate them with a very greedy look on your face. It was quite a sight.
D: (grins) Yeah, they were good. My neighbour should send more.
M: What’s next now? Take a bite of my clan, we were moulded just this morning. Your old neighbour woke up at seven to prepare us for our day’s work.
D: Really? She’s been working that hard for the sweets? I hogged most of them in under 2 minutes.
M: Hmm…
D: You know what Marzi, I am not gonna eat you.
M: WHY?
D: I don’t feel like.
M: Hey, you are supposed to do that..eat us. You love us. In fact, I heard you saying that you preferred us to anyone else on this platter.
D: I do, trust me, I do but I need to control my diet. I am putting on weight.
M: That’s ok. You can diet tomorrow. You know, I am the best that you’ve ever had till now…ever in your life.
D: (gulps down a mouthful of drool) I can imagine. I am getting tyres, you see. FAT is not good.
M: Well, think again. That gentle soul, your neighbour bought the choicest cashews from Goa when she was there last month for her grandson’s 3rd birthday. She fought with her daughter-in-law who was acting bossy, and slipped to the market by the music equipment shop. There she bargained and actually paid a little more. She sneaked us back to your building and has been up all day kneading and mouldingus.
D: Yaar, kya musibat hai! Aaj kal food bhi senti deta hai!
M: Do you want to disappoint your neighbour?
D: NO! But I haven’t been to the gym in more than a month. I can’t allow myself to be carried away. Thank you, Aunty but I need to exercise some kind of self-control. If I allow myself to be lead now, then I’ll end up eating everything and looking like a fat oaf. I cannot just binge. No, not, non, neigh, nyaah. I am not eating you. That’s final!
What happened in the next few seconds cannot be explained. There were some confused and awkward movements but there was no more marzipan left. After the crime was committed, Guilt arose, patted my back and belly and eventually said ‘Well done, you ate those too’.
It’s not my fault. It’s the food…it entices me into eating it..and by bloody sweet tooth!
Here’s wishing all a very Merry Christmas and a peaceful n prosperous New Year :)
