For the Love of Sweets

A Grateful Heart, Day 18

Photo by Stefano Zocca on Unsplash

We went to the big mall yesterday after the lockdown and I was overjoyed to find that the counters selling sweets and fish and meat were all open and being (wo)manned by happy salesgirls and the odd man or two. It felt as though the Sun had risen in there.

I made a straight beeline for the sweets, informing the man I live with, that I couldn’t EXIST without sweets. He gave me a narrow and very stern look, which, of course, I couldn’t see. I hurried to all the glass cases, and shamelessly ogled all the sweets, deep-fried, and dripping with ghee and I felt that my life had some meaning after all

The gentleman accompanied me, disapprovingly. He had always deplored my shocking lack of restraint, and my repetition of scandalous words like ‘I have set my heart on it...’

“You must not,” he had said once, “set your heart on anything. Then you won’t be disappointed.” We were out on our walk, and I almost swallowed my tongue when he said that. Many, hasty words had risen, unbidden, to my lips, but I resolutely stayed mum. Mutinous, but mum.

I was BORN setting my heart on things. I shall most certainly die that way. What’s the sense in living any other way?

My Suns are bright, my moons are light, my rains are silver downpours. My breezes are riffs, my winds are Vibrato, my thunder always, crescendo.

But catch me explaining all this to him. Ha!

So I went and tasted and tested, and grinned like a crazy Cheshire cat all the while, and I got all the long, sad faces around me in the mall, to smile.

And we returned with the vehicle piled high with food, and lots of sweets. Which I am eating very slowly, especially the Bhalushahi, and the prawns.

Thank God for the small flavourful things in life. For the food and the smiles and the words to describe them. For the sun and the rain and the clouds between them.

©️ 2021 Suma Narayan. All Rights Reserved.

This is a response to the Monthly Prompt of Ravyne Hawke’s light-filled publication, ‘Promptly Written.’ Today is Day 18, of my Gratitude Journal.