The sweetmeat conundrum
WHENEVER my close relatives or family friends visited my house, they used to bring sweetmeats despite my pleas against this formality. I would always tell them: “Please don’t bring sweets for me as I am consciously avoiding them.”
“But how can we discontinue this tradition all of a sudden?” they would ask. “Okay, in that case, bring fruits,” would be my riposte. A relative beat me at my own game. One day, as he arrived at my home with his family, what he brought made me laugh: a basketful of vegetables!
I have a sweet tooth, but my weakness for sweets is limited to sweetened milk tea. I know well that consuming confectionaries will benefit only the sweetmeat shop owners and not those who partake of them. Excessive sugar consumption is considered a great shortener of life.
A retired Colonel was hired by my employer on contract for a five-year period. He was much older than me. Being diabetic, he was very particular about having tea without sugar. Every day, he would remind the office boy who prepared tea, “No sugar in my tea, OK?” He used sugar-free tablets instead. So far, so good. But he had a sweet tooth — very sweet at that! He gorged on sweets and was second to none at gobbling up snacks.
When I had my first child, a girl, I distributed sweets among my colleagues. As I gave them to the Colonel, he said, “Congrats”, and then added, as if to console me, “Don’t worry, she is Lakshmi, you should be happy.”
“Yes, Colonel. Both my wife and I are very happy to be blessed with a girl,” I replied.
The day she turned one, the Colonel told me, “I want you to go with me to my house. My wife would like to meet you.” There, we had tea and his wife joined us. She said, “Poor Colonel. He is highly diabetic. Very careful about his diet. No sugary tea. No sweets, no rice, no snacks. Nothing other than what he eats here. I pity him.” I had to make an effort to suppress my laughter! When I got up to take my leave, she gave me a gift-wrapped parcel. I looked at her wonderingly. She said, “This is for your daughter. Please open it at home.”
It was a lovely sweater knitted by her. When his contract ended, the Colonel moved out of Mumbai and thereafter we heard nothing of him.
