i shall eat cake

Let me tell you a beautiful story...

This is all about a young boy who more than twenty years ago was insane about cake. He was not insane about the velvety softness of the core inside a cake. Probably like any other youngish child he was insane about the icing, the sweet substance above the layers of flour and eggs. The topmost crust that was colorful and enticing to everyone who saw a well-baked cake. He loved to lick the icing off his small fingers and the sides of his lips. The sweetness totally drowned him in a wonderful sea of untold delights.

Because of this gastronomic obsession he visited his aunt's house almost everytime she made cake for a big birthday celebration among relatives or for orders from outside customers. His aunt was a fairy at creating sublime delicacies and aphrodisingly delicious cakes of all forms and tastes. The young boy would wait in anticipation as the aunt brewed wondrous pastries of untold richness of taste. However not once would he consume a slice of the cake. What he was after was the icing that would be left over. This was the creamy paste that did not make it to the finishing touches of the cake. The cake would not need anymore icing so there was a lot of leftover cream on her bowls . He would gorge himself on the the bowls of cream with different colors and experience one of his earliest encounters with gastronomical highs.

But for a certain period the young boy was pulled from his childly habit of waiting for leftover icing from his aunt's baking sessions. He became busy with school, friends, the outside world. He went onto adventures away from home and completely became detached from his aunt's house who he used to visit often to see if something was brewing in the kitchen. He became a child of the world.

Then one day after so many years he decided to visit his aunt's house to see if she was making something. She was baking something delicious! The familiar smell quelled the primitive juices of his palate. He was back home. He waited for his aunt to finish with her concoction but to his surprise there was very little icing left in her magical bowl. He also noticed the cake was not as big as before too. Of course...a smaller cake with less icing! The boy became sad over this. This was a sadness that consumed his character.

Suddenly a thought hit him from nowhere. Times were hard. People were sacked from their jobs. Money was hard to come by. The country was in a bad state. Not so many people were willing to part with money that easily anymore. The boy grieved not for the way people spent their money or how much cakes cost nowadays though. He was sad for his aunt. She was not the same vibrant, magical, and glib personality he had known before. She was a bit slower now, less loud and probably was not earning as much as before. She baked fewer cakes this time.

The boy overcame his own selfishness and prayed for his aunt. He prayed she would not create more delicious pastries in the future but instead prayed she would become happier even if she baked less concoctions. He missed the times when he was at her table and like a predator snatched her leftover icing. That was a thing of the past he realized. Now he had overcome this selfishness and realised there was much more to life than icing on top of the cake....