Day: June 19, 2012

This post was first published in my private blog two years ago on the occasion of my secondborn’s birthday.  I reproduce it here today for public consumption with a view to reflect and rejoice in the gift of life even as we celebrate a sixteenth birthday.  For her fourteenth, for some whimsical reason, she got two cakes!  The original post follows.  The cakes for her 15th and 16th follow below after the post.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Let Them Eat Cake

Let them eat it everyday (if they can and wish!), but let them eat it for sure on their birthdays!  Well, the title of this post is a phrase oft-attributed to Marie Antoinette, the last Queen of France known for her lavish ways for whom brioche or cake was as ordinary as bread.  But cake is not ordinary.  It is extravagant in every way:  butter, sugar, flour and flavorings come together to create a decadent sensation for the palate and the eyes.  It is the signature food for special occasions: weddings and birthdays, in particular.

And so, last week we had cake.  To celebrate S’s 14th birthday.  Not one or two, but three altogether!  And here’s why:  there’s the main one– a very fancy guava-and-lime tiered cake on the day of her birthday (which happened to be a Wednesday); another small one which was a double-chocolate fudge brownie cake (which is a random tradition in our house to have a smallish one on the side, just for fun!); and a standard yellow sheet-cake on the day of her party (Friday of that week) with her friends that has a lovely blue-and-yellow frosting of flowers that also look like butterflies!  Needless to say, all three were delicious!

 And speaking of cake, I read this article the other day on an interesting concept in designing a dinner menu for a wedding reception– a novelty idea to have each dish catered by a different source, including the cake which looks oh-so-gorgeous in all that chocolate glory and those pink flowers (orchids?) as a shocking and delightful contrast against the rich brown chocolate exterior.  Mmmm… I think that cake might have even stolen the show at that reception! 

Oh, and by the way, that phrase Let Them Eat Cake, well, there is controversy on whether or not the line was truly uttered by Marie Antoinette.  Here’s some more info on that.

So, enjoy these pictures of Samira’s birthday cakes.  They were certainly good enough to eat!  Now, if only we could have eaten our cake and had it too… 🙂

…especially when you’re Sweet Sixteen!

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Third Sunday In June

The Google logo today shows an image of a kid running ahead of a guy who is presumably the Dad, and a kite is flying along behind them as if to imply that they’re going to fly the kite. Nice. It reminds me of my own childhood of my father teaching me how to fly a kite from our rooftop on late Spring afternoons.

The kite-flying was only one of several things that my Dad taught me how to do, and one of several things that I learnt well (the others I didn’t take to quite so easily or so well!). Some other things he taught me to do:

• polish my shoes and shine them so they served as mirrors
• lace up shoes (in two different ways) so they were of equal length
• tie those same shoelaces (in two different ways)
• ride a bicycle (craftily letting go of me without my knowing, where when I did realize that he wasn’t right behind me holding the rear of the bike, I instantly fell down!)
• drive a car (which was an exercise in trying both of our patience– me as a sixteen-year old lacking much of it anyway!)
• ride his large Lambretta scooter, and especially to pull it up to park it up on its stand
• do long division and all the other math that I seemed to lag behind in
• edit my essays and the occasional speech for Independence Day and/or Republic Day
• fill up the inkwell of my fountain pen without making a mess
• tie a necktie in the classic Windsor knot
• and to flood our house and our minds with the news and current affairs of the day by way of always having our subscriptions to National Geographic, The Reader’s Digest, Time magazine, and The Illustrated Weekly always current (not to mention the fortnightly Indrajal comics that the paperwallah would drop off along with the daily Times of India newspaper).

But beyond all this, my father taught me a few other things as well.  Here’s a very small list.  He taught me:

• by personal example the importance of being humble in all things
• in not bragging about oneself
• in helping out in whatever way one could (and God knows he loaned family, friend and foe money that many a time went unreturned)
• in the importance of holding one’s peace (to the point that he gained a reputation in some family circles of not being willing to speak up)
• in taking risks (with his choice of career and vocation)
• in being so devoted to my mother (to the point that he has been affectionately labeled as being henpecked)
• in being unashamed of proclaiming his personal faith and sharing it with all and sundry (to the point that as I grew older, I didn’t need much convincing from him to follow in the same way)
• and in reassuring me many a time, especially in times of my own doubt and discontent in my later years of his love for me, that he loved me!
  

 So, yes, the image of the kite does remind me of many things today. Also, it makes me reflect on what that means to me, and the fact that I have been privileged to have a loving father.

Here’s hoping for many more such years of treasuring my father and of reminiscing on our relationship on this third Sunday in June each year.