"You're in time for tea," she said, as she patted the head of a grinning ceramic cat, silently curled up on the dining table.
Petal-shaped cupcakes frosted with buttercream icing, pink, blue, and yellow, dotted the tablecloth. Aunt Alice sliced three cupcakes, one of each color, into three parts, as equally as possible, and then arranged the tiny wedges on three small plates for teatime, one for me, one for her, and evidently, one for the cat, all decorated with what appeared to be fresh violets that had been hand-dipped in crystal sugar. Oddly, she served the cat first, the yellow cupcake, and I found myself puzzled, wondering if she really thought it could eat it. Then she handed the pink cupcake on a plate to me.
"Thank you, Aunt Alice, but no cake for me," I said politely.
"Nonsense, of course you want cake, otherwise you wouldn't be here." She poured three cups of tea, passed one to me, one for the cat and another for herself. She pointed to a stack of sugar cubes, curiously decorated with the number three.
"Your china is beautiful." I sipped my tea and kept my strange thoughts to myself. After all, she was an old lady; perhaps even a bit eccentric.
"It's Royal Doulton, dear, you can tell its fine china by the feel of it." Aunt Alice stirred her tea, her spoon orchestrating a silvery jingle on the side of the teacup.
To be agreeable, I dropped a sugar cube into my tea and watched it dissolve. I nibbled one morsel of cake, and much to my surprise, three cakes popped forth on my plate, all of them pink and beautifully frosted, just like the original cupcake.
Aunt Alice loved blue and she dutifully popped a wedge of her blue cupcake into her pink-rimmed mouth, and then without hesitation, a second bite. Magically, nine blue cupcakes lined up in a row. Aunt Alice giggled in delight like a school girl.
"Let's not stop until we cover the table. Before long, It'll be twenty-seven cakes deep, just with the blue ones." She pushed her glasses up on her nose, her blue hair bouncing as she laughed. "Don't fall behind, Mr. Kitty."
I took another bite, producing three more pink cupcakes. And although I couldn't believe my eyes, when I looked over at the cat, the table around him was covered with cheery yellow cupcakes and he looked like he was smiling.
In this eccentric tale set in a small town in northern India, Pawan Mishra masterfully weaves ingenuity and sarcasm in a manner that’s simultaneously hilarious and tragic.
A teenage boy struggling with the coming-of-age issues of sexuality, religion, and peer approval is overwhelmed, but soldiers on. After several years, he comes to understand the family forces that have left him so deeply troubled, and the process of
