I was talking to my mother over the phone, as usual, sometime in the morning. One of my usual calls. This was the day after Deepavali. She asked me whether I had sweets, and I said no. A friend of mine did give me some sweets, but that was not the same as the kind of sweets, or the concept of them, as we were used to at home. So I told her that I hadn’t had sweets. She probably got a little sad, that her son had not had Diwali sweets while they themselves had some. She asked me why I didn’t buy some for myself.
Then she told me about the kind of sweets which had appeared in the market. And she told me that back then, when she was a child, there were not these many varieties. And that her family wouldn’t buy them either. And that one time when she cried for them, they got her a packet of sweets, which were the the normal kind, just a few laddus and jalebis in a packet.
The story isn’t that saddening, right?
She told me that one Diwali day, her father (my grandfather) reached home with a parcel in his hand, and she thought it was a pack of Diwali sweets. I could imagine how hopeful and happy she must have been. But it turned out to be a pair of slippers her mother (my grandmother) had sent off for repair.
This is really difficult to write about. I am probably going to need more than a therapy session to process this.