The baker uncle and the two biscuits
Every neighbourhood had one little bakery and one baker everyone trusted.
Ours was a modest shop tucked into a corner of the market. Before I knew him as a baker, I knew him by his uniform - a white banyan, a neatly tied dhoti, and a white cotton cloth forever resting on his shoulder. I don’t remember ever seeing him in anything else.
Once every month, my mother would carry a sack of wheat flour to his bakery. A few days later, that same sack would return home transformed into crisp, lightly sweet wheat biscuits. There was something magical about that exchange. As a child, I genuinely believed he possessed a kind of everyday magic - the ability to turn flour into happiness.
Whenever my mother went to collect them, I insisted on going along. The bakery smelled of warm biscuits, toasted wheat, butter, and something I still can’t quite name. Even today, that smell takes me back before I realise I’ve travelled.
I was too short to see inside the glass display. So I would stand on my toes, sometimes even jump, trying to catch a glimpse of the pastries lined neatly inside. He always noticed. He would smile, hand the large sack to my mother, and then quietly keep two biscuits aside. “These are for you.”
He would place them carefully into my tiny hands, as though he were entrusting me with something precious. I don’t remember saying thank you. I only remember looking up at him with complete admiration. What I didn’t know then was that those two biscuits had another job waiting at home.
Every evening, my mother had a ritual she believed in wholeheartedly. A few drops of warm mustard oil in each nostril. She was convinced it would make our brains sharper. My siblings and I were far less convinced. So before the ceremony began, she would place those two precious biscuits into my hands. “Hold these.”
Then came the mustard oil. The sharp sting. The tears. The complaints. And before I could protest too much, she would gently say, “Now eat your biscuits.” Those biscuits became a peace treaty between a mother’s determination and a child’s resistance. Looking back now, I smile at the innocence of it all.
The baker wasn’t simply making biscuits. My mother wasn’t simply giving us a sweet treat. Without intending to, the two of them had created one of the memories I have carried for a lifetime.
I no longer remember how many biscuits were in that sack. But I remember the warmth of the two that never made it inside. I remember the kindness in the baker uncle’s eyes. I remember my mother’s hands. And every time I smell freshly baked wheat biscuits, I am a little girl again - standing on her toes, waiting for two warm biscuits that tasted, somehow, of love.
