I'm 26! And here's a story: A Sweet Kiss
A hundred-year-old lady desperately needs someone to smother cake in her face
maybe: ishaan
I’m 26! And I am doing exactly what my parents did at this age: taking care of Ishaan Goel. Tough to say who had a harder job. When my parents were twenty-six, I was small, feeble, and unburdened by the knowledge of my existence. My mom tells me I pooped a lot but didn’t cry so much. Perhaps that was just how I expressed myself—silent but deadly. Now, I’m still small but stronger and weighed down by the complexities of living in our funky world. Fortunately, my bowel movements are normal. So take your pick: Cleaning up shit or getting your shit together?
How did I celebrate 26? There was the usual fanfare with my immediate family:
Pizza Hut
2 Liters of Pepsi
Pineapple Pastries from Hot Breads
And of course, I got caked in the face:
For as long as I can remember, someone has caked me in the face on my birthday (usually my sister), and I have taken every opportunity to cake others on theirs. Many of my Indian friends share this experience. I have no idea why we do this. Why are so many brown people caking each other? Are non-brown people doing this? If you’re not brown and you’re doing this, please tell me. Leave a comment below or email me (ishishgoel@gmail.com). Send me some photos. Cake me on my 27th.
I asked my mom about it, and she said that her family didn’t do it, and neither did we actually until I was like eight or nine or ten. There is a custom of feeding the birthday person something sweet (usually cake), but in their mouths, not on their face-skin. It’s meant to bring good luck, and like most modern, ancient Indian traditions, it might be recent and western.
I guess it’s not actually the case that all brown people everywhere cake each other. (But, even here, in this non-Indian Wikipedia Post about Birthday Customs and Celebrations, they chose a photo of an Indian family to represent all of Birthday customs and celebrations). Perhaps it’s just something born from nothing that has become contagious, like a sneeze, or a yawn, or a chuckle. I think that’s fine. That’s a good enough reason to do it. It gives all the participants something to do as well. And if you need a little bit more meaning to appreciate it, read my story (below). Seriously, just read it. It will take less than ten minutes. I hope you like it.
Now, when someone asks you why brown people are all caking each other, please share it with them. It’s yours now, too, just like everything else on this earthy sphere.
Let’s create a myth,
Ishaan
A Sweet Kiss
~2000 words, 8 min read
Today is Ruhi’s one-hundredth birthday and she worries it won’t happen for her this year. She asks the local cake-walah over the phone whether he could do it when he arrives with her pineapple pastry.
“Madame, you know it won’t work. It must be done by someone close to you. Maybe, if Munna Dada were still alive, he could have done it.”
The boy was right. She barely knew him—he took over the shop from Munna only recently. But Ruhi couldn’t help smiling to herself. At least Munna had passed along the tradition. What his grandson genuinely believed didn’t really matter. If he knew about it, it might slip out in conversation, that Munna loved cake smothered all over his face on his birthday. Maybe, the boy’s children would start to do it, too, out of love for their grandfather’s shenanigans. Perhaps they would do it to the boy. Maybe they would do it to his partner. To their friends. To their future partners. To their own children. Not because it meant something to them, but because they thought it was fun. But who would do it to her today?
“Madam, what about your husband? Surely, he can do it.”
Her husband, Rohan, died of cancer in 2006 while eight-five. He didn’t really believe in the tradition himself. Why would getting caked affect what happened to you after you died? You would be dead, and that was that. But it didn’t bother him to do it for Ruhi. Sometimes, he even delighted in it. He just hated it when someone caked him. Why get all messy and sticky, especially on your birthday? Ruhi thought about her first attempt to cake him. During his twenty-first, his first birthday after their marriage, she took the entire Halwa Cake and shoved it in his face. The semolina clung to his nose, not sliding down like the cream from a typical cake. This made him incredibly angry. He shoved her away, fuming hazardously, and began to shout nasty things. Ruhi began to cry, but she knew it was her duty now. She was sure that his mother had done it to him for the first two decades. So Ruhi continued to cake Rohan every year. He continued to get angry, shove her, and yell. Divorce wasn’t an option for them. He couldn’t leave her. She couldn’t leave him. By sixty, he finally acquiesced.
“Okay,” he said, “If you must do it, do it gently. I am not a crazy person who wishes to receive an entire cow’s worth in the face like a child in a cafeteria food fight. And please, only the right cheek. My bad one.”
She agreed. Her finger grazed the butterscotch frosting, his favorite, picking up less than a toothpaste-on-a-toothbrush amount. She dabbed Rohan’s right cheek and left a smudge. An atom of goo touching face-skin was all that was required. That she welcomed more was just a preference. She knew it didn’t impact her odds at ending the cycle, but a little peck of flour on Rohan’s cheek might affect his. He tried to hold back a smile.
“Madame, so sorry to hear about your husband. But, what about your friends?”
Her two closest friends, Baksha and Bogi, had attended her ninety-ninth. After she blew out ninety-eight candles and saved one lit, as her mother had taught her, Baksha and Bogi grabbed snowball chunks and rubbed them on each of her cheeks. A hunk of pineapple slid down the right one, pulsed toward her double chin like a confectionary snail. Ruhi retaliated immediately. She grabbed two of the pastries Munna had sent her and pushed them into Baksha and Bogi’s faces. She started to laugh the laugh that made her stomach twist. Baksha and Bogi told her to calm down, sit down, and stop laughing so much because she might have a heart attack.
“Don’t worry,” she said, still writhing in hahas, “If I die now, it won’t matter. I will make it. I am not afraid of my heart-stopping.”
Baksha and Bogi had passed away only a few months ago. Baksha slipped down the staircase, and Bogi just didn’t wake up one morning. She assumed they had escaped. They must have. She had caked them for over ninety years herself. They couldn’t do it to her now even if they wanted to because they were no longer beings. They were no longer anything. They were a part of everything. Would she still get a chance to join them? To become them?
“Madame, don’t you have any children?”
Her youngest daughter, who would have happily done it, had passed away in a car accident when she was twenty-two. Her eldest one, now sixty-five, lived in America. But even if she were here now, she wouldn’t have done it.
“Mummy, that doesn’t make any sense,” Junal had told her when Ruhi tried to explain the tradition to her when Junal was fifteen, "Why would it work this way? What evidence is there for this? How is this compatible with physics, biology, and chemistry? Besides, I don’t think non-Indian people do this. What about them? What’s going to happen to them?”
“Beta, they do what they need to do. We do this. Not everyone has to do the same.”
“Mummy, this is dumb. Stop trying to spread cake on my face. I don’t like it. It’ll ruin my skin.”
Junal never allowed even a tickle of sugar on her face, so every year, Ruhi snuck into Junal's room while she was asleep. She swiped her forehead with a dash of whatever treat they had celebrated with, waited ten seconds, and then wiped it off with a damp handkerchief. Sometimes Junal tossed a little, almost waking up, and Ruhi had to sneak out on her tiptoes. Once safe in her bedroom, tucked underneath a comforter, Ruhi would tell her husband she succeeded, only for him to toss the other way, grumble, and tell her that she was crazy. They did this for eighteen years together before Junal went off to college in America.
“Madame, I am so sorry. Deeply sorry for the loss of your smaller daughter at such a young age. And Madame, I am sure your bigger daughter would do it out of respect for you if she were here. You shouldn’t think so negatively about her. It’s not good for your heart. And if you have done it successfully for ninety-nine years now, maybe it will be enough. Don’t you think so? But don’t worry, Madame. Don’t worry. I will bring you some pastries immediately, and I will celebrate with you. And I will bring more than one. And not two. Not three. Not four. Not five. Not six. Not seven. Okay. Hey. Madame, I will bring as many as I can carry on my bicycle. I will shove them in your face, and we will try our best.”
Ruhi puts down her phone and tightens the comforter around her. The cake-walah had forgotten to ask about her grandchildren. She has one, Anya. She wonders if Anya would do it if she were here instead of in America like her mother. They had only met a few times. But it was unlikely Anya even knew about the tradition. Why would Junal have told her?
Last night, Ruhi had thought about going up the staircase she had avoided for the previous fifteen years. She would sneak into her daughters’ old bedroom one last time. Tiptoe back to the one she inhabited with Rohan. Then, she would try her best to come back down. She had wondered, while she was still ninety-nine, that if she slipped like Baksha if she would make it. Would it have counted? She wouldn’t try to force the fall, but she wouldn’t resist, either. If it came, it came. At her age, the odds were high.
Or perhaps, like Boga, she just wouldn’t wake up tomorrow. Could she dream herself into nothing? But it was wrong to ask for death. Even Junal would agree that whether you were Indian or non-Indian, you shouldn't ask for death. And so today, on her one hundredth, Ruhi asks for forgiveness instead. As she mutters mantras from her mouth, each one a signal into space, Ruhi’s doorbell rings, buzzing her back to life.
“I am coming, beta,” she shouts at the cake-walah, “I am coming.” Ruhi wiggles out of her comforter. She takes short, swivel-y steps to the gate. Could she do it to herself?
“I am here, beta,” She clutches the rust-smeared iron handles and swings with all of her strength, “Please just give me some time. I am very old.” Maybe she could place the pastry on a high shelf and walk into it. Would that work? “Okay, be—.”
Anya hurls a white pastry with a pineapple chunk visible on top—Ruhi’s favorite—straight into her face, “Happy Birthday, Dadi!”
Ruhi’s chest starts to ache and tighten, “Anya, what are you doing here?” Ruhi places a hand on her heart, “Where is Junal?”
“I wanted to surprise you for your one hundredth, Dadi. Mumma couldn’t make it. She broke her right leg while hiking and didn’t want to worry you. Don’t worry, Mumma’s fine. She said she really wanted to come. She told me a story about how you loved to get caked in the face for your birthday. She told me you snuck into her room and spread some on her forehead when you thought she was asleep because she would never let you do it while she was awake. She told me how mad you made her and how her forehead stayed sticky all night even though you tried your best to wipe it dry. You’re so silly, Dadi. I don't know why Mumma is so mad at just one little, sweet kiss. I told her I would give her one on her sixty-sixth. A sweet kiss just like Dadi. She just mumbled and called me crazy.”
Ruhi starts to feel short of breath but continues to smile. Cold sweats secrete from her face but are unnoticed as they mix with sugar, flour, and heavy cream. She continues to listen to her granddaughter’s story.
“Dadi, I had actually brought you a proper cake, but I left it on a bench at the airport when I called my driver. But then, on the way here, we saw a man fall off his bike. I told the driver to check on him. The drive said he was carrying too many pastries. His foot was probably broken, and I suggested he take him to the hospital. I could walk the rest of the way to my destination. The driver told me he refused, saying it was essential that he deliver the pastries to a woman who had turned one hundred today. He needed to smash them all in her face. He had made her a promise. I told him that I would do it for him, but only on one condition. I needed just one of his pastries now to bring to my dadi, who had also turned 100 today and enjoyed getting caked. Maybe you know her, Dadi? Does everyone like getting caked here? Is this just what our people do? I wish Mumma had told me sooner. I think I would have liked to get caked. I guess I can start now.”
Ruhi, light and dizzy, pushes into Anya, hugging her. The cake from Ruhi's face smears onto Anya's. “Beta, I am so glad you came." Ruhi knows that it’s too late for Anya. She has already spent one-third of this life without following the custom, but like Junal, she will get another chance in the next one. But it’s not too late for Anya’s children and their children. “Please do it every year, Anya. Please do it with your children. You’re right. This is just what our people do.”
Wonderful Ishaan
Stay blessed
Awesome piece. I loved the story and how every character had a real voice. I loved the intro. The humor and story telling us spot in. Thanks for all the pop culture references too. I guess whether cake wallah knows about the Lebron James Miami heat years. Already excited for your next great story. Thanks for sharing!