I am one of those to whom things always came or happened a bit late in life... and never easy!
But the one thing that comes easy to me is Baking a Cake:)
Yes, there is something special about baking. One of my most cherished memories of childhood would be of returning home from school and pausing at the doorway to catch that waft of aroma escaping from a cake being baked in the oven. There is something unexplainably beautiful and happy about baking. The very idea can immediately lift up a sombre mood and turn the day into a small festival! Let me push in a little titbit here- one of the first items that most urban Assamese girls learn to make i.e. of course after the most obvious humble omelette- is to bake a cake or a bread pudding. Though neither of them is origin to our traditional cuisine. Strange I know, but anyways how does it matter?
My earliest memory of baking is of following Ma's heel as she goes around making preparation for the cake- all along telling me the how to~ first we whisk 3 eggs, than we measure a cup of sugar, a cup of melted butter, sieve in a table spoon of baking soda to the flour and etc. etc… So there it was imprinted in my mind. Was never ever consciously listening to her because I was more eager for the batter to be transferred into the baking dish, so that I can get my hands on to the bowl, where she was mixing up all that delicious ingredients and lick it up clean. A job me and my big brother used to do quite throughly, and which was duly and very responsibly taken up by our younger brother once we left home. (By the way, he also has the capacity to wipe off half a kg. of a regular pound cake at one sitting itself)! Oh yes, we were baking that cake; mixing up our very own personal festival! As I became old enough to lend Ma a hand, mixing the cake became more of a family affair. The job of beating the eggs used to be handled by my Uncle- whom all the kids in family grew up fondly calling 'Don'. Yes Don is an 'excellent beater' he can whisk them up to fantastic froth in just couple of minutes. Once everything has gone in Ma would again push the bowl towards Don for that final touch. Then Deuta (father)would do the all important job of setting the oven to the right time and temperature. No, no job is small when you are baking a cake!
After that, the wait .. wait for that happy aroma to float in and quietly fill all our faces with happy smiles:)
There was also this special cake- we used to call it the 'Pithagurir cake'- it's eggless, made with rice flour and baked in a 'showka' ( a wood log earthen stove).
It's a bit moist and chewy, with the lovely fragrance of wood fire flavoring it… been quite some years since I lasted tasted it. We would wait eagerly for it to be sent by our Khuri(aunt); just as my nephew Luit would today wait for his favourite 'homemade cake and cookies' to arrive from his Aaita(granny). By the way, I also taught Luit the fine art of - 'How to lick and wipe clean a batter bowl to look like it has never been used.'
Yesterday I was again baking a cake.. that brings me back to that little detail of being 'a bit late'. Well yes, I baked my cake post Christmas day and not on the eve as I should have .. but I take that as- better late than never;) Besides I am sure that everyone was too busy celebrating and enjoying all the thousand of other delicious gorgeous cakes made around the world, to miss my humble cake.
So, as I was mixing my cake alone.. quietly my mind flew a few hundred miles away... to some many years ago. In there.. in my mind, it was a happy warm montage of all the years Me and Ma had spent baking cakes or cookies. Sometime alone, sometime together as family. And I found myself laughing at the visuals that floated by... of times when disasters struck- when a cake got burnt ; or the middle remained gooey, or we put something in bit too much or too less.. or at the spontaneous celebration when some experiment of Ma came out of the oven with flying colours! Yesterday I was mixing our cake with all those memories softly nudging me and helping me.. with each ingredient I was adding a prayer for all of those in my heart, in my mind.. and then put the baking dish inside the oven with a content smile.. that was my own little festival.
Our lil' girl Môu is tad too young today to follow my heels but perhaps next year she will join me.. help me bake our family cake. And than someday, many years later.. she will gently pour back all this memories into her own little cake and seal it with a Happy smile; thinking of the days and time she spent with her Ma, of course not exactly learning to bake a cake...
Just as I do today- thinking of all the time I spent with Ma in the kitchen as she baked ..patiently waiting to clean the batter bowl clean!
-27th December 2014
