Cake Encounter

My Gran and I used to walk every evening. It was something I had looked forward to, every day. Armed with a shopping bag, awaiting the stories that she'd tell me about her life in foreign lands, I'd set out with her down the tree-lined avenue, and trace the same route we'd taken every day since this routine began. We'd stop at the vegetable vendor first, take our pick and then head for the shop selling old books and magazines. The last stop would be the bakery, where she would buy me the sponge cake I fancied, before buying something savoury for my grandfather and for herself, to have alongside evening tea.

There was nothing special about that sponge cake - in appearance at least. It looked plain and unassuming, very much like a loaf of bread, albeit of softer colour and finer crumb. The shopkeeper would slide it out from the glass display, place it on the counter, and slice it deftly, the way he sliced the bread. But it tasted phenomenal. Mildly sweet, with the subtle flavour of vanilla, and soft as a cloud. Quite simply, it was the taste of joy.

The sponge cake became a prominent feature of my stay with my grandparents, until the bakery shut down and was replaced by an uninteresting pharmacy. I had to leave the city soon after too, but those evenings with my grandmother remained unforgettable.

It's been over a decade now, and I haven't found a cake shop that makes sponge cake quite like that one - until yesterday! It was a small bakery, and it bore the identical, typically South-Indian name too! Coincidence? I don't know. But I do know that it had the same, familiar hunk of sponge cake that has been on my mind for years, neatly stacked and showcased between fruit cake and gaudy cream cakes.

So I brought home some, carefully wrapped in plastic, its sweet, subtle aroma awakening a montage of old remembrances. Like the distinct smells of the old bakery, the delicate vanilla flavour of the sponge cake, and the long, happy walks with my Gran, much before the days she was ill and confined to a hospital bed.

It takes me back to a different time, a different life, to the special person who made it so wonderful. And it makes me grateful for the gifts my grandmother left me...memories of long conversations, of genuine caring, of steaming cups of tea on balmy evenings, and neatly cut slices of delicious sponge cake.