This Onam I was lucky enough to be seated next to Harriet the Accidental Spy. She is 11. And the fullness of her life thrilled me.

Her opening remarks were “I eat five times a day. That’s why I am so fat.” Without looking at her I tried the inji curry and without any heat, I said, “You are not fat.” Clearly it had just been an icebreaker because she said, “Yes, because I cycle four km a day. And on the weekends I cycle 15 km.” I looked up then. Fifteen km? Inside the colony? Yes, she said. It’s true that I usually see Harriet in motion. Either with her girl gang on wheels or inside the pool. One of her friends, a curly-haired character, pinched me underwater one day. When I surfaced and stared at her, she seemed genuinely confused. “Sorry, aunty, I thought you were someone else.” Like who, I wondered.

I complimented Harriet on her chocolate pattu paavadai (silk skirt). “Did you choose it?” “No, it’s the only one I have. My grandmother made it.” She opened her bag to take out an SLR. I Instagrammed the sadya leaf sheepishly as she stood to focus her camera and take an overhead shot.

The dal arrived. She and I looked past the man with the dal and the man with the rice, hoping to see the man with the ghee. No sign of him. We looked at each other. We stopped the next supervising gent and asked him in one voice: Neyyu (ghee)?

He tried to looked genial and said that the ghee was in the dal. This was just not on, Harriet and I concurred. There was ghee in the dal but not as much as we could have coaxed out of a man with a bucket of ghee. Plus, there was no repeats of dal. Harriet and I and my sadya companion on the other side all felt grumpy. I asked Harriet whether it was strange now that her brother has gone to college. “Not at all. Anyway he only fights with me. Even when I call him he just argues with me.” “What about?” “Something. Nothing.”

Harriet now told me that the sadya venue had been changed because a man had died in the colony. “They didn’t bring his body back here, though. They took it to his native place.” My head swam briefly because “native place” was such a Proustian cookie. Or in this case, a Proustian banana chip. I had heard rumours that the man had committed suicide, but Harriet was showing no signs if she knew about it. She had moved on to asking if I was afraid of dogs. No. Her dog had gone to watch the cultural programmes the previous day. Really? No, ha ha, just teasing.

The sambhar had come and gone, and now we were gesturing in a Mexican wave for rasam. And more kootu curry. And maybe a bit more rice.

Look at that aunty, Harriet said. Which one? I tried to look without encountering the gaze of the aunty in the row facing us. The one with the red blouse. She also made payasam in the payasam competition. “Oh, how was it?” “It was a banana payasam. It was too bitter. But mine didn’t win, either.”

You went to the payasam competition, I asked with astonishment. From what I heard, the payasam competition was pretty serious and last year, one of the professional cooks in the neighbourhood had entered and vanquished everyone else. “Yes, aunty. I knew I wouldn’t win. I only got 12 out of 20. But I wanted to make it anyway. I made date payasam.” Then I was told the recipe with an élan that Deb Perelman would approve of. Then she pointed out the aunty who was too sweet. She or the payasam? Harriet giggled. The payasam. She too, Harriet considered. She gave me some of her payasam.

Do you bake, aunty? Not really, I said. “You should bake red velvet cake.” We lunged together at the guy with the buttermilk bucket who looked like he was going to bypass us. Perhaps because of that cardio effort, I told Harriet the truth. I don’t like red velvet cake. “You should try it again,” Harriet said, while making partitions in her mound of rice, for a second stab at rasam. She tilted the banana leaf forward, so the pool didn’t spill into her lap.

“I am not sure about red velvet cake.”

“I don’t use food colour. I use crushed beet.”

How long have you been baking, Harriet? Since she was seven. Then she told me about the chechi (elder sister) who could do everything who had won the payasam contest. How old was said chechi ? Eighteen. Same as my brother. I should eat faster, I need to take pictures of the sadya , she said and patted her bag. She can also paint. She has only one arm, said Harriet. Who? The chechi who won. She is very talented, Harriet said, while making sure we got our full share of the two payasams. And one papadam in between.

I have to take photos, Harriet said. We folded our leaves forward and departed.

Nisha Susan is a writer and editor of the feminist website The Ladies FInger

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