Muriel and I are at the Creamery. I’ve chosen an ice cream to match my mood: midnight chocolate. She cuts right to the chase. “So. Why are you and Bins still together?” I shrug. “Because it’s the easier option.”
Muriel has a tall glass of cold coffee. “Even though you hate each other?” she asks. I tilt my head to the side. “We don’t hate each other”, I say. “Hate is an extreme word. Like charred toast. No-one wants to eat charred toast because it’s not food any longer. We’re more like cooking chocolate: still edible, still chocolate, but not sweet.”
Just then Janet, our wait-person, wanders by and hears that last remark. “Not sweet enough?” she asks. Muriel rolls her eyes and explains that I have just compared my life partner to cooking chocolate. Janet is tall, blonde and generously proportioned, like a great pink pear. All her weight is distributed evenly around her middle and hips. She’s good at her job however, and there’s a quality of oceanic serenity as she glides about the restaurant delivering sundaes and hamburgers, French fries and coffees.
So when she stops, as she does now at our table, it’s a bit like an ocean-going tanker slamming on its brakes. “Chocolate!?” she says, clearly taken by surprise. “You mean he’s... he’s...” She doesn’t want to complete the sentence but the remark has acquired momentum and we can see it practically bumping against the back of her teeth. Her face goes bright red as we’re both staring expectantly up at her. We have no idea why she’s looking embarrassed. “He’s dark, you mean? Like cooking chocolate?”
Of course, she had never wanted to make such an obvious reference to race. Particularly when Muriel and I are both decidedly caramel in colour. Desperate to defuse any possible tension, I throw back my head and neigh, “Oh no! He’s French!” To which Muriel adds, “ — but from India.” Janet frowns. “If he’s from India then... isn’t he just Indian?” His parents are French, I explain. They settled in India at the time when the French had colonies there. So Bins is a citizen of France even though he was born in India.
Confusion is spreading across Janet’s warm, friendly features. “Really?” she says. “I mean, I thought France and India were really far apart. And what about the chocolate then?” she asks. “Isn’t that made in Switzerland?” “Also Belgium,” says Muriel. I can see her shoulders are shaking with suppressed laughter though her face is poker-straight. “I compared him to chocolate because he’s not sweet,” I say. “Or Swiss,” adds Muriel.
“And he’s from Pondicherry,” I say, firmly avoiding Muriel’s gaze. To my surprise, Janet lights up. “Pondicherry?! Sure, I’ve heard of that! My boyfriend goes to an ash-ram there, and oh my goodness? That is in India!” Smiles break out all around. “It sounds like a great place. I’d love to go there some day.” “Don’t forget to take some chocolate,” says Muriel, in an act of pure mischief. But Janet has already turned and glided away out of earshot.
(Manjula Padmanabhan, author and artist writes about her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column)
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