A candies’ tale~ (From WHEN MR. PIRZADA CAME TO DINE-Lahiri, Jhumpa )

Have I ever tell you I had a weird habit when I was small? Well, kids usually keep their falling tooth under their pillow and wait for the tooth fairy to come but I was keeping candies under my pillow instead of my falling tooth when I was a kid!

(Well, not this much..but there were so many different varieties you know?!!)

Blame it all at Mr. Pirzada!! ;) He was the one who spoiled me with all those yummilicious candies!

That year….Apart from eating a piece of candy for the sake of Mr.Pirzada’s family and praying for their safety, there was nothing I could do to makes things better as a little girl. Whoops, there was something big going on that time, it’s like real big!! And I’m going to tell you all.

Well, I nearly forgot when did Mr.Pirzada came into my life, but I heard from my mama that he came from Dacca, now the capital of Bangladesh, but then a part of Pakistan.

This is how Dacca look like... 

 Mama told me that Mr. Pirzada had a three-story home back in Dacca, a lectureship in botany at the university, a wife of twenty year, and seven daughters between the ages of six and sixteen whose names all began with the letter A, and it was all their mother’s idea! Luckily papa and mama didn't came out with such crazy idea!! >__^

Mr.Pirzada is like my real uncle and I believe he is a very good husband and father. As far as I could remember, each week Mr. Pirzada wrote letters to his wife, and sent comic books to each of his seven daughters.

(Shhhh..Sometimes Mr.Pirzada let me read first before he posted it back to Dacca!!)

How did Mr. Pirzada end up at America, far apart from the family at Dacca? I think he must be a well-educated man because he had been awarded a grant from the government of Pakistan to study the foliage of New England. Mama said the grant was a great honor, but when converted into dollars it was not generous. Therefore, Mr. Pirzada ended up living in a room in a graduate dormitory, and did not own a proper stove or a television set of his own. Oh ya, and that’s how he came to our house to eat dinner and watch the evening news (and gimme candies!!).

I was born here and never have a single idea about history of India, if it wasn’t because of Mr.Pirzada and his candies, I wouldn’t be so concern about the partition of India in 1947, which is also India’s Independence Day from Britian. I still remember how papa said it: 

“One moment we were free and then we were sliced up,”

 “Mr. Pirzada is Bengali, but he is a Muslim,” my father informed me. “Therefore he lives in East Pakistan, not India.”

Back to my topic, how did I pick up such a weird habit! Well, there is one time when we watched the news about Ducca from TV, BAD NEWS!

I could still remembered clearly that night I tried to convince myself that Mr. Pirzada’s family was in good situation. Eventually I took a square of white chocolate out of the box, and unwrapped it, and then I did something I had never done before. I put the chocolate in my mouth, letting it soften until the last possible moment, and then as I chewed it slowly, I prayed that Mr. Pirzada’s family was safe and sound. I had never prayed for anything before, had never been taught or told to, but I decided, given the circumstances, that it was something I should do.

Guess what?? That night when I went to the bathroom I only pretended to brush my teeth, for I feared that I would somehow rinse the prayer out as well. I wet the brush and rearranged the tube of paste to prevent my parents from asking any questions, and fell asleep with sugar on my tongue. Hahaaa!!! I admit that I was quite naive that time, F I NE!!! But hey, I was just a kid back then okayyy? I wanted to help but there is nothing I can do and I knew Mr.Pirzada misses her 7 daughters so much from the way he cared and looked after me, like the halloween night!

I always knew Mr. Pirzada would go back to his home in Dacca, to reunion with his family~

Finally, several months later, we received a card from Mr. Pirzada commemorating the Muslim New Year, along with a short letter. 

This habit of eating candy every night for Mr.Pirzada's family had been going on ever since he went back to Dacca. Each night before bed, I continue to eat a piece of candy I had saved from Halloween. And that night upon reading that letter, there was no need to do that anymore. Instead, I kept that letter under my pillow for quite sometime until I went to college. And our family continue to write letters with Mr.Pirzada to keep in touch with him.Recently he just became a grandfather. 

Bonus for you all: The picture he sent us the other day before 2011 new year.

Prepared by:

Choo Siaw Yin (Matric Number: 100464)