Most mothers like to say, “My child eats nothing.” I am no exception. From the time my daughter started going to school, I have always made a special effort to pack some excitement in her tiffin box every day. Scarlet pasta, jam rolls, melted chocolate on biscuit, egg dosas and so on. However, nothing worked for the longest time.

The tiffin box always came back half full, either with food I had packed or leftovers from someone else’s box.

If I asked her why, she — who could barely string together a sentence in
English — would say with a drawl, “khoob boring”.

The first time there was a deviation from this norm was the day I packed a cream roll. And since then, the cream roll has come to feature regularly in her tiffin.

Growing up in the mining town of Dhanbad all those years ago, my childhood was nothing like my daughter’s, but this girl and that girl had the cream roll in common.

Every evening, all those years ago, Ismailkaka would turn up at what used to be referred to as the “officers’ quarters”. He would be on his bicycle and tied to it was a large tin trunk. Ismailkaka wore bells on his fingers and gave them a shake once he turned into the lane at the mouth of the compound.

He was punctual to a fault. One didn’t have to consult a watch to know what time it was. If Ismailkaka had arrived, it had to be 10 minutes past four.

Children would appear out of now-here, come running from all directions and chase him like a swarm of bees. He beamed like a desi Santa Claus —his face half-covered with a white overgrown beard and a bushy moustache. His eyes were tiny but his gaze cheery; he had a pointed nose and whenever he smiled, one got a glimpse of paan-stained teeth.

Ismailkaka would stop under the same peepal tree every day. Even before he could open his trunk, tiny heads would bob around him, and little hands reaching up to his waist would thrust at him shiny coins. He would throw open the lid of the trunk in a grand gesture and the aroma that wafted out would make my mouth water.

My brother, who was one of the tallest of the lot, tucked 10 rupees into his palm one day. A visiting relation had gifted us five rupees each and that day we siblings were filthy rich. “Two cream rolls, and one hot alu patty,” I can still hear him say in that voice, which I last heard nearly three decades ago.

I remember the exact moment of the exact day when he carried me on his back just so I could get a glimpse of what was inside Ismailkaka’s trunk.

Inside the trunk, there were two boxes. One had warm savouries — square alu patty and triangular egg patty —and the other box contained cakes with sugar toppings coloured vibrant pink or white, often with a dollop of jam on top. He also stocked freshly baked bread, khasta of different sizes and shapes, biscuits with curious names such as tara, chakra, lathi, kathi, murgir thyang. Some of the biscuits had no names; we called them char anna, aath anna, ek taka after their prices.

And then, of course, there was the cream roll.

I bought two cream rolls and four char annas — one each for my brother, the parents and myself. I could not not give Ma and Baba and eat things on my own.

My brother put me down, sat down on the mound of sand with other children and munched away at his cream roll. I spent a longer time on mine and returned home happy, my face smeared here and there with cream. When we returned home, Ma would have bathed and changed. The second part of the evening, the domestic part, was inaugurated by the sweet sound of her conch. My father would return from the colliery and together we would settle down for muri and tea.

Our lives were simpler. Not like my seven-year-old’s who is spoilt for choice. She has her cream roll and she has her cupcakes and chocolate mousse, croissants, burgers and still wants the gingerbread she has read about in the story of the gingerbread man. She doesn’t drink tea, her milk has to be flavoured, and then there are all those packs of juices and shakes.

The sight of the cream roll takes me back now and then to my own childhood, to a time when my brother and I cherished each and every bit of our shared life. They were little things, insignificant things, but how much we enjoyed them!

And I cannot recall when I first learned the word “boring”.