Oyster-Shaped Biscuits

I have the most wonderful memories of oyster-shaped biscuits. They are always intertwined with my grand uncle, my great grandmother and big glass jars. When my great grandmother in Salem was still alive, she would bring home a packet full of golden-yellow biscuits that would crumble and melt in my mouth before I even crunched them up. And they tasted like biscuit-flavoured pieces of bliss. My grand uncle who always has a word of advice used to ride me to a small bakery in Cananore and I would watch with bated breath as the baker would drop sand and sun coloured biscuits into a plastic bag that would expertly be wound around at the top, to seal it.

A while ago, I walked as I always walked to Iyengar bakery-in a trance. Iyengar bakery is especially adept at finding my invisible puppet strings and duly wielding them to lead me into its lap. This time, my eyes fell on the oyster-shaped biscuits. Three trays of them! In varying shades of the sand and the sun. I was only obeying the divine plan when I bought about ten of them.
I like to think that food tastes best when you stumble upon it by accident or chance, when it isn’t part of any scheming or pangs of craving, when it sort of slips into place with your present, without any prior warning. But somehow, oyster-shaped biscuits cannot be touched by chance or everyday triteness and still melt me into a little puddle of happiness. They need to be nested in a wonderful day long past and handed to me by the frail hands and grey hair parted exactly in the middle of the small dark face of my great grandmother, or by the crinkly eyes and uneven teeth of my grand uncle.