She lived to host dinner parties. It was a need, a compulsion, to fulfill it she would look for the most absurd reasons. Like the time she bought a purse and messaged our group: Guess what it’s dinner party time. I just bought a purse. Or when she had a fight with her parents over not hurrying to marry a nice boy and having his babies before her biological clock froze. Then there was one where her blind date stood her up. Soon, the reason to hold dinner parties gained as much popularity as the dinner party itself. Her friends couldn’t fault her since her hostessing skills were flawless. She was an extraordinary cook with a knack for chopping her feelings and emotions into itty-bitty pieces and adding them to her dishes. She preferred the food to tell us stories and hold all the intimate conversations while she  laughed, twirled her hair, and talked about anything and everything except what she felt
Like when the guy she thought was the one broke up with her, she held a dinner party and made her version of Cassata, a three-layered ice cream on a sponge cake, and served it with a sprinkling of pistachios. With every spoon we took of this dainty ice cream, we tasted her thoughts of that guy, her love, her heartbreak forming a bitter-sweet taste in our mouths, stirring our own uncomfortable memories of having loved and lost. We looked at her, imploring her to talk, to tell us what she felt but she kept pushing the Cassata in front of us. That night, we left feeling betrayed by love, and with a deep unsettling fear of layered ice cream cakes.
And the time her cat died, she had made Rogan Josh.  That dinner party, with candles lighting up the room instead of electricity, as we mopped up the soft naan bread with velvety Rogan Josh sauce wrapped around meat pieces tender as a child’s kiss, we digested her sadness. We could see her dicing onion crying, pretending her tears were onion tears and nothing else. Her heart was raw, her eyes swollen, and she smiled and chatted while shadows danced on her face. By then we stopped asking her to talk while we wrestled with a million conversations within us.
Happiness also occasionally found a seat at her dinner parties like when she passed her driving test after four attempts, and she made bitter gourd curry that tasted like a mother’s hug. We remembered when our mothers stroked our hair and cheeks and rocked us with milky breaths to sleep. With every dinner party we partook in, we felt, we were swallowing a part of her soul, her memory, her being; our souls blending into hers. When, at long last, we realized we needed these dinner parties more than she needed them.
Roopa Menon
Roopa lives in Dubai, U.A.E. but was raised in Kochi, India where swatting mosquitoes at dusk is considered a life skill, to be honed and perfected. Some of her short stories have been published in Corium magazine, Nunum, Bright Flash Literary Review, Tiny Molecules, Crow & Cross Keys, and elsewhere, and have been nominated for Best of the Net and Best of Microfiction. Her debut middle-grade fiction, Chandu and the Super Set of Parents, has been published by Fitzroy Books. She tweets erratically @RoopaMenon1
