Having my cake and beating it, too

My boyfriend -- we’re still together, dragging our feet, assuring each other: don’t worry, I won’t marry you, your life is not doomed, hang in there etc – has a bakery. It’s in Gurgaon, five minutes from my house and called Cake Away.

It’s a delivery only thing. (You get the idea of sounding like ‘take-away’. Bit forced, but bit late. Send the bouquets to me. I came up with it.) It’s not a retail space like an Angels in my Kitchen or a Bagel’s Cafe, so you can’t sit there, sip coffee and feed on brownies but you can order the brownies and the brownies will come to you, walnuts and all, secured in a humongous thermocol box with ice packs and gun men.

Kidding. Ignore the gun men line.

*cough*

The bakery has been up for a year and for a year I have had a problem with it. Refer gun men jibe. But whenever I’m asked, ‘What is your problem with his bakery, woman?!’ I mumble, make rude dismissive sounds and give caustic, nonsensical replies. I say things I don’t mean or believe. How does an engineer and a musician bring himself to care about the fluffiness of flour? See? Not nice. Especially not to someone you care about and date and of whom one is sigh 'posed to be encouraging and supportive.

It gets ugly. He gets hurt. I get vocal. Nothing helps. If and blah we split, he will attribute my whole hearted lack of support as one reason why the deal soured. I won’t blame him.


Imagine:

Hey, why d'you guys break up?

Oh, we couldn’t see eye to eye on the divinity of the chocolate cakes.

I judge me. Look at it. I have a problem with a bakery, a bakery – it’s not like he’s an arms dealer or a contract killer and I want him to give up his sexy Sopranos act so we can settle into domestic harmony. It’s a bloody bakery! Eggs and cocoa not grease and crime – hardly the stuff break ups are made of. Seeing the light, and staring it down, I say to myself, shut up and let him do whatever the fuck he wants. That is the trip I’ve been on for some months now – do whatever you want. Hardly supportive but it’s a step up from downright nasty.

What IS my problem?

It bothers me that he sits in his not-even-retail kitchen the whole day, takes orders, fusses over the execution of those orders, supervises icing, and talks shop. It tests my patience and I consistently fail. He’s his own boss, sure, lucky guy. On some days, he goes to meet people in corporate offices so they can buy cakes from him. But usually, there is no connection or chit chat with similar, able-minded people. This gets to me the most – these hardly stimulating influences. Of course the comeback is perfectly just: Oh, you think you’re always surrounded by superior life forms, is it?

Answer is no, but at least there’s a variety. I’d go mad if I were stuck with three of my dumbest colleagues, and names, I assure you, spring to mind IMMEDIATELY.

But in words that could be his, I feel there is a glaring dearth in the calibre of human resource around him. It’s just him and his bakers who call him sir. I find it perverse that his people interaction is restricted to four servile people. I wouldn’t give him street smarts. His earnestness makes me want to choke on one of his beautiful butterfly muffins. And at the best of times he has the naiveté of an 11-year-old. But it so happens that this boy has the intelligence and sincerity of no one I know. This is a compliment and mostly a good thing. But it’s tiring, showing him what for I don’t like the idea of a bakery, and especially him running it. Conviction: it’s a waste of his IQ and I feel of his time. If you want to be an astronaut why settle for star gazing and insist the apron is your space suit?

Fully endorsed: the banoffee pies at Cake Away

But now that I don’t have a job – quite the news, huh; papers finally put in, after months of shall-I-shouldn’t-I -- I have all the time in the world to criticise people who are actually doing something, such as the space cadet of Cake Away fame mentioned above.

He even asked me, the hitherto-ex-journalist to join him. I said ha ha, not a chance in hell. Meaning, of course, as any fool can see: I’ll help you, I’ll give you all the advice and feedback you want, I just won’t take orders/ a salary from you.

To which, and filed under touché, cupcake, came this golden nugget from baker boy: “Okay, since don’t want to do anything with your life, why don’t you just concentrate on becoming a professional bitch?”

What can I say? I deserve all the love I get.

I can haz half muffin, pwease?