Glee, Thy Name Is Tea!

(Theme 2)

A blogger friend is very fond of tea, and she asks for a cup of tea whenever she comes home, and so I am very fond of her. Actually, I am bound to like someone who likes tea. I also love people who display their association with tea in any manner, for example in the following picture, because at once it is two things I love the most, tea and flowers. Though I am friends with people who love coffee and shun tea too. Doesn't matter. One has to have all sorts of friends.

We are a family of avid tea drinkers. Almost tea addicts (My husband calls me something which could be 'tea-holic' in english!) I am having tea since my teenage years, though I remember ginger-holy basil tea served to us kids whenever we got drenched in rain. I remember lemon tea was prepared at home for various reasons: The milk had gone bad, after a non-vegetarian meal when milk is not advisable, to feel refreshed after a heavy meal, to aid digestion (in combination with caraway seeds) etc.

Perfect day for a steaming cuppa!

I have hardly seen my father in the kitchen. When someone tells me about how their dad makes the best chicken curry or rustles up the greatest cheese omelette, I quietly listen and wonder. Once or twice I have witnessed how the kitchen turned upside down when my father was looking for a cookie box or was trying to find the sugar container, while the object of his search was right there. But, but... my father knows just the perfect recipe for lemon tea. The yummiest, most refreshing tea!

And why are we suddenly talking about tea? Because today when I was reading articles on spending quality time with family and family bonding in the family life section of rewardme.in, I suddenly remembered how I have bonded with friends and family over cups of tea, mostly with our shared love of tea. Surprisingly, rewardme.in also has this amazing write-up about mood altering teas in its time saver recipes section which made me nostalgic and I started missing my cup of lemon-tea like a long lost friend. Whether the lazy woman wants to kick herself out of her reverie and get going or whether she wants to calm herself and slink back to her lazy comfort, the most refreshing, tangy, fragrant lemon tea is there to her rescue. And how do we does my father prepare this magical concoction from heaven? In the following few simple steps:

1. Boil a cup of water with a teaspoon of sugar (or to your taste).
2. Meanwhile, squeeze half a lemon (or to your taste, again) in your teacup.
3. Just before removing the boiling water from heat, add a pinch (strictly, a pinch!) of your regular tea-leaf.  Turn off the heat immediately. DO NOT wait for the tea to boil or take colour. It will do that on its own.
4. Strain the tea mixture into the teacup.
5. Sit on the veranda/balcony with a book and tea. Enjoy!

The awesome ginger-honey-lemon tea from Landour Cafe, Mussoorie

The above recipe is the original method of preparing plain lemon tea. Although, with changing lifestyle and food preferences, the recipe also got a face-lift and one of its many forms is known as ginger-honey-lemon tea, which I recently found being served in a cafe in Landour, Mussoorie and immediately fell in love with it. Preparing this tea is incredibly simpler than its name suggests:

1. Boil a cup of water with half a teaspoon of grated ginger.
2. Add a teaspoon of honey and squeeze half a lemon in a teacup.
3. Strain the boiling water in the teacup.
4. Dip in a teabag of your choice. Your steaming and superbly refreshing cup of exquisite ginger-honey lemon tea is ready. Sip your way to heaven.

After sipping this tea, I realized that it helped clear my blocked nostrils and buzzing head which was slightly aching due to cold. So there. My best friend!

A couple of friends visited Sri Lanka this winter and brought back nuggets of information about tea along with some great tea. As they told me, our regular tea has health benefits equivalent to green tea. Though we ruin a lot of its qualities by adding milk and sugar. Of course, drinking plain black tea will take a lot of sacrifices and efforts from me, as it is clearly an acquired taste. Lemon tea is the closest that I can ever come to having black tea. So lemon tea it is!

While we are on this topic, somewhere in our country, these were spotted:

I am participating in the ‘Ready For Rewards’ activity for Rewardme in association with BlogAdda.

It's Raining Love!

(Theme 2)

Every year on her wedding anniversary, my mother makes quite a stir about shopping for gifts. She makes sure that both the involved parties exchange gifts, however small the gifts may be. Once or twice, I have been caught unaware when she would suddenly ask me what I gift on special occasions to my husband, and I have nothing to say, except give her a blank look.  However I am observing that gifts for husband/boyfriend/fiance are more common than I know and girls enthusiastically planning/buying/making their gifts or surprises inspired a tinge of jealous competitive pondering: is it high time to give a gift to my husband?

Today when I was going through rewardme.in, I came across many articles about gift giving in the family life section ( https://www.rewardme.in/family/family-living ), and a particular one caught my eye. The article was about homemade gifts for husband. I was perplexed again. I realized I have almost never gifted anything to my husband on anniversaries or birthdays, bought or homemade, other than thinking about gifts and conveniently forgetting buying/making them, on the pretext of being busy with something else. Though it did not mean that I forgot receiving gifts. I never let a single chance go when I could get a gift from him, sometimes waiting quietly, sometimes dropping hints, sometimes even asking blatantly, as per the demand of the occasion.

Though I have made a solid resolution of buying a gift for my husband on the next special occasion, the rewardme article inspired me to gift him something today, without any occasion, just like that. It was well past noon and I was already late for my household chores, and homemade was the natural choice for the lazy wife, since it involves working cozily on one's kitchen chair/sofa/bed, while sipping tea comfortably. After a little thinking and planning, I settled on writing a letter to him as a gift, on a doodled paper. For this I only required pen and paper. Well, not just pen and paper, nice coloured pens and good looking scrapbook page, thank you.  

Then I started my little doodle project, which I think is a very easy thing to do. If you cannot draw a straight line, this is meant for you, for it seldom requires many straight lines. Once you have caught your doodling pace, it can have meditation like effects, and it can be done anywhere with limited resources. The above collage is my attempt at presenting the step by step progress of the work, without putting too many pictures. It begins at top left and goes clockwise, as you would have guessed.

So, I started at the bottom of the page and figured out it is turning out like a landscape, little plants and flowers on ground, trees on the sides and dark clouds above, raining little swirly raindrops and little hearts too :). Then it was time to write the letter, which I wrote, not quite an elaborate one. The reasons for the brevity are, one: I wanted to preserve my privacy (its internet, remember!!) and two: I was lazy, well, mostly lazy. 

After completing it and writing enough words to express my feelings (hey, pictures/doodles are worth so many words, right!), I presented the letter to its intended recipient whose head was buried in a heavy book, and he made his 'like' face, which I know by experience; he also readily agreed to leave the page in scrapbook itself, so I could write him a scrapbook full of such 'letters', as I told him. I think that would make an awesome gift. 

“I am participating in the ‘Ready For Rewards’ activity for Rewardme in association with BlogAdda.”

Rains Bring Rainbows

Marshal's Pick Award

This post has been published by me as a part of Blog-a-Ton 55; the fifty-fifth edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. In association with ​Rashmi Kumar, the author of Hooked, Lined and Single and Jyoti Arora, the author of Lemon Girl. . 

Violet 

Viola pulled a deep breath as she accelerated her scooter through the drizzle on the wide road. Oh! How she loved the intoxicating smell of the parched earth soaking up the first shower of rain. The falling drops pierced her bare arms like little needles, the cool wind ran its wet fingers on her face and she felt invigorated. In no time she reached the Academy Crossing, where uniformed armymen had stopped the traffic to let the cadets pass through. The road ran right through the Academy and divided it into two campuses. The traffic halted multiple times during a day to let the cadets and officers cross the road and visit the other campus. Viola brought her vehicle to a halt and waited impatiently, as jealousy crept up like a fire in her belly. 'Fancy people these, they get the road all to themselves!' Driving in the rain was thrilling, waiting in the rain was frustrating. But no frustration for her today. This day was too good to waste. Viola saw the cadets crossing hurriedly on their bicycles and a smile crossed her lips. Cadets looked charming, the weather was beautiful, and she was a romantic at heart.  Her seventeen years urged her to evoke all the love that she had in her and see the world in it's warm glow. 'Next term,' she thought, 'I am going to meet a cadet and get invited to the Academy Ball. Oh! It would be so glamorous and romantic!' Staying in this city and not going to the Academy Ball was an absolute wastage of her college years. She felt like the heroine of a romantic film who was about to fall in love, as she watched the last cadet struggling to keep pace with others in the growing rain.

Indigo

Cadet Neel blinked his eyes vigorously to ward off sharp little raindrops from his eyes. He found it very difficult to keep cycling in rain and was trailing behind his coursemates as they crossed the road and vanished behind the other gate. Eventually, he dismounted his bicycle as he was left alone and as a rule, he could not ride a cycle alone. In order to ride their cycles, cadets had to form a squad. Though Neel was getting late for his evening lecture, he felt greatly relieved to dismount his cycle. He had no idea how others managed, but he did not like cycling in the rain. He did not even like cycling. Coming from an affluent family, snazzy cars and bikes were his playthings. But here in Academy, he had to follow the rules. He dragged his bicycle along as he tried his best to keep his satchel strap on his shoulder while running in the drizzle which was swiftly changing into a shower. Neel hated every single moment of this run, with water now running down his spine through his collar and dripping through his socks and soaking his canvas shoes.

Neel had given up a life of luxury which was custom-tailored and delivered at his doorstep as a birth right to endure this difficult training because he wanted to unfold the many layers of life and take a peek beneath the surface where he expected to find something much more valuable than money and luxury, to measure his self worth and weigh his own mental strength. This passion more than made up for his lack of stamina and street smartness. He took all the difficulties in his stride, but as his training was getting closer to the end, the thought of just reaching out and grabbing that glorious moment was making him restless. 'Few more months', he wiped his eyes with his right hand and muttered to himself, 'Just few months!', as he saw an instructor's car coming from the opposite side. In a few months, he expected to graduate from the Academy and say adieu to this pre-owned Hero Jet cycle that had served nobody-knew-how many generations of cadets, and to own a car with his own hard-earned money. As the instructor's car passed by, he straightened himself and shouted a crisp 'Jai Hind, Sir'.

Blue

Major Firoz mouthed an inaudible 'Jai Hind' acknowledging the cadet who was now so thoroughly drenched that droplets flew in a flurry out of his mouth when he spoke. Major Firoz was in a hurry as he sped towards his office to take care of something important. Nowadays, he was on a study leave, striving hard to cram a roomful of books in a few weeks time before his crucial pre-staff entrance exam, and came out only in important situations, like today. Before the call came from office, he was immersed deep in a thick book in his study room, but the studious schoolboy of yester-years had lost his capability to continue studying for long hours without intermittent calls from office and signing of important documents over cups of tea. He faintly remembered that he used to love rains long ago, as if in a past life. When he joined army, the strict regimentation of army changed him overnight from an unworried teenager into a  disciplined soldier. Years went by and he could not as much as notice the seasons changing amid his busy schedule, competitive courses and tough job. Beautiful rainy days like this were at their best a hindrance in his path now, like a flat tire or a fused bulb...bulbs... oh, and he had to rush to the Canteen after office to buy some bulbs, as Harita had asked him in exchange of chai-pakoda. Harita, who was at this exact moment, folding the dozenth paper boat at home.

Green

Harita threw her head back and stretched her arms after finishing folding the last paper boat. She was immensely relieved as rain had cooled off the hot and humid afternoon and a pleasantly cool evening was on its way. Monsoon had made a hearty appearance and after a heavy downpour for almost an hour, the rain was taking a step back to look at the effect, like an artist would look at his artwork, with squinted eyes and tongue thrust out between lips. Harita got up to examine the effect too and peeked outside the window. Green leaves appeared clean and bright, droplets still hanging at their pointed ends, air was cool and little puddles had appeared too, like they always did. She realized she did not have the old urge to run out and splash in the rainwater filled puddles. Instead, she was worried about mosquitoes, moths and fungus growing on everything, groceries, fruits and her expensive silks.  Long ago, monsoon meant long bike rides in the rain with Firoz, going out in the rain to enjoy spicy street food. Years had blown away all the superficial romance like candyfloss and solid life had precipitated like soft and glowing snow on them. Now, monsoon meant saving carpets from muddy footprints, and preventing moths from eating clothes in damp closets of creaky old bungalows, opening a dozen boxes and sunning their contents. Rain had not changed a bit, life had changed immensely, and...oh, ouch! She came out of her thoughts and saw the windowsill was wet with seepage and gave her a mild electric shock when she absently placed her hand on it. She rolled her eyes. Such incidents were minor issues in these parts of the world and no house was completely free of seepage, chipping paint or leaky taps. These were old houses, well lived in, and came with their own history. And their own furniture.

She craned her neck to see the time. The maid was terribly late, probably due to rain. Harita changed into a funky pair of squeaky rubber flip-flops and came out to go to her friend's home, on her way out asking Pitambar Bhaiya to stay at home and supervise the maid's work when she arrived.

Yellow

Pitambar was sitting on the veranda on a lawn chair, waiting for the maid to arrive. He was bent over his phone, checking for any new messages, rather staring at the screen for new messages to appear. He was worried, though his worry had nothing to do with his father's old age, his sister's doomed marriage and his brother's high school results. He was worried because it had rained today. He was a native of the hills and it had rained heavily there, so heavily that there were floods and all contact from the outside world was lost, roads were closed and phone networks were down. He was married four years ago and had never had an opportunity to stay with his 'family' in the married accommodation. Now, he had come to a family station, bless his 'Saab', where he could bring his 'family' and be a proud and dignified family member, he had got a flat allotted too by Saab's recommendation,  and was due to leave next day to bring his wife. But the rain seemed to rob him of this great opportunity and had shattered his dreams. All his preparations and plans were washed away. The evening was getting darker than usual due to clouds, and his heart was sinking into great depths of helpless longing. Tired  of staring on the screen and tired of waiting for Kesar, the maid, he got up from the chair and stood on the steps of the veranda purposelessly.

Orange

Kesar Bai increased her pace as she saw the evening fading away fast. She was late and was scared of the fact that it will be dark before her return. It had been two months since she had started working at the new 'Memsahib's' house. Memsahib was all right and did not constantly monitor her, as long as her work was done on time. But the house was situated in a faraway corner of the colony, hidden behind dense shrubs and trees. Walking on the deserted road frightened her even during daytime and she could not imagine walking on it in dark, that too wet and slippery. This area was full of wild animals and even falling leaves sounded like a leopard is approaching. Memsahib always told her to carry a stick which she sometimes did. After rain, the shrubs had come alive and ringing with sounds of chirping insects. There might be snakes also, what if she gets bitten by a snake in the darkness? Or attacked by a wild boar? She was almost running now, shaking away all scary thoughts and promising herself to borrow some money from Memsahib and buy an umbrella next day, cursing the monsoon whose sudden arrival had skewed her budget. The roof of her quarters was leaking and she had to buy a big plastic sheet to cover it. Her room always flooded in the lightest of the rains and she will have to do a little brickwork also to make a threshold to prevent rainwater from entering her quarters. 'No season is friendly towards us poor people,' she thought as she panted and puffed. In the distance, she saw Memsahib holding Laal's hand, coming back from her friend's home.

Red

Laal was happily hopping, wearing red sandals, holding Harita's finger, making up stories about the 'twees' and 'fowers' and 'wain' and 'watal', pointing with tiny fingers, adding special effects by making sounds, widening eyes, exaggerating and then looking at her face searching for signs of belief and appreciation. Harita nodded enthusiastically, exclaimed and praised Laal's stories more than they merited, and satisfied, Laal moved on to the next line and the next..

When they reached home, Laal found paper boats lying on the coffee table and screamed with joy. Today's children do not play in rainwater on streets. Harita took him to the bathroom, filled a big tub with water and handed him the boats one-by-one. Laal held the boat like a spoon, stirred with it in the tub and sang:

Low low low yo bot 

genty doh a teem,

Melly melly melly melly

lie a deem..

Harita stood at the bathroom door, watching Laal sinking boats, and smiled at his sweet song. Rains always brought rainbows, one just had to tilt her head and find out.

The fellow Blog-a-Tonics who took part in this Blog-a-Ton and links to their respective posts can be checked here. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton. Participation Count: 04. Image Credits: Monsoon by Yann (Wikimedia Commons). Shared with GNU Free Documentation License CC Attribution-Share Alike.

Anybody Home??

 Hi, It has been so long... So just checking in to see how things are going in and around blogsville. After a long trip to my parents, I came back and was very sloooowly recovering from so many shocks and aftershocks (read 'being lazy') and re-adapting myself to my environment. It meant loads of cleaning and laundry, and various little visits to and from friends. Meanwhile, my fingers were also itching and I did these two watercolour paintings. 

The above picture  is based on a photograph from Colleena Shakti's Flickr stream that I stumbled upon on Pinterest. I have pinned various such dance poses and intend to paint them one-by-one in future.

 I painted the above picture based on the following image I found on Pinterest, which I pinned for the express purpose of painting only. 

Quite a good similarity, huh? Well, to all of you connoisseurs of art, the obvious flaws would be visible in an instant, and I stand no chance as a painter, I know, I know! But, the visit to my parents made me nostalgic and I decided to revisit my school days, when I used to paint and do such stuff. 

I did these and a lot more... You sure will have to bear with a so much more of this kind, while I am on a roll!

Shaken, not stirred!

Visits to 'Nana-nani-dada-dadi' have always been synonymous with fun and happiness, isn't it? As we packed our bags and boarded the train to Coco's nana's home, I hoped this visit will create some beautiful memories for Coco as well as his grandparents, since he is in such a cute and naughty age. Coco and I are visiting my parents and as we come to the end of this visit, I cannot stop myself from summarizing what this visit meant to us, since when we go back home, Coco will start play-school, and once that happens, we will bid goodbye forever to the carefree days and long visits, and I will have one thing more to worry about. Till now, I only checked my husband's calendar to find out when I could take a break. From now on, I will also follow Coco's schedule. And I will have to plan all my vacations/visits accordingly.

 Well, as we are now ready to go back, we have with us a distinct memory of a disastrous earthquake which shook us up pretty badly and left us sleepless for a few nights and restless for a few days. It was an ordinary day, with everything normal, everyone going about their day in the routine ways, when suddenly the earth shook and brought us all outside. As I grabbed Coco and ran for life, I did not for a moment realize that I was forgetting something very important. And that was my mother who was taking bath, and I did not even call out to her. When I reached a safe distance and looked back at the balcony of my house, I wanted to pull out my hair and scream at the top of my voice. It was when the building stopped shaking, she appeared at the exit of the building, all soapy and frightened, looking for us, and relief surged on her face as she saw us. During the shake, she had come out of the bathroom, looked for us, wore her clothes, switched the TV off and then came out. While all I had done was grab my baby and run barefoot, stammering random words. When I told her that I could not think about anything else except saving Coco, she laughed and said, 'Love runs downwards, like water.' She was happy that we were safe, and I was feeling guilty. To add to it was fear and restlessness. The neighbors spent two succeeding nights outside and we somehow managed to dose off indoors, while keeping our eyes and ears on high alert.

It has been more than a week now and we are reading a lot of stories about hope, courage, fear and loss in the local papers, since camps have been set up in this town which is close to Nepal border.

One of my friends asked me, why am I so quiet nowadays. The tone of my blog is usually happy and bright. It's not like I did not do something happy and creative during this time, but I just did not feel the urge to blog about happiness when my surroundings were not so happy. First rains ruined crops and eastern UP is the worst hit, and then this earthquake! These disasters and a shaky internet connection affected my mood and I decided to take a real break. Today, well I decided to end my break!

 

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.

Beauty And The Beast

                                        

March saw me plucking little flower bunches off of the grapefruit tree in my neighbor's yard and putting it in a jar filled with water in my kitchen. Such a beautiful and fragrant setting! Excited, I tried putting the jar in various possible places but could not decide where it looked most beautiful. The next morning as I walked in into the kitchen, it was so fragrant that I had to ask my husband if he had sprayed air freshener. But frankly, no room freshener can be so fresh and so beautifully fragrant like citrus flowers that have the perfect combination of freshness and limey fragrance.

I came across these lovely flowers during an evening walk. This time of the year is the best when one does enjoy a peaceful and long evening walk, especially people like me who find it extremely difficult to rise early in the morning and go for a walk. This season is the best because of the right temperature and humidity and presence of the right kind of flora and fauna. And a right combination of all these factors is very important to pull this lazy woman out of her reverie and set her on her feet to do the needful i.e. take a walk. But along with all this beauty, we have our share of beasts in the area too.

This is the road to my home. My house is so well hidden behind a row of bungalows and trees that people have difficulty finding my house. It has that haunted forest look about it that forbids faint  of heart from walking alone on this road at dusk. It is situated at an extreme end of this residential area, on the edge of a forest which is separated from our house by a deep gorge, and considering the presence of wild animals in this area, this little separating factor is a boon. 

I had once mentioned how a leopard was once spotted at the edge of my lawn (Read Here). Appearance of leopards and wild boars is not uncommon in this area and thus we always finish our walks before the fall of darkness. During these walks or while I am sitting in the lawn, I keep my eyes and ears open and stare at the side bushes as if something will jump out of it instantly. Falling leaves and small birds and squirrels make me jump, however I consider myself brave once I am inside my home. My maid finishes her work and leaves before dark and when my husband, who has set up a study room in the outhouse, goes there to study late at night, I always insist that he should carry at least a hockey stick, which he sometimes does, if only to keep me quiet.

Coco is not allowed to play alone outside, even during the day and presence of an adult is mandatory. These are a few rules that we try to follow in order to stay safe. Even after repeated requests, warnings and even threats, my husband does not always close the screen door behind him when he leaves while I am resting, and I grind my teeth when I see it wide open to the world. What if someday, the leopard invites itself to my kitchen for an afternoon snack, the main ingredient of the snack being me? After all, it regularly keeps appearing in backyards and side alleys and lawns. 

                              

Then one day in mid-March, started the spell of terror with the above news from a neighboring colony, in which a leopard dragged a teenager to nearby fields when she went out of her house after dusk, and left her dying after local people rushed to the site. The girl died later, and her death triggered a little public upheaval to the forest authorities, who then roped in a team of hunters, and the leopard was killed a few days later. 

The incident left us all terrorized and shaken and so much more alert. Earlier we used to talk jokingly about the leopard, or gossiped about its appearance in thrilled voices. Now, when it seemed to cloud our lives with the threat of getting hurt or even dying, and we narrowly dodged the encounter with fear, the jokes and the thrill turned into contemplative questions of life and death. Biggest of them all is: who killed whom? Man or leopard? 

Chocoderella

This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 53; the fifty-third edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. In association with ​Soulmates: Love without ownership by Vinit K Bansal. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton. 

Once upon a time there lived a chocolatier. Moulding chocolates was his passion more than profession. He used to make chocolates in all shapes and sizes. Once he moulded a batch of chocolate babies on order. When he packed his shop away for the night, he forgot one chocolate baby out on his counter. That night when the chocolate fairy visited his shop, she saw the little chocolate baby and spun her magic wand thrice and lo and behold! The baby came alive. The next morning when the chocolatier came to open his shop, he found a beautiful baby girl crying on his counter, in a pool of chocolate sauce. Her tears rolled down her cheeks and dried into chocolate chips. He named her Chocoderella and brought her home to his wife and two daughters. In the beginning everything was alright, but the chocolatier died after a few years and the wife started giving Chocoderella a step-motherly treatment, though she was a loving and caring mother to her own daughters. 

Chocoderella used to work hard all day long, wearing rags but would hardly get anything to eat. Her sisters dressed up in gorgeous dresses and ate gourmet food all day. As a result, they grew up into lumpy and lazy girls while Chocoderella was a lovely girl who smelled of hot chocolate.

Once, her sisters went to the royal ball, all decked up in jewels and pretty dresses, leaving Chocoderella home to keep their beds ready when they came back home from the ball, tired after all the dance and fun. Chocoderella sat down in a corner, crying tears of chocolate chips. As she kept crying, the floor got covered with chocolate chips and when there was no more room, the chocolate fairy appeared, and with a flick of her magic wand, turned all the chocolate into a grand coach, driven by six white horses and a uniformed coachman crisply holding a whip. She then turned Chocoderella’s rags into a beautiful gown, decorated with lace made of spun sugar and a necklace of candy gems adorned her neck. Lovely as she was, Chocoderella now looked like the goddess of temptation and desire with her golden tresses of molten caramel and her creamy skin reminding of milk chocolate that she was actually made of. 

The fairy smiled and said, ‘You are all set to go to the royal ball now, Chocoderella. But you should be back before midnight for that is when my spell ends. Your coach, horses and coachman will all become chocolate chips again and your clothes will turn to rags.’

‘All right,’ said Chocoderella happily.

Chocoderella had a gala time at the ball with the prince, and when she heard the first stroke of the midnight, she was shocked to find how quickly the hours had gone by! She was suddenly reminded of the bitter truth and reluctantly pulled herself away from the prince’s arms. As he saw her slipping away, the prince wanted to pull her back but all he could get hold of was the little finger of her right hand. In her hurry, Chocoderella pulled her hand hard and her chocolate finger snapped. Startled and shocked, she ran away. The prince stared at a vanishing Chocoderella, his jaw dropped, her little finger in his hand, smelling divine and looking tempting. In a trance like state, he took a bite of the finger. Never in his princely life had he ever had a chocolate so delicious. Without thinking, he hurriedly ate the whole finger and licked his palms crazily which had held Chocoderella and were now fragrant with her hot chocolate sweat. He had fallen madly in love with her.

When the king saw the prince’s condition, he announced on the spot, ‘Go and find the girl with caramel hair and milk chocolate face who smells like hot chocolate. The prince will get married to her.’

The king’s men now searched the whole kingdom for the chocolate girl with a missing little finger and finally reached Chocoderella’s home. Chocoderella’s sisters, in order to impress them, bathed in hot chocolate that morning. But when they came in front of king’s men, they were covered in blisters. As they were leaving, one of the men spotted Chocoderella standing in a corner, covering her right hand with a cloth.

When she saw the king’s men bringing forth Chocoderella for examination, her mother sniggered, ’Oh, but she is only a maid. She could not have gone to the royal ball.’ But it was too late. One of the men had removed the cloth from her hand and it was missing the little finger. Her hot chocolate fragrance confirmed further that she was indeed the chocolate girl that they had been looking for. At that moment, the chocolate fairy appeared and waved her magic wand. Chocoderella’s clothes changed into a royal gown, but surprisingly her hand remained unhealed.

As the sisters and the mother looked on wide-eyed, the fairy said, ‘The missing finger cannot grow again, but if you find it, I can attach it to your hand.’ As Chocoderella nodded, the fairy disappeared. The king’s men took Chocoderella to the palace where the prince was eagerly waiting for her.

One would think that Chocoderella married the prince and they lived happily ever after. But since this is a new age fairy tale, what happened next is written in golden caramel letters in the history of chocolates.

Chocoderella asked the prince about her little finger. The embarrassed prince admitted that he ate it in a crazy rush of greed and excitement, and now he wanted to marry her because he could not forget that divine taste and all he could think of was her hot chocolate fragrance. Chocoderella replied dryly to this proposition saying, ‘If you cannot resist eating a little chocolate finger, I am afraid you would eat me alive if you get the opportunity. You are not in love with me, but only lusting over chocolate. And no one can deny, chocolate can heal a broken heart, and it can almost replace love!’ Holding her head high, Chocoderella stomped out of the palace. She restarted her father’s closed chocolaterie and lived happily ever after. Only, every once in a while, Chocoderella cried for her missing little finger and there never was a dearth of chocolate chips in her chocolaterie.  

The fellow Blog-a-Tonics who took part in this Blog-a-Ton and links to their respective posts can be checked here. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton. Participation Count: 03