An Extraordinary Tale | Flash Post 340

Button, as you love a well told tale, here’s one for you.

Yeah, a tale! I can’t wait.

A friend of Dost sent us a Christmas fruit cake a couple of years back. As nobody, with the exception of Dost, swears by sweets, he went for the cake and devoured about half of it in the first sitting. I just happened to slice a thin sliver for myself and, good Lord, was it good? It was better than any fruit cake I had ever eaten but didn’t go beyond that sliver! When I told barididi to try a slice, she too loved it and, even when the cake became mouldy, Dost refused to throw it away.

I love that cake too.

I requested Dost to find a way to tell this friend to send us some of that particular cake last Christmas.

Thank god you remembered.

Dost was kind enough to request his friend to courier us the cakes last year too. On their arrival, he told us about how this seventy year old lady residing in 6 Ripon Lane in Kolkata bakes these absolutely delicious Christmas fruit cakes every Christmas.

What’s wrong with that?

After we had couriered a cake to his elder brother who lives in Delhi,  I heard Dost telling him the next chapter of this story during dinner one evening.

What was that?

He told his brother that this aged lady was the niece of Vivien Leigh of Gone With The Wind fame who lived in Ripon Lane and migrated to England to pursue a career in Hollywood and that Rhett Butler ate this very cake when Leigh carried it to the sets and fell in love with her after which both starred in the movie, Gone With The Wind!

And his brother believed him?

I guess so.

Where was Vivien Leigh actually born?

In Darjeeling, I am told, when I looked it up on the Internet.

Not Ripon Lane!

That’s what the Internet said!

Who runs this business now?

Apparently the lady’s daughters.

That means Dost’s story about the seventy year old lady was fiction and everybody believed him!

That’s right. I personally went to my psychiatrist and psychologist to hand them a cake each with Dost insisting that I tell them the history of the cake, which I did in good faith!

That’s hilarious.

It just proves that he’s a born story-teller.