Chocolaty Affair🤎

 

What an interesting topic to write on....Chocolates!!! 😃

Hardly would there be anyone who does not like to have an association with chocolates. Everyone would just love to indulge in a chocolaty affair, be it in taste or in talk. Whether a person has diabetes and has restrictions on the intake of sweets or whether a person is naturally not too inclined towards sweets, still the fact remains that a mere mention of this fancy word creates multitude of ripples in our mind and taste buds😋.

My memories related to this interesting delicacy is far and varied, starting from the tugs of war between us siblings for one extra piece. In those days, unlike today, chocolates were not that readily sourced for children. During Diwali too it was mainly the Indian mithai that was more common than its elevated counterpart, thereby leading to a famine for our young tongues! So naturally when we did get hold of the bars of chocolate on some magical rare occasion, we would give it our all to procure the maximum share. Luckily the judges in our household i.e. our parents were strict enough so as not to have another World War in the vicinity, otherwise, all our weapons were ready to burst open. Those were my early memories but as time flew, my fondness for this magical item only increased multifold.

On procuring a well-paid job, I had the liberty to not only buy for myself bars of chocolates but also gift them to whomever I fancied. Just an excuse was needed and off I went to get different kinds. I used to adore 5-Star and do so to this day. Many used to avoid this one due to its sticky texture but that's exactly what I liked, for even after finishing the bar, we could still savour it for a few more minutes by relishing the parts stuck to our teeth😉. It may sound a bit off, but for the one having it, it does not matter where the sweetness came from as long as it tastes 5-star😁. Nowadays there are innumerable varieties available and one can choose from a whole lot but back then the selection was fewer, but no complaints whatsoever.

I still remember an episode where I was working for All Nippon Airways, a Japanese airline. The General manager gifted each of us employees a basket of chocolates covered with brightly colored wrapping paper. I saved myself to open at home. As soon as I reached home and my mom opened it, she saw these strange kinds of chocolates with unusual colors of red, green, etc and since I had educated her on a few of the aspects of Japanese culture, food, and the like, she immediately assumed them to be sweets made from the beings of ocean, took the whole lot to the terrace and scattered all over to test them🤨. If they would be picked up by the birds, then they are not for us to relish since we were 100% vegetarian Brahmins😌and cannot consume any thing remotely linked to sea food.. Anyway, the sweets lay there with not a single bird approaching them but all my interest in those Japanese chocolates vanished. Alas!! But I was glad that majority of the chocolates were brown in color so as to pass the color test😄. Later, when I brought chocolates as gifts from my official visits to Hong Kong, I made sure all of them had the right color🤪.

Then when my prospective groom came to see me, he gifted me with chocolates from South Africa and a whole new era of my affair with chocolates began🥰. The packaging, the taste, and the varieties were so elegant that I wondered if any living being could resist having an affair with these sweet nothings. After my marriage, the first thing I noticed in the room was his suitcase filled with chocolate packets. Seeing my surprise and just to make things clear from the beginning, I was enlightened that they come in handy as a perfect gift for everyone lest I presumed all of them to be mine!!. From then on these packets become an integral part of our luggage.

How a whole journey from one piece to a row to a bar to a packet to many packets progressed, is just a very sweet chocolaty affair for me! 🤎