Famous last words of Queen Marie Antoinette, allegedly. But modern sources claim that she never actually said those words. Nevertheless, it came to signify her ignorance and the ignorance of the aristocracy about the plight of starving peasants who asked for bread. The French queen lost her head subsequently. You know all about that. And the four line phrase has survived history to be applied to certain relevant situations. And throughout Nagaland during the Christmas season, it became applicable when bakeries stopped baking bread as if by mutual agreement. Empty bread shelves were filled up with cake as the cake sales accelerated. But no bread was to be had in the stores over the advent season. It is still difficult to find bread, and this is the second week of January. For those of us who are bread lovers, the lack of bread makes us imagine a monarch huffily declaring, ‘No bread? Well then, let them eat cake!’ But seriously, this is an appeal to bread makers that cake can never take the place of bread at our break fast tables. No one seriously slices cake to partake of it at breakfast. I mean, you can only eat so much cake. And cake in the morning? And risk an upset tummy?
Our quest for bread has taken us to mysterious places. In Kohima, the baker’s neighbour is a Bihari grocer. When the bakery is open, he buys bread from them and has it available for his own customers. But for the longest time, his answer to my question, ‘Bread ase?” has been a negative, ‘Bakery khulia naitoh.’ Still waiting for that one. In Chumu, the fancy store that looked promising disappointed us. The young woman replied to our query that bread was expected to be on the shelves in three days! A little roadside shop, the type that sells everything from soaps to stale cakes wrapped in shiny paper, had a loaf beside the well displayed cakes. No time to be squeamish. I bought the lone loaf and asked for more. Alas, there was no more. The next day there were more. The owner had understood that someone was buying bread. That is how the Bihari does business and excels at it. He seems to have a nose for sniffing out what his customers need. To be safe, we bought more than one loaf. The next evening he had four more loaves on display. At this rate, if we played our cards right, maybe the man would end up feeding five thousand with …just joking. Although it is hard to see anything good about a breadless ten days or more, when you consider it, perhaps it makes us stop taking bread for granted. Makes us appreciate bread more in scarcity. My sister hoarded. We looked the other way. Behavioural patterns changed in the face of breadlessness. New word for new social situation. Hallelujah, more and more bakeries are returning to normal. People have quite recovered from the surfeit of eating cake, and gifting cake. The luxury of bread for breakfast is fast being forgotten.
The other marvel that I want to share is a cure that works for coughing. Since it is customary to develop a long term or short term bout of coughing while in the motherland, I was prepared to endure my share. Many well meaning friends and relatives came with recommendations, some alcoholic, others not. The cures that included honey only served to aggravate the cough hormones. But an indigenous packet that someone had left behind atop my fridge held the coughing at bay. It says, Kitsung Mozii on the cover and lists basil, ginger, nutgall, lemon, cinnamon and ginger as the contents. I have no idea what it is used for but since I was very ready to be rid of my coughing, I mixed a spoon in warm water and drank it. Voila! No coughing. Please ask your Ao neighbor what this magical mixture is all about. Far as I am concerned, it works! That and zinc tablets. A beloved cousin who was a medical person once prescribed zinc tablets for the category of coughing we experience in these parts. She said it was caused by dust allergy. And she was damned right. Zinc works.
