The importance of aunties

Aunties are a must-have. I visited one yesterday after a lengthy chicken-pox-induced quarantine. She stays at a place called Colaba, which is an hour and a half - and a world - away from where I live. They have roads. We need an suv to get out of our building. They have museums and art galleries. We have shopping malls. They have restaurants that serve real food. We have restaurants that sell gobi manchurian. They have birds. We have car horns. Even their grass is greener.

So anyway, we make the trip there and it is, in every sense, a lovely day: good music in the car, djs talking sense, no traffic, and I'm happy to get out of the house. And once we get there, oh boy oh boy oh boy, me aunt starts off with a yoghurt dip. Now this dip (strain yoghurt, mix cheese, spring onions, capsicum, a few cubes of tomato, add some tabasco (or tobasco), and voila!) is divine with anything. Since good food and politeness never make for good dinner companions, we hogged. Then came the fried rice (same ingredients as dip plus two eggs minus the yoghurt) and noodles. Then out comes the vanilla ice cream and this divine thing called strawberry crush, a sweet syrup invented solely to invoke tears of joy. But don't put it in your eyes.

And then, god bless her soul, she returns my copy of Life of Pi and Bumper Book of Comic Speeches.

Update: That wasn't my Life of Pi. My copy was already at home. So whose book is this?