Two rival café owners. One busy, bustling street. The war begins.
Leela's quirky little tea shop, the "Kamal Jalebi" has always had the evening crowd swooning for its hot, steaming chai - until some rich, snobbish café pops up right across the stree...
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Krish smiled as the final customer stepped out of his little café, carrying out a box of the Flirty Tulip's specially baked mini cupcakes.
He turned around to a counter by a side, where a large, creamy butterscotch cake had been polished off slice-by-slice by guests all morning.
Next to it was an assortment of treats in various different shapes and sizes, each one looking more like an absurd real-life item than the next. The previous week's debacle with the chai-girl had made quite a few people step begrudgingly into the cool, cozy establishment, looking around inquisitively to ask if they could taste one of the "boxes" he'd tricked the girl, Leela, with.
Krish made a whole flurry of tiny life-like pastries after that, sitting up long after hours to perfect his art and think up quirky shapes to turn cake into.
By the end of his first week, he'd sold all kinds of peculiar-looking cakes— people took away a couple of cacti, a box full of shoes, a cluster of autorickshaw horns, fat chocolate spanners, even a large, ugly purple "bean bag" (that was originally supposed to be a handheld purse).
The last pastry from the morning's batch lay beneath the display case, alone on it's polished metal tray that was littered with the crumbs from the other cakes.
"Oh, the irony of you being left behind." Krish grinned at the lone piece.
"How about we have a little fun, huh?", he spoke out loud to the last bit of cake, gently wrapping it in a box before slipping out of the shop with a mask on.
Barely anyone paid attention to him as he crossed the street, hordes of people from the nearby offices, parks and school rushing in as the sun slowly dipped behind the trees.
The Kamal Jalebi stood proudly swarming with customers, this time manned by a young-ish man who seemed a bit too preoccupied with the blaring television on the side.
Pacing quickly to get himself a cup of tea and a small scoop of cashew cookies from one of the tall glass jars, Krish found himself leaning over the walls of a nearby building. The colourful cup of chai steamed under his nose as he watched a bunch of young children toddle out from the inside of the building, guided by a tired young woman.
Pulling down his mask, he took a quick gulp of the classic warm tea, savouring the way it rolled through his tongue and heated up his insides.
Hmm, he thought to himself while taking a bite of the cookie. So they do come here for the tea after all.
From the corner of his eye, he saw the girl Leela bustle around in the inner corners of her cramped tea stall, stirring something warm and heavy inside a large, brimming vessel. He could smell the wafting scent of warm milk, sugar and jaggery, trying to crane his neck to peek into what it was.
No one paid any attention to him as he quickly polished off his cup of tea and cookies, placing the empty glass on one of Kamal Jalebi's four tiny counters. Quickly pulling up the box he brought, he opened the lid to unveil the leftover piece—a cake shaped comically like a hollow little tea glass. In the fading sunlight, it looked starkly similar to his own empty cup of chai.
