Sweet stress

When I was living with my Sri Lankan friend in London I used to say to her, jokingly, "I'm so glad I wasn't born an Indian, otherwise I'd be the size of a house by now," after finishing a meal which she had cooked, to which she could have responded, "Probably two houses." I ate so much curry - sambals and whatnot made out of fish, egg, vegetables and crabs - during the one year we were living together that I sometimes wondered if passers-by on the street could smell the mustard seed oil and chili oozing out of my pores. My flatmate loved cooking, and excelled at it. I tried to learn from her, but the only thing I can remember now is how to make a 'chili' omelette - you add in garlic cloves, chili peppers, onions and mustard seeds to the eggs.

Every weekend, she and her husband (who lived abroad and came visiting) would attend several Indian weddings, or visit friends and relatives just back from Sri Lanka. I would sometimes watch as she briskly dressed and made up her face - I seldom put on make up myself, but it was fun watching someone else do it - before waving a kiss of goodbye into the air and disappearing out of the front door downstairs. On Sunday mornings I would open the fridge to discover boxes of beautifully wrapped Indian sweets. The first time I saw them I didn't recognise them as edible matter. My flatmate, knowing my voracious appetite, hovered behind me as I eyed the contents of the fridge up and down, expecting me to say something about the box. When I finally saw the box, I looked at the silvered squares through the plastic lid and asked,
"Are these cosmetics?"
She laughed.
"No, they're Indian sweets. Haven't you tried them before?"
I frowned. My adventurous mother had once somehow managed to stumble upon milk halwa before and had brought it home in ridiculously large plastic boxes. My sisters had detested it - maybe it was the unfamiliar spicing of cardomom that had put them off, or the semolina. But these sweets were different.
"I don't think I've tried anything like this," I said.
"Well, I've already had some so I shouldn't have any more, but you should try these," she said. We took them out to the table. There were coloured squares and diamond shapes all covered with a thin layer of silver or gold.
"Are you meant to eat the silver on it too?" I asked, grabbing one diamond.
"Yes, but you'd better not eat all of that," she said, taking it back from my hand and breaking it into half. I could see the inside looked like coconut ice.
"Why not?" I asked, pained at the thought of not finishing whatever it was.
"It's fattening," she said. "It's condensed milk, coconut milk, ghee... whatever is bad for you."
So we ate small pieces of the mawa barfi. I fell in love instantly with the tooth-ache inducing sweetness of it all, the silver and gold cover and the fatty smell of it. We both agreed the stuff was gorgeous. I reached out for more but she shook her head at me.
"I know it's lovely but you shouldn't, really," she said, putting the lid back onto the box.

One of my colleagues came back from a trip to India yesterday and has left out a massive box of Indian sweets in the corridor. I am doing my best to be polite and not gobble it all up, Cookie Monster style.