A Mallu feast ends with tears

We have a delighful Mallu couple in Oulu. They are both electronics engineers.

They invited Annikki and me over for dinner. This was one of the very rare weekends that Annikki and I can actually go out together.

Isaac Sundarajan and I always get together for a meal when he arrives from the US, so I asked our hosts whether he could join in.

Nisha and Sunil worked hard (as a team - Sunil did the chopping, Nisha did the cooking) to turn out a wonderful Mallu feast for us.

Mango juice followed by vegetable spring rolls and kappa (tapioca) with super spicey chilli / onion chutney and garlic pickle for starters. Fried rice, tofu in garlic bean sauce, egg curry and cubed turkey for the main meal followed by delicious ice cream to end. And all this was served with mora (beaten yoghurt laced with onion, chilli flavouring).

Annikki was stuffed to gills, almost the feeling of attending the Egyptian meal we went through in the early seventies.

All three of us thoroughly enjoyed the great evening in the company of this lovely young couple.

We had much more in common than we thought, but that is another story.

But all good things must have a nasty end.

Nisha and Sunil have a beautiful daughter, Hannah, who is just four. She was also having a great evening and troubled no one during the entire evening.

As I got up to leave there was a nasty cracking sound as I stepped on one of her lovely plastic golden Christmas bells.

I knew I had really put my foot in it.

Tomorrow, even though it is Sunday, my task is to find her a string of bells that she will enjoy and forget about that one I broke!

A broken heart of a child is something I cannot live with!