Recipe For A Bitter Cake

By Parmita

To follow this recipe, you will need the following ingredients:

(p.s- you might want to hoard them before the patriarchal system claims it for itself).

• First, sanity and a strong mind because it is easy to go insane in an asylum like our society

• 1 kg of aunties, biological and non biological, because they're like the air we breathe - omnipresent, extremely polluted and assist with burning. Note: only big nosed ones.

• ½ a kg of uncles to invalidate your dreams and to give unsolicited opinions. Note: we won't be needing the other half of them since they don't believe in the concept of equal opportunity for women anyway.

• 250 grams of sexism. Squeeze the pulp out of the woman’s gut and watch out for the fruit(y) flies (Always keep it covered with a lid of victim shaming).

• 400 grams of societal stigma, taste according to your preference. Since it is available in all forms, quantities and shades.

• 10 pods of fresh, raw and locally sourced fascism. These will be easily procured as they are readily available. It’s an indigenous ingredient that goes way back and is abundant around you. Ask your parents where to find them.

• Denial to taste. People usually enjoy a jolly good portion of political blindness as it helps them to cope with the brutality of the truth.

• Some internal politics, to grease the pan before pouring in our mixture. Very useful in a caste based dish such as ours.

• 2 liters of queer people. This ingredient makes your recipe a fool proof one, because no matter how terrible a cook you are, adding this will make your dish more deliciously colourful, interesting and filled with love. If you happen to be allergic to this ingredient then you deserve to choke on it anyway.

• A drizzle of double standards because you want the dish to please everyone.

• Lastly, try to keep those shrink fingers from licking your batter at its final stages of redemption, if there's anything worth saving. My bad, I meant savouring. You better not put your mental health first, you could just escape the eyes of Big Brother.

If you have blindly followed everything, this is how your dish should cook once you’ve shoved it into the oven that has been pre heated to a degree of high expectations:

• It takes a while to bake. It is quiet, almost docile.

• It might begin to bubble up. The pressure will hone the dish so let it sit until it gets used to the environment.

• INDIFFERENCE IS KEY! Be patient.

• It will look rebellious but it’s just a phase, all the 20-odd cooks obviously know better.

• It will be a successf-

By Parmita