THE BAKER

Ms. Mala’s bakery was one of several in the old neighbourhood where yeasty scents poured from windows into the narrow street. But she alone had decades’ worth of roots with which to drench her treats and leavened goods, and no mere nostalgia for sponge cake cooked at home guided her hands. Ms. Mala possessed a secret ingredient—not only her treats’ flavours but herself. She was a show.

Each morning, as the first fissure of dawn light leaked its way through the curtains, she would emerge from her witchy little cottage, her fingers a patchwork of flour and her apron a quilt uniquely designed. But she looked nothing like your typical early-morning baker. She’d come out with coiffed hair, her make-up was always on fleek, and she was just... weirdly gorgeous—a runaway from a fashion shoot leaking out of her magic little kitchen. It was as if she opened up an invisible portal to glitter and stage makeup every time she whipped up a new confection.

Throughout the morning, as the neighbourhood woke up, her regular customers began to line up. Some came to buy chocolate chip cookies that, when you bit into them, seemed to turn to liquid gold in your mouth. Others bought the apple pies with their flaky crusts that had been baked to the most heavenly of scents. But what made this visit special was that they didn’t simply experience the food. They also came to get a dose of Mala’s style.

She pinched and rolled cookie dough like a concert pianist, her flour-splattered apron daubed and smeared with paintbrush strokes. She’d smile at me as she caught me lifting the lid on her sponge cakes and slipping in the crevice of her mouth—a computer-generated smile that glowed for the oven.

They would hang out at the counter—not just to eat their cakes, but to watch Mala. People learned that for the price of one cake, you got a twofer: seeing Mala in her full-on princess regalia was entertainment in itself.