the upper-middle-class habits of the early nineties, even when our financial situation didn’t. They were a curated performance designed mostly by Mum’s aspiration to break out from our lower caste. The biggest show of the year would often be my birthday party. Every year till I turned five, Mum baked elaborate cakes from scratch—her 2-kg rabbit cake and a three-tier witch’s house from the Hansel and Gretel fairy-tale were remembered for many years—and prepared a feast for at least thirty guests. It was an occasion to declare our ‘higher’ class status and an attempt to camouflage our lower
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