💬 I eat the sweet last and somebody always takes it

At weddings I leave the sweet on the plate until everything else is finished. It's a rule from my childhood. Last month at a wedding in Malakpet, I had a bowl of kheer on the side of my plate for 20 minutes. I ate the rice, the curry, the salad. Then I turned to reach for the kheer and the bowl was gone. My son, who's 9, was sitting next to me with a very clean spoon and a very innocent face. I said, where's my kheer? He said, what kheer? I said, the kheer in the bowl. He said, oh, that. It's a good thing you saved it, Mum, because I was getting full. He said that out loud. 2 women at the next table heard it and started laughing so hard that one dropped her fork. I got another bowl, of course. But it had been sitting under a fan, and it was a bit cold. My husband says that's what you get for hoarding the best thing. He eats his sweet first. He has done this for 12 years. He says life's too short, and I tell him dessert isn't life. We've never agreed on this, and my mother in law sits in the middle and says nothing. She puts a little extra on both our plates every single time. We're not allowed to complain. I'll say this, though. The first bite of anything sweet is the best one. After that it's just sugar. If I eat it first, I'm done after 3 spoons. So I save it and it lasts me till the end. It's a system. It works for me, mostly, except when my son is within arm's reach. Next wedding I'm putting the bowl on the other side of my plate. Far from his hand.

What kheer? Your son has a future in politics. My brother does the same to me with gulab jamun. He sits next to me with a spoon in his pocket and waits for my plate to look relaxed. The only fix is to eat the sweet in the middle, which my mother says is bad manners. I say it is good strategy.

I go the other way, sweet dish first while everything is still fresh, otherwise I am too full to properly enjoy it by the time I get through the rest of the plate. My grandmother finds this deeply wrong and has said so every time I visit for twenty years without exception. We have agreed to disagree, though she still serves me the sweet last on purpose just to make her point.