Swami Takes the Cake
“Unity in Diversity in action.”
During the first meeting of the Mid-Atlantic region to organize Swami’s birthday celebration in New York City on November 20, someone suggested that we have a birthday cake for Swami. Inspired by the birthday cakes I had seen at Dean and Deluca, I put up my hand to volunteer to coordinate.
Toward the end of October, I found myself in Greece working on possibly the biggest assignment I had ever handled. One night I found a message from Runee on my machine. Did I still want to do it, or should they ask someone else? It seemed there were other people keen to do it. I thought about it for a few minutes and called him back saying that I was so very busy that it looked like I would have to let that one go. Let someone else do it.
When I got back to New York a few days later, Runee and Farida still wanted to know what I planned to do about the cake. “I thought that my response was pretty clear” I said. Apparently, there wasn’t really anyone else able and willing to do it. So, then I said, in essence, “I will not seek this nomination, but if drafted I will serve.” I was drafted!
Time was running very short. About ten days before the celebration, Sheila came up with an idea. We could ask all centers in the region to bake two or more cakes, and on the day of the celebration I would use all these different cakes to put together one big cake. Unity in diversity in action! However, there were a lot of logistical problems to be worked out. How many cakes did we need? What shape and size, and last but not least, what about the icing?
I have greatly improved under Swami’s supervision, but one could still say that control is my middle name! After considering various designs and making detailed calculations, I decided that we needed about 35 cakes, baked in 13x9x2 inch pans, delivered, undecorated, by 12 noon. They could be chocolate, banana, carrot or any other kind of cake without eggs. The size was the only important factor. Sheila and Farida hit the phones and relayed the information.
Now I had to think of the icing. I had never made icing before. I got hold of several icing recipes but the sheer volume I needed made it seem overwhelming. I bought icing colors, and 68 beautiful gold candles, but still I had no icing. Then, in one of the cake stores, I met Beverly. Her card reads “Cake Artist”. She was just the person l needed. She clued me in on the various problems that can occur and offered to make the icing for me at a very attractive price-Swami had come to my rescue.
The Day of the Celebration
I arrived at the school carrying Beverly’s tub of icing and other cake decorating paraphernalia and waited for my 13x9x2 inch cakes to arrive; architectural plan in hand! First came Nancy Hollander. She brought four cakes and gave them to me with a beaming smile. I took them in, opened them with anticipation and to my horror I saw that they were the wrong size! “But they are the wrong size” I said. “I specifically asked for the cakes to be 13x9x2; these are Square!” Nancy naturally felt hurt and upset. Soon more cakes arrived. They were every shape and size conceivably possible. If I had specifically asked people to each make a different cake, I would not have received a bigger variety. At last, I realized that this was one of Swami’s jokes. My rigidity gave way to acceptance. I went up to Nancy and apologized. I could now clearly hear Him chuckling away with amusement.
As I surrendered to solving the problem at hand in good humor, Anastasia and another Greek friend came down to the dining room volunteering to help. The three of us cut and pasted the cakes together and, saving the one round cake for the very top, we produced an unprecedented cake which many people thought looked something like a mandir. Having learned my lesson early in the day, I thoroughly enjoyed working on the cake, the final product, having turned out much better than I could ever have planned. Thank you, Swami!
~Eleni Mylonas
