Tacos for Survival

“You are too naive, Upashana. You can’t stay single your whole life. Trust me, you need a man.”

Does your manager say that? Well, mine does.

And I guess she is right. No matter how much I insist on staying single, I have never truly been able to escape the feeling of being loved. by a man.

But that is not why I ended up here. The ambitious girl in me was running away from marriage (not from love), determined to stand on her own feet first. Well, I have to stand on my own feet to make tortillas now.

What do you do when your family says, “Either you get married or get a government job. You are running out of time.”

If you have a brain, you choose one of them, and if you are like me, you run away from both, very far away, so far that even the time zone is different. I was not interested in either of them. Unfortunately.

I ran away from marriage just to fall in love with the idea of marriage again. To hell with that.

After my independent (ambitious) ass had been fired from countless labour jobs, Helen was the only one who could see the potential in me. Yeah, the potential to make good tacos.

“You are too slow,” was the response I got every time I got fired. Well, it sucked, of course. It would immediately take me back to the times when I used to hear things like, ‘You are never going to do anything in life,’ or ‘You are too innocent for this world,’ or, as Helen said, you are too naive.

I was certain I was getting fired from this job, too. But she trusted me. Surprisingly

“You are too slow. I will teach you how to become confident, Upashana. I know you can.” Does your manager say that? Well, mine did.

If it had not been for Helen, I think I would still be struggling to find a job here. She might not know it, but she has helped me in more ways than she realizes. She helped me become myself first. She made me feel safe in this completely new, big city.

I don’t even mind her shouting at me now. Although she still does, in her own Vietnamese slang.

This cozy little Mexican restaurant on Parliament Street has seen different phases of my life now. I have made some really good tortillas and some really bad ones, too. But the people always loved the tacos. I still can’t believe they did not fire me. Tacos really helped me survive here.

Now that the time has come to leave this place, I realize I might not ever find a manager like Helen anywhere else.

If my sanima had not taught me to make round roti, I would not have been good at making round tortillas either.

“Date a good man, Upashana, not a bad one. The wrong person can make your life feel like hell.”

“SURE.”