My “cha chi’s” childhood confidante from the community of Cane Grove made that finest of Indian milk sweets, the silky smooth “perah,” that she sold each Saturday, outside Stabroek Market.
In the cool darkness, Auntie Meena travelled with other vendors by taxi to “town,” bearing her twin woven baskets of delicacies, in an exhausting, bumpy ride across many muddy miles from their rural farming settlement of lush, green squares, set neatly away from the winding and moody Mahaica River.
The dawn would find her perched on a low wooden bench or “peerah” below the rusting roofline along the northern flank of the bustling market designed and built by the American firm Edgemoor Iron Company, in 1880-1881.
