Gulab jamun

There are enough delivery services in our neighborhood that we rarely have to go anywhere to get anything at all, but it can end up being a lot of work getting what we need anyway, considering the language and accent barriers.
After such a long time here what was once just my immitation of the local accent in English has become a natural way of speaking for me and I can communicate rather well on some topics. Unfortunately, ordering groceries is not one of them.

We do alot of business with City Market, our source for everything from incense to soy milk, produce to junk food. They know us as 'Lakshmi Mansion, F-1." I think we must be their worst nightmare when it comes to orders phoned in. I never knew it could be so difficult to explain that I want a light bulb.
The other night I ordered roasted kajju (cashews) 50 grams, one Lipton iced tea in a can for Hamid, gulab jamun (what I thought would be rose incense), and a pack of 30 white emergency candles.
There is no emergency, we just like to burn them.

Frequently, no matter how many times we repeat our order we receive something so far flung from what it is we expected that we have to send it back. They've sent oil instead of apples, soap instead of rice - you get the idea. Once in a while the shop is just too busy in this rapidly growing neighborhood to keep the orders straight and once in a while the mixup is due to my feeble attempts at impressing them with a bit of Hindi or Kannada.

As it turns out, gulab jamun was not rose incense - not even close.
It was an intriguing box with a glass jar inside full of tan golf ball sized round things suspended in light syrupy stuff - apparently something to eat. I decided, out of curiosity (edged with a slight embarassment at my own linguistic mistake) and in honor and memory of trips with friends to Uwajimaya in Seattle to buy and taste nameless wonderfully packaged foreign goodies, to open the jar and pluck out and taste one of the offerings.
It was, at least for the moment, the most delicious thing I've ever eaten.
Tasting something like a maple syrup soaked donut hole, gulab jamun is a wonderfully edible Indian delicacy.
Made of curded and fried milk and soaked in rosewater syrup, the roundy sugary things are my most recent accidental favorite.