Spice of life | Delightful deluge of sweet celebrations!

It was joie de vivre to relish the world’s softest ‘ras malai’, whose unmatched sweetness was like a beautiful melody that lingered on even after it was gone

Peering through the glass display shelf, I feasted my eyes on the heaps of ‘imarti’ amid the lavish spread of sweetmeats in the shop. Spoilt for choice with the delightful deluge, I had enough to pamper my sweet tooth. As the royal smugness and a feel-good factor descended on me, there was no escape from the world of gourmet. It was joie de vivre to relish the world’s softest ‘ras malai’, whose unmatched sweetness was like a beautiful melody that lingered on even after it was gone.

Peering through the glass display shelf, I feasted my eyes on the heaps of ‘imarti’ amid the lavish spread of sweetmeats in the shop. (HT File)

The bugle call for the arrival of the festival season had been given by the extended outlets and bedecked markets. It was truly a sinful time of the year when the heart swung between ‘aye’ and ‘nay’ and the hand involuntarily moved towards the irresistible ‘gulab jamuns’. When one started debating which sweet to pick first, we knew that we had a lot on our plates.

My calorimeter had been stashed away and I had become stone deaf to any pearls of wisdom of healthy eating falling on my ears. I was a simple soul whose culinary cravings could be satiated with a meek ‘rasgulla’ or ‘chamcham’. It would have been almost unpardonable for me to ignore the piping hot ‘jalebis’ popping out of the sugar syrup, so I obliged. Had I been a little more adventurous, my heart would have wandered to savour the ‘shrikhand’ of Gujarat or ‘ghevar’ from Rajasthan, the Mysore pak or Bengali ‘sandesh’.

The imagination of the local halwais (sweet vendors) worked overtime as they churned out a riot of colours and flavours, leaving us asking for more. It would get grander with each passing year, and was getting difficult for the likes of me to drag ourselves away. So, the dilemma would be between besan barfi, rose-flavoured barfi, chocolate barfi and even a paan barfi.

My partner in crime was my father, for whom ‘mithai’ meant anything from a humble jaggery to kaju katli. Laddoo to him was sacred as ‘prasad’ and was never meant to be declined. In fact, his choice of sweet was according to his mood. When in a light mood, he would settle for a homemade ‘kheer’ or sweet semolina. An exuberant mood called for a heavy mud cake with a torrent of chocolate sauce. What I enjoyed most with him was the thrill of having something that we were denied. The secrecy with which we would pop an extra brownie had its own charm.

With me getting older, it was a bittersweet relationship with the delectable eats. I almost wished for utopia where one could gorge on them to the heart’s content without an iota of guilt. Or perhaps, bump into a house made of chocolate doors, windows, and walls, like the fairy-tale characters of Hansel and Gretel.

I would forever stand with the sweets, for when memories are sweet, people are sweet, gestures are sweet, and they make life sweet. alkagaurkashyap@gmail.com

The writer is a Chandigarh-based advocate