Delhiwale: To the jubilee year

Gurugram's Sham Sweets, founded in 1951, celebrates 75 years in 2026, renowned for its doda and other traditional mithais amidst the city's modernity.

2025 is soon ending. The forthcoming 2026 will create its own anthology of fortunes and misfortunes. It will also mark a landmark’s diamond jubilee.

Indeed, if Gurugram were a country, then doda might have beer its national mithai. No sweet shop in the town is without this sprouted wheat delicacy. (HT)

The Millennium City sobriquet for Gurugram suggests as if the city came up only after the year 2000. Gurugram, in fact, dates back to the ancient times of Mahabharat. Consider the “guru” and “gram” constituents of the name: the city originated as a gram, or village, that was gifted by the Pandavas as gurudakshina to Guru Dronacharya. Today, however, the high-rises of contemporary Gurugram are so overwhelming that one forgets the city’s timeless past. As well as the fact that this land of shopping malls and office towers has an unassuming old quarter, where the pace of life is slower, and which possesses a moderate share of old edifices. Such as the stone gateway of Ghamand Sarai.

This time-worn piece of elegant architecture has so thoroughly integrated into Sadar Bazar’s dusty hyperlocal scene that it is barely noticed by citizens, who crowd the facing street all day long. Indeed, the scores of stalls and shops that choke up both sides of the gateway claim most of the attention. One of these is Sham Sweets.

It is this mithai shop that is turning 75 in the forthcoming new year. Owner Anil Bajaj, a fan of the Godfather film trilogy, states that so far he has no concrete plans for the shop’s anniversary celebrations—the exact date of its founding being July 7.

The mithai shop was founded in 1951 by his father, Sham Lal Bajaj, who had arrived in Gurugram as a Partition refugee. His family used to have a halwai shop in Dera Ghazi Khan, in what is now Pakistani Punjab. The new shop gradually raised its reputation, and this day is renowned for its milk cake and Gokul ki rabri, among other delicacies. Its most city-specific offering is the doda, the barfi of Gurugram.

Indeed, if Gurugram were a country, then doda might have been its national mithai. No sweet shop in the town is without this sprouted wheat delicacy (see photo). Cooked in desi ghee, the dark brown treat comes topped with sliced almonds and cashews. Anil Bajaj says that his father was a pioneer in spreading the reach of doda in Gurugram. His father died in 2012. Some two years ago, his grandson, Anil Bajaj’s son Apoorva, who earned a diploma in baking from Sydney’s Le Cordon Bleu Australia, opened an outlet of the mithai shop on Basai Road. He administers it with MBA graduate Nikita; she is also his wife.

One entire floor of the outlet is devoted to a section that prepares not mithais, but a range of eggless cakes and artisanal breads. That said, Sham’s hasn’t strayed from the classic traditions of Sham Sweets, the mother establishment. It also serves good old mithais, including the doda.