Aromatic whiff in the air? That's the sweet flavour of tradition during Diwali

Did you smell the delicate fragrance of gram flour being roasted, the merry jingle of peanuts crackling while frying or even the rich flavour of dry fruits as they are crushed and powdered to make them into edible sweets this season?  Hardly, right? Never mind the chocolates and macarons or whatever is the oh-so-fancy sweet of the season. If you don’t have some traditional items on your Diwali thaali, then let’s face it: it’s not really a Diwali thali. [caption id=“attachment_2502606” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Pic Courtesy: Reuters[/caption] The sinfully-sweet and ghee-dipped laddoos top the list of festive mithai. Diwali brings to mind laddoos made with besan (chickpea flour), rava or suji (semolina) or dry fruit. The tightly-curled spirals of chakli are also old favourites. Crispy chivda, also known as chevdo, bhuso, chanachur – depending on which part of India you are from – adds dashes of spice to the thali. There’s also a tradition of soft, sweet and gooey halva. Some opt for the firmer, gummy version that has raisins or sunflower seeds. Another favourite is the barfi, daintily wrapped in silver foil. And finally, there’s the karanji or gujiya that fills your mouth with the flavours of coconut and khoya. We spoke to food historians to find out what has gone off the Diwali thali as traditional joint family system has given way to nuclear families, with both parents working and no time to go shopping for provisions to make the sweets and savouries, and let’s admit it, there are far easier and varied mithai that one can buy over the counter. Ugly ducklings! Pushpesh Pant, a food historian and author scoffs at how with joint  families becoming extinct, “the younger generation we are told have no taste for home born Ugly Ducklings that refuse to change into Swans!”  He recalls how over half a century ago, all sweets for Diwali were made only at home. “The women folk in joint families worked together from  Kojagari Purnima- a whole fortnight before Diwali.” The way to celebrate Lakshmi puja was to make kheer and offer it to the goddess, he says.  The 67 year old says there was no such delicacy known as malpua, the north Indian traditional sweet that is crisp and yet soft and fluffy coated with sugar syrup. It is usually served with thickened sweet milk or rabri.  It was known as just pua. Tracing its origins, Pant informs, that even pua is a descendent of apupa from Vedic times! The other delicacy served during the festival of lights was kheel– puffed rice paired with batasha droplet of syrup baked on hot girdle. The girdle was bought from the market, says Pant, not the sweet. When guests dropped in, Pant says, “laddoos made of besan or suji or atta were offered. This was an auspicious day when use of tawa was prohibited and this resulted in dishing out poories in large numbers. For a more lavish spread kachori was added.” There were traditional regional specialties like the mildly sweet singal in Uttarkhand,  a jumbo jalebi-shaped confection prepared with semolina and fennel and mildly sweet. Poories were paired with either alu ka gutka tempered with jambu or Himalayn chives or semolina halwa semolina. Pakwana and mishtanna were home cooked in ghee. Everything has changed with passage of time, he says with a whiff of sadness. The lack of guidance from elders in the family has meant many of the traditional sweets are known by the mass produced sweets available in glass counters in mithai shops. The few who dare to venture into the preparation of traditional sweets dilute ingredients or use easy to use materials that change the mithai into a poor cousin of the original. Whither devlay? Preetha Mathur, an authority on Kayastha cooking says the typical sweets prepared in Kayastha households were devlay – hard sweet puris, g_une_ made with semolina, refined flour sugar and shaped like rings and deep fried. There were many varieties of ladoos, says Mathur,  but the most popular were the ones made of til, choorma and besan were very popular. Another sweet made in Kayastha homes were gujia – half moon shaped sweets made with flour and stuffed with khoya, dry fruits and sugar. In the making of _gujia_s ladies would give a lot of time and care to shape its edges into different patterns, recalls Mathur fondly. [caption id=“attachment_2502608” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Pic Courtesy: PTI[/caption] Did you know fish too was part of sweetmeats in some regions in India? Mathur talks of the hard-to-find preparation in many Kayashta homes of Andarse ki goli in which soaked and ground rice was mixed with sugar, ghee and samudri jhaag (scuttle fish) and formed into a dough, then divided into small balls, rolled in sesame seeds and fried golden in ghee. “The way sweetmeats were made have undergone changes what with sugar-free, sweetness instead of sugar,” she sighs. Southern misses Is there really a unique culture that can be identified with any region any more. The sangeeth, the mehendi and all the elaborate wedding rituals up north are now a part of the weddings in the south. Regional delicacies have changed in the sense they have been diluted by not adhering to traditional sweets of the particular region, says Sabita Radhakrishnan, author, food columnist and broadcaster from Chennai. “In the South you see people buying rasmalai, rasagollas mapua, or making gulab jamuns from ready mix powders and so on for Deepavali.” So what were the traditional musts on a Diwali thaali? “_Athirasam_s. The athirasam flour would be ground at home and this sweet is prepared with rice flour and jaggery as the non Brahmins have a Lakshmi puja on Amavasya day which is one day after the festival of lights. _Athirasam_s used to be prepared with so much reverence at home, nowadays most women buy them off the shelf and place it before Lakshmi on the day of the puja!” The others edibles that were to be found were murukku (chakli) as also _thattai_s (a crispy snack), boondi ladoos prepared out of besan, and sugar syrup, as well as _Mysore pak (_a rich sweet made with ghee). Radhakrishnan says that with the bonhomie and the joy of making sweets at home now becoming folklore, senior citizens feel a sense of void and a guilt of letting go of these traditional practices. That certainly is food for thought. But who is listening?!