Reading about Aparna’s Amma’s kozhikattas have kindled a deep yearning that begins at the edge of my tongue and goes all the way to the pit of the stomach, where one feels most keenly the well-being brought on by eating something sweet. It is the yearning of a sweetaholic on the mend for what used to be her poison of choice.
I have spent the last six months (actually six months, twelve days, and five hours till the time of writing) without as much as looking a sweet in the eye. Which includes anything with refined and unrefined sugar, ‘natural’ subsitutes like honey, dates, palm sugar, even fruit juices that confess to ‘sugar’ on their labels. Until I quit cold turkey, I worshipped the sweet taste in all its avatars, from chocolates to mishti doi, from tiramisu and crème brulee to any old laddu and barfi concocted by my neighbourhood halwai.
In my sorrow, sharpened by the aroma of frying jalebis from the flat downstairs, I turn to a familiar comfort – that of writing. Please don’t get me wrong: I don’t intend to moan and groan, not too much, anyway! Would just like to relieve my mind of the press of tastes that pursue me like hungry ghosts – mango kulfi on a hot summer afternoon, late night snacks of leftover cheesecake, warm apple pie with coffee on a chilly winter evening.
It is said that the taste one is born with, the primary one we can sense as babies, is the sweet. It comes naturally to us; all the others we have to become accustomed to. During the ritual when solid food is introduced in a baby’s diet – I know only of the north Indian version – it is sweet kheer that is coaxed into the baby’s mouth. According to my mother, I smacked my lips and wailed for more when I was introduced to the delight of rice cooked in sweet, thickened milk. I think it was a moment that marked me for life.
After all, what chance did I have in a culture that celebrates everything with sweets? Every festival, every rite of passage, every birthday and anniversary, every little happiness that comes a family’s way, must be marked with mothers laying on the kadhai for a sweet something, or a quick trip to the neighbourhood halwai. What is Diwali without succulent gulab jamuns and rotund rosogollas, Holi without crumbly gujias and nutty besan laddus, a wedding feast without creamy kalakands and crisp malpuas dripping with syrup? And there is always the humble halwa for emergency sweet needs – semolina roasted in ghee and doused with sugary syrup, garnished with pistachio nuts in the winter and soaked and skinned almonds in the summer.
Is it a wonder, then, if I grew up to be a sweetaholic? And that now, even after six months of being sugar-sober, I still break out into a deep yearning when I think of anything sweet?
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