Desserts

The first rajbhog I ever ate was not in a sweet shop. It was at my cousin’s wedding in Kolkata, long past midnight, when the mishti course finally arrived and the waiters set down steel bowls holding sweets so large they looked like a joke — pale golden, gleaming with syrup, each one nearly the …

The nolen gurer payesh of my childhood arrived with the winter fog. My grandfather would come home from the village market with a round cake of patali gur wrapped in old newspaper, and before he had even unwound his shawl, my grandmother had the big milk pot on the stove. Nolen means new — the …

The pantua of my memory did not come in a shiny box. It came from a Kolkata sweet stall near my aunt’s house, wrapped in a twist of newspaper, still warm, syrup already seeping through the paper. I remember the colour first — almost mahogany, far darker than any gulab jamun I had eaten back …

My love affair with this dish started at a cousin’s wedding in Lahore, in a marquee so full of people that the waiters were passing platters over our heads. When dessert finally arrived, the whole row of aunties in front of me actually turned around to look. The mutanjan came out on a tray wide …

The first time my nani brought imarti home, I refused to believe it wasn’t jalebi. It came from the old halwai near her street, still warm in a paper packet gone translucent with syrup, and the pieces inside looked like little orange flowers caught mid-bloom. I bit one expecting jalebi’s thin shattering crunch and got …

Every year, just as the first monsoon clouds gathered and the bazaar stalls started stringing up green Teej decorations, a flat white box would land on our kitchen counter, tied with pink string and already softening at the corners from the damp air. Inside, nested in butter paper, sat ghevar — great golden discs that …

The first time I saw mishti doi, the shopkeeper was showing off. At a little sweet shop counter, he picked up a small clay pot, turned it completely upside down over the tray, and held it there — and the doi stayed put, glossy and unmoved, like it was glued to the clay. Then he …

The sandesh of my childhood never came from our own kitchen. It arrived from the little Bengali sweet shop two streets away, in a shallow box lined with butter paper, whenever my grandfather decided the house deserved something gentle. I remember pressing my thumb into one piece to watch it spring back, smooth as a …

The mohanthal that ruined all other mohanthal for me came in a round steel dabba, carried from Ahmedabad by my friend’s grandmother — her Baa — who never travelled anywhere without provisions. She set one amber-coloured diamond on my palm like it was a coin, and it did something I still chase: it held its …

The kaju katli of my childhood arrived in a flat cardboard box tied with string, usually because my father had passed our mithai shop on the way home and lost an argument with himself. He would set the box on the table with ceremony, untie it slowly — far too slowly, if you asked any …