WHO DOESN’T LOVE SWEETS!

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Life & Living October 24, 2025 , by Tara Narayan

WHO doesn’t love sweets? I don’t, I do, I don’t, I do… but only a few sweets. And so it goes. Sweet is a predominant flavor amongst life’s luxuries or so one would think, and see how expensive mithai has become, even if the learned rich no longer like their life sugared, or do they? Of course, they do. Everybody has sweets on their mind come the festive seasons and we in India are on a roll currently at least till Christmas and New Year celebrations are over and a bleak 2026 arrives for those at the bottom of the pyramid of the gross good life!
It’s that time of the year when the mithai shops around about town are brightly dolled up with festive beckoning temptations – there doors cascade with fountains of fairy lights, strings of yellow and orange marigolds, lanterns, lamps, and other intriguing real and unreal arty decorations.
Wherever one goes a sweetmeat awaits one and it’s not polite to refuse, impolite to say although one may say it, “No sweets love, I’m diabetic” – all sweets banned by my doctor for the time being. Or some such new fangled excuse if you don’t like the looks of what’s being offered, and you know how injuriously it will take a toll on you, even if it’s one fat toffee brown Dharwad peda.
One may squeeze out all the syrup of a gleaming white rossogolla though and relish it! A real genuine desi ghee motichoor ladoo is hard to resist as is the Samant Brothers’ Mysore paak…well, there I go. To repeat, once upon a time we indulged in sweets on only during festivals but nowadays it’s as if have money, buy and eat some mithai or another sweet post-lunch lunch, dinner or whenever. We set the example for our children to eat sweets day in and day out till all their teeth fall off even before they are adults.
I LIKE to repeat this story. A friend of mine once told me her oh her so rich grandmother used to put a piece of Cadbury chocolate in her mouth every night to get her to sleep (sorry, the friend is no longer around, she died of a stroke in the prime of her life, for complicated reasons or just plain old bad kismet — as a grandmother of mine would say if she were alive). We know but pretend we don’t know the impact all the refined and unrefined sugary stuff we treat our palate too and our teeth…it’s okay, nowadays mod con dentists do a great job of implants. Mercifully, I still have most of my own teeth and brush them morning and night, and think it’s always a good idea to rinse out mouth after stuffing it with savory anything or sweet nothings.
THE hubby who has a sweet tooth will say get some jalebi or look for a soft ladoo like a motichoor which he won’t have much trouble chewing, and I normally get it if I know that’s all he will eat that day, even if I know all the refined sugar is not going to do him or me — who generally speaking likes to polish up leftovers nine days old in the fridge, instead of chucking ruthlessly.
Hey, I do give away too so I neither eat it all up or chuck it…on good days of course. If I don’t like something I don’t want to give it away either! But my purchasing of sweets has come down over the years, maybe a token gesture now and again, if I see something worth living for and not dying for. I’ve more or less switched over to these several versions now of crushed or cut dry fruit embedded in a variety of beds made of dates. Dry fruit mithai (no sugar) is something most everyone likes.
Usually at home I try to have one reasonably desirable sweet and one savoury — like the light crisp gram flour “papri” which I get from Mishra Peda around the corner where I stay. Apart from all the spread of ladoo and mava mithai they have a special section only for nutty sweets, like the most popular cashewnut katli or in combo with green pistachio and sometimes almond crumble. If you want pure almond katli you have to do a special order with a caterer, may be give your own almonds, no cheating with “mava” please and low sugar quotient please!
India’s roll call of mithai or sweet something is endless and in various avatar in state after state, really exhaustive. I mean think Calicut halva, ice halva, Bombay halva, some sweetmeat shops during the festive season also do bottle gourd halva or carrot halva and these are appealing for they’re not painfully sweet or ghee loaded; I like the coconut oil laced halva of Kerala sometimes after tasting them at the exhibitions on in town along with freshly done thin banana wafers (a favored crispy).
The sweets of Rajasthan are superlative apart from the primary choorma ladoob, and in Mumbai there are the exclusively Bengali sweet shops with names like Chhappan Bhog, after the 56 item prasad offerings laid out before the deities in temples and especially the ISKCON temples)…I’d say the “chenna” or cottage cheese sweets of West Bengal make for some superior mithai, I’m partial to them and especially the noton gur or date palm jaggery “kacha golla” and “sandesh” and some more. At the minimum every household will buy the delicate little savoury “singhara” (samosa) along with “mishti doi” (sweet tangy creamy curd which is a Bengali special). Much more only in West Bengali mithai shops.
And never mind that anything deep fried in one of the hydrogenated fats of vanaspati or dalda has an obnoxious odor, avoid! Sugar and fat is a deadly combo, but we must surely know that by now. Okay, no more mithai talk here now but do be very selective this festive sweet seasons on a roll currently. Stay traditional, especially old or ancient traditional when it comes to savoury and sweet something.
THIS interesting bit. In my search for desi or native millet flatbreads of ragi, jowar, bajra I was at one of my local grocer, Yugantar Super Market down Caranzalen, mid-town Panaji, and asked the guy here (from Rajasthan), looking again at the variety of whole wheat chapatti available to just warm up, lace with ghee and consume……he stocked several brands of freshly made chapatti, the Nice brand are a pretty decent buy and one may get whole wheat chappaties at several local eateries.
Anyway, I asked this grocer bhai why can’t you also get ready-to-heat-and-eat millet chappati/roti/bhakri? He shrugged, people think it’s up market to eat whole wheat roti chapatti, the same old story of the mind! But his tall handsome teenage son nearby listening in exclaimed, “Madam, in Rajasthan we begin the day eating bajra rotlo with tea and in Panjim I do the same, I make my own rotlo to eat every morning…”
Amused I told him if he makes these bajra (pearl grey millet) rotla for me I’ll pay for them but don’t make them too heavy! He laughed and looked at his elder brother, looking at his elder brother and wondering if I was joking. Not joking. Man can cook, it is okay with me.
After all the talk and expenditure of public funds on promoting the goodness of millets (AYUSH promotions), I really wish the government of Goa would make the millet roti of our very own country available to consumers at their doorstep every morning – just like the delivery boys of the local bakery come around blowing their horns on a cycle or scooty retailing the day’s freshly baked “double roti” of bread loaves – poie, unde, kakon, pau, etc. Same price, Rs5 per baked loaf, or per nachne or jowari or bajra flatbread, anyone? Or “thalipeeth” or the steamed “amboli” (steamed rice pancakes of the very best kind). What’s the point of spending so much public money promoting millets, without also creating an infrastructure which will deliver traditional millet goodies to the people, whose health parameters desperately need to be bettered?
This is to say my saga story of seeking millet flatbreads to buy in the local marketplace continues, but I can’t find them for love or money and am depending on a real thoughtful and sensitive government of aam aadmi to do the needful! Oh don’t tell me to make them at home, they’re easy to do but it’s not cost-effective for me at this point of time to do so…as we grow old and older, coping with the nitty gritty of staying alive becomes more tiresome or forgettable.
Lately, I’ve been realizing that most times I end up stuffing my face with what somebody else wants to eat, but not me. Smoke on that. I urge you anew to switch over to the millet flatbreads of our country’s traditional fare by the time 2026 sweeps in. Quite simply, it’s more nutritious and flavorful and you’ll still be walking, talking, enjoying life when you touch your 80s plus, plus!