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SHRAVAN BYE-BYE, CHOVOTH WELCOME!
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SHRAVAN BYE-BYE, CHOVOTH WELCOME!

Eating is Fun / Eating is Yuck! - A variety food column, Life & Living, Sept 12- Sept 18, 2026 September 11, 2026 , by

Another season of chovoth is here… with best wishes and goodwill and sweets and savories distributed to family and friends. Perhaps no other country has the wealth of sweets which India has! In Goa it is nevryo, patholiyo and ladoo making the rounds followed closely by all kinds of variegated modak.

OKAY I’ve seen something like 25 Shravan-ka-mahina and Chovoth come and go in Goa and the differences are there – that is, when I make comparisons with Mumbai’s Shravan and Ganesh Chaturthi and Goa’s Shravan and Chovoth. I know comparisons tend to be odious but in Mumbai everybody says Ganesh Chaturthi, and not Chovoth as in Goa. Chovoth celebrations are still sublime and old-fashioned in Goa….and I’ve noticed it is not all kinds of modak from the steamed to the caju or boondi ones which rule (also mava modak) in Mumbai, in Goa it’s the lovely crunchy delights of “nevryo” or “nevri” which one is treated to in most every Goan Hindu home…these come stuffed not only with a wholesome chana/moong dal-coconut-caju sweet filling, now there’re also savory versions of nevryo which can be enticing but too spicy I don’t like much. These ivory nevryo when patiently, correctly made, are a delicious one may want to savor lingeringly…the Konkan nevryo are soft yet crunchy crescents offering a couple of mouthfuls of mysterious sweetness but very agreeable! Badly or indifferently made nevryo can be thin, hard in crust and thankless to eat – all depending on whether refined flour maida or a judicious mix of rava has gone into the making of the dough for rolling out, and then parceling up into the crescents to be deep fried (in desi ghee and not one of the vile vegetable oil fats of vanaspati or dalda). One may tell by the smell of nevryo — to eat or not to eat. In Mumbai nevryo are also called “karanji.”
 OF COURSE in this country we consume a whole lot of shallow and deep fried sweet and savory stuff, much to the detriment of our larger preventive health concerns. I don’t want to be a wet blanket or so speak here this week’s column. Come festivals and few are going to keep their hands off sweets; all I’m saying gently here is to be discriminating at least in the larger interests of long term wellbeing!
Apart from dainty nevryo in every Goan home one will find the turmeric-wrapped steamed “patoleo” – stuffed with a choon of freshly grated coconut and grated jaggery, jaggery, cardamom or nutmeg flavored. Nothing like a freshly taken out whole warm patoleo to take pleasure in and take one down yesteryear’s memory lane of grandmothers and mothers and aunts and uncles of various classification. The old-timers did everything with blow-by-blow painstaking effort; today one may find readily available fresh grated coconut at the local deli store refrigerators for a price and it may not be so fresh. Ditto for fresh coconut milk although I don’t think anyone is retailing freshly squeezed coconut milk in the Goan or even Panjim market.
Someone in family may make a whole lot of nevroy and patoleo for distribution but help is available for these gala Chovoth making sessions, as various daughters-in-laws, mami, kaki, maasi, cousins, turn up on a planned day for the blessings of togetherness in work! Once upon these family festival togetherness celebrations were fun and memorable but now…sigh…nuclear families are in a hurry as a rule and if things can’t be made at home, they’re bought and bought things may turn out to be good, bad or ugly. Okay, don’t wallow in the past too much nostalgically and sentimentally.
THE other all-time classic Chovoth sweet which will always be popular is of course our all-Indian range of ladoo – simplest of sweets, they come in quite a variety now, including my favorite “motichoor” and “halim” (garden cress seeds) soft dulcet ladoo as only a few housewives can make them, you can’t hoard halim ladoo too long for have shortest natural short life. Then again, think boondi large and motichoor, choorma, mava, besan, rava, panjiri, til, the millet ladoo of ragi and bajra and rice flour and getting popular are the “maha healthy” dry fruit ladoo done in soft date or fig base — all ladoo or ladu as you wish! Softball mithai of sweet somethings featuring in every mithaiwallah’s shop or outlet big time and small time; across India, slight ladoo variations from state to state may be a joy to discover. It’s a wonderful world of ladoo in our part of the world…I would say the humble ladoo is the national sweet of India! Ever tasted a pure khajur dipped in the most expensive desi ghee ladoo? You will never crave for any other kind of ladoo again or something again!
Of course the khajur or dates must be expensive high class “ajwa” (from Medina) or “medjool” (Morocco), best dates are from the Middle Eastern countries. Honey, just love a date a day and you’re good for life!

CHAVTICHO BAZAAR AT ESG COURTYARD

ALL of this reminds me to remind you that the Entertainment Society of Goa has organized a most well-organized “Chavticho Bazaar” at the old GMC complex in Panjim from September 10 to 12, 2026. I dropped by on Thursday evening and was delighted to find a few things I needed like lavender agarbatti or incense sticks and yes, some of the most sublime ladoo preparations presented by the entrepreneurial pair of Suhani Sen and Anshika Thakur of Mapusa, although their ladoo making unit is at Guirim. They do some most desirable millet ladoo of little millet (amaranth) and ragi (also nachne), sattu (chana flour), date-dry fruit…no sugar anywhere, only jaggery. More expensive, but each of their very eco-friendly austere cardboard boxes are a pack of six ladoo, I couldn’t resist buying the little millet and sattu ladoo after tasting them. Look out for their EarthPurna ladoo stall right out there at the old GMC hospital-ESG hospital complex, where the stalls line-up in the rooms commence, if you’re interested in ladoo only like I am increasingly so, don’t ask me why. Sticking to old favorites is best policy.
Lots of other desirable things too at the ESG’s Chavitcho Bazaar for some Ganesh festival shopping like makhar, pooja sahitya, musical instruments, German silver costume jewelry, some very lovely chikan work saree collection, not to forget shirish wood small furniture pieces; also the colorful swaying dolls and neem wood toys of Kondapalli in Andhra Pradesh. I couldn’t resist buying colorful key whistle, and I’ll go back and to buy that neem wood comb! Plus, may be some home-made ghee…maybe, maybe not!

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