Cakes and calendars

Unless you live on a deserted island or a remote rural place undiscovered by corporates you will have registered that yesterday February 9 was Chocolate Day under the very special calendar known as Valentines Week which includes Rose Day Propose Day Chocolate Day Teddy Day Kiss Day Hug Day Valentines DayResearch suggests that this is an entirely Indian concoction in which the chocolates roses teddy bears dates and kisses usually stacked into a single day of Valentine celebrations have been mapped and stretched onto Indian ritual time Its Valentines Day remixed with an Indian wedding or the nineday colourcoded dandiya calendar mdash to create a Valentines calendar yaniki the Himesh Reshammiya Dating Utsav version of VdayDespite this remix chocolate uninterestingly retains its dominance as the ritual sweet offering for the desi Valentine This is curious because if there is any parallel to this GangaDanube tehzeeb of EastWest remix it is in fact the Indian bakery where the concept of cake and bread have been joined with Indian mithai in sugary matrimony to birth Indian bakery itemsConsider the concept of mawa cake where does the mawa end and the cake begin I could tell you but I dont talk with my mouth full Before there were pastel macarons I do love to look at them especially the purple ones and cupcakes there were the shelves of Indian bakeries looking like an entire colony of Hansel and Gretels manycoloured magic house of sweets For most of us the afternoon walk home from the school bus was a longing contemplation of beckoning bakery cases full of dark yellow puff pastry patties with a little bit of veggie mash leaking out of the corner and a rainbow array of pastries whose icing was as curlywurly and thicklyfrilly as Marie Antoinettes wigs complete with tiny silver beadsSeveral buttery cream strawberry and raspberry and pista green socalled mint and yellow pineapple pastries whose cake tasted faintly of kewra not vanilla and whose icing flavours were surely a mix of cough syrup and food colouring And of course the creamcrammed chocolate eacuteclairs and cream horns determined dominions of sugar and cream proof that most Indians with a sweet tooth were also maakhan chors at heart Every tiny north Indian town and big city neighbourhood had several such bakery shops with names such as Azad Maqdoom Victoria and Bharat Sweets mdash not clever puns on buns like contemporary bakery names Love Sugar Dough Sweet Retreat but a layered cake of history and cultureThe south had far more developed and synthesised choices As one friend informed me Bengaluru has Iyengar bakeries and Malayalam bakeries There you could buy things such as dilkhush or dilpasand a big chocopie type item filled with coloured coconut filling and candied fruit yaniki tuttifrutti in slices Sounds horrible I said Oh yes horrible and sooo good she replied Japanese cake a cousin of mawa cake Russian cake a black and white cake that seems like a riff on marble cake khoya naan also a tart stuffed with khoya and so on to the savoury bitsThese bakeries made a contemporary Indian food mixing colonial with desi foreign with familiar As the mixed fruit jam of Valentines week ndash which indicates that despite purification efforts of cultural gatekeepers Indians find the old tastier mixed with some newParomita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at wwwparodevipicturescomCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates