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Escaped Flavors
It was about a week or so before Deepavali and I was pacing around the parking lot at my local Indian grocery store, feverishly updating my Deepavali shopping list — A meticulously built google sheet with a table of snacks that I was going to make at home for the festival along with ingredients for each one of them.
Nah..
I was at the store for my weekly essentials and Deepavali was the last thing on my mind. As soon as I walked in, I was greeted with a shelf full of “diyas” (lamps) and it didn’t take long to be reminded why they were there. As I walked to the back of the store, a colorful assortment of Indian sweets (mostly Punjabi/Haryanvi/Bengali kinds) was arranged on a table along with boxes / tongs for one to make their own mix-and-match style sweet box.
I mean, this is not new — this is an usual sight for us at these stores during this time of the year. But what was certainly new for me was the feeling I had for a fleeting second as soon as I saw these sweets.
As colorful, glittery, and geometrically perfect they all looked, these were not the sweets I remember growing up with, especially around Deepavali.
A typical Deepavali in deep south Tamil Nadu started at least a month earlier, with the family discussing the list of sweets and savories they wanted to make that year. There were the usuals, there were the favorites, and then there were a couple of those…
