I am living in a small town in Tamil Nadu for the past few months. A Christmas, a mosque festival, and a temple festival have all taken place in these few months. Outside these places of worship and festivity, inevitably, makeshift shops selling local sweets spring up. The most prominent sweet they sell is called thenkuzhal (literally meaning honey-tubes), and also kara chev and sweet chev (these being little sticks that are savory and sweet respectively, sort of like sidekicks for the main character in our ‘sweets’ story.) One of my kids can eat the sweet chev sticks till the cows come home.
Not that there are too many cows in this town, though I am sure there are a few somewhere around. I can hear one moo-ing at odd times in the day. And our milk-delivery-boy (who is a teenager on a swanky red and black bike) brings fresh milk morning and evening in little plastic bags for all the houses in our street everyday without fail.
There was an innovation at the mosque festival, where the thenkuzhal was made out of jaggery instead of sugar, and it was a dark brownish in color instead of the golden hue. A nod to the healthful fads in modern times. We got it home and eagerly tasted the sweet only to find that these ones had sugar too, but maybe a little added jaggery to change the color.
This sweet also has another relative, called thenmittaai (which translates to honey-toffee), these are little round sweets, brown or orange in color. Put one in your mouth, and chew it, you can taste a burst of honey and flavor right there. I think there is no honey at all involved in all these proceedings, but the sugar added to these sweets does make you feel like you are eating a slice of honeyed paradise. Okay weird metaphors, but I don’t know how else to put into words this highly local taste. The festival shops don’t carry the thenmittaai, but we found them outside most tourist attractions here, sold by hawkers, who also sold brined gooseberry and spiced buttermilk. It’s a joy to be India and be visiting places, there is an abundance of foodstuffs to discover and eat everywhere. No need to carry a thermos filled with stale tea and no need to carefully plan our snacks, else be eating placid burgers and overly sweet ice creams only.
I hear from my local guide, I mean from my husband who is the local, that these sweets were traditionally sold only outside the church festivities. But now all the major religions seem to have co-opted these sweets. Which is perhaps a good thing, a case for communal harmony maybe.
life-moonlighter 