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A festive tradition
May 8, 2007 | 26 Comments
in today’s postcard.
Our Postcards Series is about extending a handshake across cyberspace. Read about it here.
Please accord a warm welcome to our guest contributors. They will try to respond to comments and questions.
Pic: Hampi river bus: Ferrymen wait to carry passengers across the Thungabadra river in their corricles. From Flickr Creative Commons.
Sra, our guest blogger today, has two exciting blogs: when my soup came alive and mywordsall, where she muses about food, her travels and life in India. Her perspective is unusual and always thought-provoking. Do check them out if you haven’t already.
Here, she talks about a fascinating festive tradition she became acquainted with during her brother’s wedding.
I don’t like giving away the surprise in the headline, otherwise I’d have titled this ‘Madame Tussaud’s. Only, Not Waxworks’. Yes, what you’re seeing on your screen is not an array of vegetables but their likenesses made from ‘paala kova’ (milk solids, khoya), sugar and food colouring.
At the back, you will notice bright pink and gleaming white figures, among others, there is a caparisoned elephant, a statuesque bird and a lion poised to leap. Known as ‘panchadara chilakalu‘ in Telugu (literally translated as ‘sugar parrots’), they are made of sugar, milk and ghee.
This is a scene from my brother’s wedding a couple of years ago. It was our long-time friend and neighbour who suggested that we adopt this tradition from his native region of Bhimavaram in Andhra Pradesh’s West Godavari district. Traditionally, sweets are exchanged between the bride’s and groom’s families during weddings but in this district and surrounding areas, a mixture of coconut, jaggery/sugar and kova is moulded into the forms of vegetables and fruits and displayed at the venue of the wedding.
My folks were game, so our kind and enthusiastic neighbour proceeded to send for a relative from his home town, who stayed in his home for a couple of days and fashioned these replicas that were so stunningly life-like.
Watching her was a treat. Unfortunately, she had finished colouring the raw material by the time we went; we could only watch her as she was shaping it to form the bottlegourd (in front of the sugar elephant, far left), rolled a greener bit of kova into a long and thin tube for the stalk and attached it to the gourd.
We would have gladly given up the fun and games that evening to watch her at her work but sensing that she could work more efficiently if she didn’t have gawking visitors peppering her with questions and camcorders, we made a regretful exit from our neighbour’s house and went back to our own.
My favourites in the photo are the green tomatoes, the red ones too, the raw custard apples (they’d have been flecked with black if they were ripening/ripe), the mosambi (citrus fruit, battakaya) with the green blush on yellow skin, the yellow dosakayas (behind the pink elephant) and the cashew apple with the nut attached to them in the foreground (extreme left). Notice the green eggplant and the red and green chillies to the far right.
As for the ‘sugar parrots‘, well, it’s just a name. My early memories are of them being made in varied forms – parrots, swans, peacocks, gopurams/temple towers – all ornate, in white, fluorescent green and the flaming pink you see in this picture. The amount of sugar in them would be enough to rot your teeth in one go, and somehow their texture and the thought of teeth grazing their surface sends a shiver up my spine.
It’s a hard sweet that looks like a mixture of ice and snow, and meant to be savoured and relished much like a hard-boiled sweet – only, there’s a vast difference in size. They were at least as big and broad as your palm, and weighed a ton, or so it felt like in those childhood days of discovery. And your fingers, oh, would they be stained a ghastly pink!
My friend Padmaja, who hails from Anantapur in the Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh, tells me that the wooden moulds (achchulu) used for these sweets are made in the towns and villages along the Andhra-Karnataka border, in and around Anantapur and Bellary. It’s a small-scale industry, she says, adding that it’s not so big now but that in the Seventies and the Eighties, it was a major source of jobs for the poor women in those areas.
During the four-day Sankranti festival in January, on the first festive day called Bhogi, children are feted and blessed with a shower of regi pandlu (zizyphus/ber in Hindi), coins, sugarcane pieces, sesame brittle and these confections. Traditionally, they are also exchanged or presented to guests at pujas and rituals.
A few references I found on the Net. Do let me know if you have more information on this art!
Pictures of food art by Sra’s better half.
Kalaripayattu - the ancient form of martial arts from Kerala. Picture from Wikimedia Commons
Odissi dancer. Picture from here.
Gadsisar Lake, Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. Picture from Flickr Creative Commons.
Wild Parrots. Flickr Creative Commons
Buddhist monastery, Ladakh. Flickr Creative Commons
India photogallery @ Terragalleria
Mitchell Kanashkevich North and Northeast India Photo Gallery
Verity Smith – South India Photo Gallery
Indian Wildlife
Indian Architecture
Filed Under: food-sculpture, India, kova, lifestyle, MUSINGS, Postcards, TRAVEL, vegetarian recipes
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26 Comments
Lovely pictures..Hampi is surely a beautiful place. I am going to visit it when I go back. Infact, I want to see the whole of India:)
Beautifull collection! Nice writeup it is making us looks back what our kids our missing!
Brilliant pics: makes me want to go back to India NOW!
A lifetime is not enough…
and i agree with Anita
Beautiful thoughts and pictures, Sra, Bee n’ Jai.
I especially love the round bottle gourd picture! its been ages since i saw this ghiya kaddu…..and those lovely ladies in gorgeous dresses, riot of colors! i feel like reaching out my closet and waering my colorful dupattas!
Thanks again!
Beautiful, vibrant pics Sra. Liked your write up. I have had these figurines when I was small, they would be hard and sugary. Not sure if it’s the same as this though. Loved that bottle gourd
Beautiful and colorful!Makes you proud!:))
Beautiful photos. I’m quite fascinated by India. It’s on my (ever-growing) list of “must visit” places. I’m loving the postcard series!
Excellent Pics and river….Great Going
Sra, I am speechless….this post did get all my attention!! I still cant believe that those veggie goodies are not fresh ones but sweet goodies. !! Really good work !
Shn
beautiful pics:)its hard to believe those vegetables arent real!!such an art and artist!!
Dear Bee & Jai,
Thank you for inviting me aboard! I had a really, really nice time writing this piece. If I’d known food blogs existed two years ago, I’d have commissioned more pictures of these! I also enjoyed looking at the other pictures of India that you put in.
Thank you, friends, for all the appreciation of the pictures and writing. I’m glad you enjoyed it.
you’re most welcome, sra. we love your contribution. thank you. – b.
I have spent majority of my childhood and teenage years in Rajasthan and I can tell you its one of the most colorful place with some amazing traditions and dances. Wish I could share those beautiful pictures I have at my parents place. May be next time when I visit India, I would get them.
Being an Army office daughter, I had a great chance to travel many places in India and the beauty of India can overwhelm you, if you are an adventurous person..
Loved your post
Wow, that was a really vibrant and colourful journey…well done Sra, and kudos to Bee and Jai for providing the platform…
What a fascinating post! I always enjoy learning about wedding customs and am unfamiliar with Indian traditions. Thanks for enlightening me!
Oh, and i just remembered about those “khand de khidone” toy candies
. i have had stuff similar to what Sandeepa mentioned, it used to be especially popular during Diwali. This one seems like proper mithai, with khoa and gur.
Wow the food art is awesome! They say artists have long fingers so does the grandma in the picture.
Sra loved the write up. BTW in Maharashtra too we have a similar wedding tradition of displaying art food and more called RUKHWAT the brides skills are supposed to be displayed but everyone helps.
India is so huge and like all of you I too believe that a life time is not enuf. Writer Ashok Banker,takes this a step further and chooses not to apply for a passport!
Sra, this is a lovely piece on a very creative tradition! Thank you!
Anjali, thank you for that! Rukhwat. I was always afraid I would never get married because of this! Then I found out that other people did it on behalf of the bride and so I figured that I might have a chance after all!
what? someone made your rukhwat? shame!! shame!!! – b.
i have eaten those diff. types of candies. it was available during diwali. thanks guys for this series. it is fun to read.
Thanks, folks, for your comments!
Awesome pics.. I love them all, but my Fav among all these.. the Parrots.. holds a VERY special place in my heart… I have a Parrot at home (Mom’s home) (raised him from a chick of 2-3 weeks and is now 12yrs old) and he prattles like a 3 yr old!! Oh I miss him… just looking at the snap, I admit, my eyes misted over! Oh to just listen to him calling me… snuggling upto me and murmuring some garbled words and cackling!!!!
doesn’t the one above look like a mafia don with squinted eyes? – b.
Sra, Bee & Jai, thanks for this trip. I want more…
Manisha didn’t someone ask you to remake one of your rukhwat displays
after the wedding LOL.
hehehehe! Mafia don… kanya (squint) eyes!!! I like that!!!
Hey am just speechless..
too good ..
Its amazing..