Actor Priya Bapat of Time Please shares her childhood memories of preparing sheera,and how the sweet dish turned out to be something totally different

So I won her over to support the plan. All I really knew was that the suji is roasted in ghee and then cooked with sugar and water until soft. Apart from that,I was also extremely confident about my skills.

It is said that partial knowledge is more dangerous than no knowledge. And my case was no different. I started making the sheera but even after about 10-12 minutes,it did not seem to be anywhere close to what it should be and was far from what we had seen our mother make. I knew for a fact that it shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes to make. Our preparation looked very weird — very white and smelling strange. So we decided to keep the dish aside and wait for aai to return. After a while when she returned,I showed her my creation. She was bewildered. She just could not stop laughing and asked us,“Kaay kela tumi? (what have you done).” Thankfully,she did not scold us and unraveled the mystery of why our sweet dish looked different. We had used idli rava instead of semolina,which is actually used for making sheera.

I was so heartbroken. My dreams of preparing sheera for my sister and surprising my mother had gone down the drain. After the incident,I officially learnt how to make sheera,and now I think I can safely claim that I make it pretty well.