Jalebi memories

My initial jalebi memories are associated with father. Rather, his insistence on having jalebis in vast quantities on all auspicious occasions. The joyous spirit at home would perk up only after their arrival. But Diwali was the hardest to digest. Jalebis would be brought in the evening but they were not to be touched till puja was over. Even mother, who is otherwise very generous, was of no help. Waiting for the puja to be over was like waiting a year for Diwali to come. Post-puja, it was time for fire crackers and to eat, unrestrained.

Other festivals like Baisakhi and Dussehra were different. Then, no puja came between jalebis and us. The jalebis would make their way straight from the shops to the stomach.

‘‘Son, will three kgs of jalebis do? We need some to distribute as well,’’ father would say on every festival. Sharing jalebis with near and dear ones was an important part of the celebrations. If someone was offered sweets without jalebis, it was cause for criticism.

Growing up, I saw that the joy of jalebis was not confined to my family. It is omnipresent in the northern part of the country I hail from. The two years that I have spent in Jammu present no different a picture. Here, too, there is an overwhelming liking for festival jalebis. When I go to my office, there is a permanent fixture on my route: a rehari selling them parked alongside the Gole Market roundabout. A father-son duo make the sweets.

When I savour their jalebis, the distance between Jammu and Chandigarh, where I spent my student days, shrinks. I am reminded of another father-son duo who are making them in the rehari market in Sector 15.

They were poor. Jalebis were their only source of income. But the father was determined to provide his son with a good education. The son was hard working. But even when he was doing an MA in Hindi at Panjab University Chandigarh, he did not shy away from making jalebis.

Fellow students at the university, both boys and girls, would throng to the Sector 15 market in the evening to watch him at work. The hard work paid off. Now a Ph.D in Hindi, he works with a Hindi newspaper.