![]() ![]() Milk is the pan-Indian intermediate base of sweet preparation. Milk and milk products are mostly consumed in agrarian belts and India’s Gangetic belt is responsible for a culture of livestock rearing. While on one hand sugar became synonymous with sweetness, another product that has been used across sweet dishes throughout the world is milk. Mintz in his work shows that if it were not for industrial Britain’s fetish for sweetened tea, the increase in consumption of sugar would not have achieved its peak. Interestingly, sugar can be added to both tea and coffee. The history of sugar is closely tied to the two other global commodities that was responsible for transatlantic trade and forced labour-tea and coffee. Sweetness, as Sidney Mintz in his anthropological work on the spread of sugar in British diet shows, is intrinsically linked to Britain’s colonial history. The very mention of the word sweet evokes the sensation of sweetness. In other words, sweets dominate the ritual calendar of Bengali culture. Tatwa sweets carry interesting embossing ranging from greetings, names of rituals to symbolic auspicious objects associated with Bengali weddings such as fish and butterfly. Sweet shops have special sections in their sweetshops called tatwa sweets and they are mostly available on request it is only when a customer wants to order tatwa sweets that he is made privy to the catalogue of the same. No life cycle ritual is complete without an exchange of sweets, so much so that among Bengali Hindus a special ritual of gift exchange called tatwa is responsible for a new category of sweets that is specially prepared for the occasion. It is common practice across West Bengal and other parts of India to welcome a guest by offering sweets. Sweets play an important role in the everyday life of a Bengali-almost an inseparable part of the population’s cuisine and culture. ![]()
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