Diwali with Aai: How centuries-old tradition of faraal made our childhood sweeter

Aai came home last Sunday to make shakunachi karanji, which she insists must be made before Diwali no matter what. As she settles down to the task, I tell her my plan to write our family story – of how the centuries-old tradition of faraal made our childhood Diwalis sweeter in so many ways.

She is 73 and sometimes forgets details. There are just so many memories. I tell her I need to take photographs of her making karanjis, and she tells me she needs to look sorted and changes into a shiny sari. I smile. When we made faraal to be sold to people, we barely had time to look at ourselves.

For the uninitiated, faraal is an assortment of several traditional delicacies especially made during Diwali. It can include everything and anything – karanjis, chakalis, laddoos (rawa, besan, boondi), sakkarpara (we call it shankarpale in Marathi) both sweet and salty, chivda of various kinds, sev, chirote and anarse. It's difficult for me to even describe many of these. My mother has always been a great cook which is why she is called Annapurna, the giver of nourishment. No matter what time a guest arrived, there would be food and she'd insist he/she eat. I have seen her wake up in the middle of the night to make zunka-bhakar for two guests who arrived unannounced. So when my father lost his job, we were barely in high school then, my mother decided she would do what she knew best – cook to earn. We lived in a small 120sq ft hutment in Goregaon. A kind lady called Rajani Joshi offered free tuitions, so we did better in school. When she learnt we had no source of income, she suggested that my mother supply chapatis to her doctor brother-in-law who longed for homemade chapatis. She would also invite aai home when the Joshis made their faraal.

My mother decided to apply the skills and tricks she learnt there into making and selling faraal to people at school where she worked as an assistant. Her salary was just Rs 75 per month to begin with. She supplemented it by making papad, chutneys, selling bangles, blouse pieces, etc. Faraal became the addition and boy did we sell! “There was a lady from Vile Parle who would buy stuff from me and send it to her daughter in the US. We should have carried on and made this into a big business. We would have done well,” aai says.

But what could we do? There were just the three of us. My mother, my younger brother Milind and I. We had our jobs assigned. I would make chakalis (each had to be of the same size and a perfect round). My brother was excellent in crafting anarsas. It requires special skill sets – it's like spreading your pizza bread using just your fingers. The teachers at my mother's school once came home only to see if indeed we worked the way she told us to.

We sold a lot of faraal but dare I say our karanjis, chaklis and anarsas were the best I have ever had. Most karanjis are hollow with very little filling and a bit too crisp cover. Ours have layers, filled to the brim and bursting with flavour. Our chaklis are not too crispy, not too smooth. And the anarsas melt in the mouth, unlike the hard shells you get in shops.

Aai tells me she got her karanji skills from my cousin in Pune. “Hers are better than mine,” she says. The chakli trick, where she tweaked the traditional mix of various grains, came to her from socialist firebrand leader Kamal Desai. And the anarsas? “That is from my mother.” The anarsas were indeed special – for the 15 years that she sold them, there was not a single complaint and the customer base only grew.

I didn't think of our Diwali business much till one year when both my father and mother fell ill and we could not sell anything. Both were bedridden and we barely ate dal-chaval the whole month. Aai doesn't remember this, but I do. So when my daughter tells me she loved the karanji she got from someone in Pune, I say no. My mom's are the best.