Halwa by any other name tastes just as sweet

When I was an undergraduate, the word ‘typical’ did not necessitate further elaboration. Phrases such as ‘the skin has a typical appearance’ never defined the prototype. All you needed was to slot observations into categories, not question the category. Anything that fit, worked. Misfits were ignored. Can you imagine anything more antithetical to change?

Mutations are the stuff of life, or the stuff of life is mostly, mutations. Something that’s stopped changing is probably dead, but it’s worth prodding it to find out.

Looking around for a word that’s entirely generic, but rabidly claimed as typical by madly diverse types, I was caught in its crossfire yesterday on the street where I live. 

Minara Sweets said it was typical of Multan. Brajmohan Halwai swore by Benaras. It could be nothing but the Tirunelveli Special claimed Swamy’s Snacks, immediately contradicted by Kerala Komforts:100% Natural from God’s Own Country.

Further afield, Sassanian Stores pointedly stuck an ‘Original Iranian’ label on their display. The Supermarket directed me to the Middle East, but further down the queue were Greek, Balkan and possibly Siberian claimants. All of Africa waited with its patient ‘Everything Began With Us’ wisdom.

And I? I jealously guard my recipe as an invention all my own.
The word we were all fighting over was-halwa.

The world has been eating halwa, and in every language, for the last millennium, at least. Magically the word has survived mutations of consumer and nationality. The recipe is the same in Croatia and Kanyakumari: a meld of sugar, fat, flour, nuts or fruit.

The chemistry is universal, the ingredients local. Minara Sweets uses flour, Swamy’s Snacks has cream of wheat, Brajmohan Halwai  veers between carrot, pumpkin and gourd, Kerala Komforts offers a choice of banana or jackfruit. In Russia, they use sunflower seeds. The vaunted Bombay Halwa has a soul of agar agar. Others addulce sesame, pistachio, apricot, or pineapple. And I? I have almonds. Last year I discovered that Iberians have been making my halwa for centuries, ever since the heady days of Al-Andalus.

I have no idea what the Arabs put into halwa when they invented the word. Halwa only meant ‘sweet’ to begin with, and wherever the vagile Arabs went, they cooked up a spot of nostalgia.

The halwa trail encircles the globe. Tiny hamlets that have never heard of Arabia will swear their halwa is unique. Cooks will sooner die than reveal their recipes. Neighbours sneer across the fence at other people’s halwa. There are families that encode genes for the stuff, halwa cohorts instantly identifiable by tonnage. Halwa is a metaphor that urges me to make a list of traditional delights we locate by geography.

Naturally, once starts with vada pao: the batata’s Peruvian, the pao Portuguese. Which makes French fries Peruvian too. Swiss chocolate’s Aztec. My sacred cup of filter coffee is Ethiopian, my afternoon tea Chinese. The pickles out sunning-mango, lime, amla-are all spiked with the fire of Tenochtitlan. The chana of Bengali mishti is Portuguese. And the national dish of Portugal, bacalhau, is fished off Nova Scotia …