Kanika Datta: An explosion of goodies

Every Diwali is a reminder of how far India's consumer culture has developed from the bad old days of the licence raj

Chocolates, toffees, cookies, barfis, laddoos, gulab jamuns, kishmish, pista, kaju… Every Diwali involves maxing out on these sweets and delicacies as a matter of course. Yet, anybody born before the nineties will remember that even in the best, most prosperous, year for the Indian economy – which usually meant a good harvest year – only politicians and industrialists could complain of an overdose of these goodies.

Today, routine over-access to a range of luxury foods and drink that India’s increasingly prosperous middle class enjoys is one of the most compelling signs of rising disposable incomes. Yet those who celebrate birth years after independence and between 1991 and whose families could claim the fortunate label of “middle class” in a visibly poor country can attest to relatively “deprived” childhoods in terms of access to such luxuries. My own, for instance, passed in a constant, feverish and mostly unfulfilled longing for rum balls and chocolate eclairs from Flury’s, sandesh, kheer kadamba and hot jalebis from Mithai – just down the road from my Calcutta home and yet so tantalisingly far – cookies from Nahoum’s, barley sugar (a uniquely Calcutta boiled sweet) and chilli chips from outside the school gate (Re 1 a packet and way outside my monthly pocket money). 

 

I am not ashamed to say that friendship choices were considerably influenced by which schoolmate brought the best break-time tiffin. Priya Paul of the Apeejay group, for instance, though some years my junior, was widely considered a favourite until word went round that disappointingly, her tiffin did not consist solely of Flury’s products.

Coke? Cadbury’s chocolate? Strictly quarterly treats or prized gifts from grandmothers and uncles or begged from indulgent older cousins. How deeply I envied a friend whose fridge was constantly stocked with these and imported luxuries! It was only much later that I realised that this largesse was the result of some sustained skimming by her father from the company for which he worked.

Back in the sixties and seventies, though, the good things in life were rationed as much because of the limited availability of these goodies as my parents’ prevailing philosophy. Having lived through the Bengal famine, for instance, they saw gruesome deaths literally on their doorsteps. Still, their stern strictures against not finishing a meal when others could not get to eat always mystified me, part of the post-Green revolution generation when famine (but not hunger) was unknown. What did register was that there would be no dessert (or pudding as it was known in those days) if I did not finish what was on my plate.

Import tariffs were so high that imported luxuries – carelessly available in kirana shops these days – were prohibitively expensive. Almost alone among corporate colleagues, my parents resolutely drank Binny’s Aristocrat, a ghastly essence bottled by Jagatjit Industries, instead of smuggled scotch. Ironically, the Glenfiddichs so prized on returns from foreign trips and dispensed in homeopathic doses, are now freely available in domestic liquor stories.

Wines? The standard tipple over Christmas and New Year was Golconda, a wine with distinct undertones of Brasso metal polish. A later variant, called Bosca, may well have been distilled from Glycodin cough syrup. No matter, we drank it and enjoyed a sense of faux sophistication.  Now? Well…Let’s just say it is possible for our children to train as sommeliers and make a good profession out of it too.
So in a sense, the profusion of goodies over Diwali is an annual reminder of how far consumer culture in India has developed since the economy was liberalised. Sadly, it also highlights that almost inevitable corollary: wastefulness.