Diwali is here again, once again reminding us that the year’s almost over. Diwali brings with it several twinkling lights, great food, happy times, vacation for the kids, and alas, lots of smoke and pollution due to crackers. I have never really caught on to what fascination people find in things that make a loud bang!

In our childhood, Diwali used to be a leisurely festival. Preparations would start weeks in advance, where initially my grandma would get all the various grains ready to be ground from the ‘chakki’ or neighbourhood flour mill. A different delicacy would be made everyday, and stashed away out of sight so that we kids could not sneak out anything before the big day. There was the bad with the good, since this was also the time for exams, and it would be torture trying to study with all the different aromas wafting out from people’s windows.

The dreaded exams would give way to a 2 week vacation, and the first job would be to build the ‘killa‘ or fort. This was almost always a group project, run in grand fashion with the bullies haggling over ‘design’, and the meeker kids doing menial tasks like filching and carrying bricks, sand , mud etc. from the neighborhood as needed and assembling it before the ‘construction’ began.

The completed ‘fort’ would be either painted in a maroon paint called ‘geru‘ and/or sprinkled with mustard seeds so that a verdant fuzz grew over it by the great Diwali day. Lamps would be lit in the fort and crackers burst around it.

I have no idea if kids still do this, or engage in these simple but exciting pursuits since the virtual world of Wiis and Xboxes has taken over. Also, with our busier lives, and the proliferation of goodies available ‘ready-made’ in the market, the number of goodies made at home is dwindling, and hence the interest in them too. But nothing can really equal the pleasure of feasting on fresh, hot chaklis that your mother is lifting out of the kadai, or home-made shankar palas or laddus.

Although I have been away from home for Diwali for most of the last several years, there is one thing that I always make at home, and this to me brings the quintessential feeling of Diwali – rava besan ladus.

These Ladus are slightly time consuming and difficult since they are made with a syrup, and also are mostly common in my family, compared to the pure besan ladu that is more widely seen. I am providing the method and recipe for a small measure, but the quantity can be doubled as needed.

The recipe is as follows –

[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:27]

So what are you cooking this Diwali?