Kandhala is small town near Shamli, not so far from Delhi. This is where my maternal grandparents lived. With the passing away of my nani last year, a big chapter of my life has come to a close. Of course my uncles are still there and the story continues, but it's not the same for me. To some extent, my Kandhala memories are sort of like Malgudi days stories - simple childhood in a simple town where small things mattered. Now I live in a country that has over abundance of everything. Things that were bought after saving money for weeks and were given the utmost attention and care are now tossed around by relentless customers in the buy-one-get-one-free heap. So writing about Kandhala is an attempt to bring back the same simplicity in my life.
With Spring round the corner and summer not too far, the smell of mangoes has started rising in the air again. Kandhala was the mango heaven for us. Since, most of our visits to Kandhala happened during the summer months, it was almost certain that we would get to eat lots of mangoes. We had our own baags, so supplies were unlimited. Often times we would sit on the buggi (bullock cart) and take a ride to the baag, and the sheer joy of plucking the mangoes yourself and eat them right there is wordless. Almost every day we used to get fresh supplies of all kinds (dasheri, langra, chaunsa, etc). And we would start in the morning and continued eating mangoes throughout the day either during meals or otherwise. I still remember at one time, often times we used to gulp doen 9-10 mangoes in one sitting itself, without bothering about the funsis that we would get later on our face. Of course often times you have to dip the mangoes in cold water overnight to cool that down but often times we were too greedy and didn't wait for that. In the afternoons, then, we would feed the mango skins to the cows, buffaloes in the gher (dairy). Towards the end of the stay, almost every year, then naniji, and other aunts and mom would then sit down to make mango pickles. Raw mangoes were cut and dried for several hours. As they were dried out in the big aangan on white sheets, they started losing bit of their sourness, and we would then feast on them, much to the anger of all the ladies. Once dried, the mangoes were then put in the oil with special masala, in a jar and a piece of thin cloth was then wrapped around its lid. After a few days the mango would become seasoned, and that would be the best tasting pickle ever.
Here is a link to the recipe -
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Pickled-Mango
Even now, whenever I went to Kandhala, I always brought mango petis from there that would last many many days. No mango can be sweeter than the Kandhala mango.
Canon 10000: Baap of all beer. This one is almost like downing whiskey. This was the favorite during the hey days in Mumbai. Tried this one first in a Bandra restaurant and immediately liked. However it's not as widely distributed as Haywards. If you are a beer lover, you must try this. Looks like this is also manufactured by UB.
