The Dabba and its Sweet Surprise!

2nd Prize Winner of the Memories in a Dabba Contest sponsored by Ektra Superware Fine Dining. To purchase one of these gorgeous kitchenware from Ektra Superware Fine Dining, contact Area Manager, Siddhi Padgaonkar using this link.

Text by Sonali Brahma, Independent Consultant – Brand Strategist and Creative Advisor, Pune

It was 1993. We were just married. He was 25 and I, 24. We met in the MBA class at SIBM Pune (Symbi). We were young. Very much in love with life and each other. Every day I used to make our dabbas for office. He had a sweet tooth. And I was a new wife, who had heard that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.

No, I did not cook exotic stuff every day; we had simple Maharashtrian fare – roti and sabzi (poli-bhaaji). But I had my own special teeny-weeny sweetness packed in there.

Hidden inside the bottom-most roti, there used to be some ‘sweet’ (in Marathi, it is called goad). A piece of pedha broken and spread on the chapati (roti) or ghee and jaggery or a fresh banana home-cooked preserve in ghee or simply jam. Sometimes, there was chikki too. By the time he ate the food packed in the dabba, the sweet used to be nicely ensconced in the bottom-most roti’s bottom-most layer and used to become one with the roti.

After the entire food in the dabba was eaten, he would find this little treasure and relish it. Since he ate with his colleagues, everyone took a bite out of this sweet roti. And loved it. I remember saying this to his colleague – “Oh, you like sweets too; I will pack in more of it!” To which, the colleague said, “The sweetness is in the limited part. Don’t pack in more. We love eating whatever little we get. That’s the charm.”

After 26 years of marriage, to date, I pack in the sweet surprise in his dabba. Just one roti with the sweet. Bottom-most. The only addition is my son who has joined in. He carried the same sweet

surprise to his school and now, college and office where he interned. Sweet family tradition, ain’t it? 😊

Please Note: All views and opinions are purely of the participant. 

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