Post-Diwali, when the real fun begins

What to do with post-Diwali stockpiles of snacks

So Diwali’s over and you’ve got a rather odd mix of leftovers on your hands? Tins with broken bits of chakli and kadboli, chiwda picked clean of all the kaju and kismis; crushed and half-broken ladoo, karanji, shankarpali. While there are some people who rule the kitchen when it comes to making Diwali sweets, there is a small, unsung lot, who specializes in leftover-makeovers.
In a time when, fortunately for us all, the world had not thrown up the phrase and the concept of Super Woman and Super Mom, there were some things that your mom did well, and some things that she just threw up her hands over and said – ‘can’t do it’. Of course, not without a bit of a struggle.

In her younger, more optimistic days, my mother insisted on making all Diwali snacks at home, from scratch. And no, they were not the world's best and did not send us into raptures of 'maa key haat kaaa….mmmm" . Her productions were only remotely related to the things her more deft friends made. Come Diwali, we would be happy to see the misshapen little things being sent off to kind, tolerant neighbours - and plates of much better stuff landing up in return.

Our hands would be rather sore with her early attempts at home productions - since we would be pressganged into squeezing down on some beautifully archaic but highly inconvenient kitchen equipment. There were wooden gadgets with shiny brass discs and what-not, from which one was expected to extrude chaklis and shev directly into a cauldron of angry oil. You were then supposed to fish them out all nice and evenly brown – well-fried and not soft inside and hard outside. There were also those motor-ability defying karanjis….needing the use of all ten fingers (and some toes if allowed). You had to roll, fill, seal, turn, twist, tweak. And they had to be fried just enough to keep them all white and pristine. Somehow things never worked out exactly that way.

Pre-Diwali, while from the neighbour's house we could hear the low murmur and soft laughter of happy, industrious women, and an occasional snatch of a well-hummed Marathi song, our kitchen was the Battle of Panipat. It usually ended with my mother having to lie down with a dark scarf tied around her eyes and my brother scraping stuff off the kitchen wall with sand paper. Really.

Circa 1980, our mother decided to just let it go. ‘Ahhh forget it’ she said and began buying it all from more patient and enterprising women and the famous mithaiwalas of Pune….and we all rested easy, as did our teeth and our hands. What did emerge though, from those Panipat days and from later, saner times, was a rather, rather wonderful repertoire of dishes that she invented to use up the stockpiles of snacks of all kinds of hues and textures, post-Diwali.

The savouries first. Broken chakli pieces were simply introduced into a boiling kadhi and allowed to sit there for about half an hour - and then eaten with a soft velvety moong-dal-rice khichadi. Or chakli pieces were lowered into a bubbling aamti. Scooped up into a hot phulka, they taste terrific. Chaklis crumbled on to a cool mound of curd-rice makes another nifty meal.

All kinds of leftover sevs and chiwdas would be mixed together and used as the base for a misal. The really exotic cousin of this dish was what came to be called 'dhaplak' amongst family and friends. The etymology of that word is lost to humanity…but one suspects it was a desi version of 'pot luck'. Everyone pooled their leftover chiwdas etc, my mother made a really spicy green masala potato-onion curry. Someone else made fiery red usal; the people downstairs got beautifully set dahi; finely chopped onions, tomatoes and dhania came with my aunts; and pavs materialized from somewhere. The dhaplak was then assembled in soup plates. Pav sliced half and placed face up, chiwda sprinkled over liberally, the two wet dishes layered on, the whole garnished with onion-tomato-kothmir, and finished off with a tablespoon of rich dahi. Eaten with a spoon - as a one-dish meal, piping hot, off Wedgewood soup plates - there's Anglo meets India for you.

The sweet snacks reinvented themselves too. Shankarpalis got a twirl in the mixer - and became the base for apple pie. Karanjis, chirotas, anarsaas - all the broken, bottom-of-the-pile lot, were crushed and boiled well in milk for an exotic kheer. A medley of pedhas and barfis lent body and character to gajar and dudhi halwas - you just crumble them in and enjoy the rich milky flavour and the little dots of colour and silver.

At the very very tail end, just before all the bins and tins of snacks were washed and put away, the last and final crumbs of everything were emptied out on to a big plate….sweet, savoury, sour…everything. Then the kids were given this eclectic mix to use for our games of 'house-house'. We then processed it further - we mixed in water, we added haldi, salt, red masala….stolen imli….even tea leaves for some reason….and dished it on to tiny plates and vessels (made of some dark, indeterminate metal with a rather funny smell). Then we, sundry pets and miscellaneous dolls sat around and ate like lords. And lived to tell the tale. Happy, happy Diwali.