Talk of sweets and our mouth waters. How strange is the fact that we love sweets but when it comes to make them we just avoid them.
BABA UMAR
There was a time when indigenous sweets like ‘Busrukh, Khand-e-gazer’ used to be the essentials in marriage
and engagement ceremonies. However, the present times presents a different picture. Sweets like ladoo, burfi, gulab jamun,kolkata sweets, etc, have deeply penetrated into our culture and society. And the outside labourers are taking a full advantage of it.
Many believe that local workers are themselves responsible for it. They say, workers here are talented but they have an ego problem that needs to be shelved. “Probably the outsiders are not willing to share their trade secret here,” opines Parvaiz Ahmad Bhat, who is running a confectionery shop in the Lal Chowk. Bhat also says the local bakers do not like learning this art and that is the reason why this work is being operated here by outsiders only. “My workers are all from Delhi and Jammu,” he says.“Outsiders don’t feel shy,” says Ghulam Mohammad, who orders a kilo of sweets in one of the famous sweet shops of the city. “Our local workers are sitting idle in their homes while the outsiders collect wealth here.” He says Kashmiri workers have already lost their jobs to outside masons, carpenters, labourers and this line of work is no exception. “Even we have an attitude problem,” says the Manager of Modern Sweets, Irfan Ahmad. He says people here are not willing to change. “We can see how many Punjabi’s and Bihari’s are eating up our jobs,” he says. “Sweets played no role in our Kashmiri culture; however, they (outsiders) brought this thing in our society,” he further adds. “And we gave up.”
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