Tea time has always been sacred in Indian homes. Not loud, not fancy—just honest hunger meeting a hot cup of chai. And when I think of tea-time snacking, my mind quietly walks back to the mid-eighties, when I began running my own kitchen after marriage. Those were simpler days. Markets were modest. Choices were fewer. And Monaco biscuits—believe it or not—were the only salty biscuit worth mentioning.
Everything else? It was made at home.
And made with love.
In my maternal home, the snack calendar was predictable yet deeply comforting: mathri, kachori, namakpaare, besan ke sev, meethe paare, etc. Festivals brought their own royalty—gujhiya, daal kachori, and indulgent sweets like coconut barfi, moong dal halwa, and peda. My mother was a magician in the kitchen. Truly. As I write this now, three decades later, my mouth is watering shamelessly. Some tastes refuse to age.
When my children were young, the market began to change. Shelves are full. Packets multiplied. Shiny wrappers entered our lives—and unknowingly, so did palm oil. Back then, we didn’t know better. Convenience often wears the mask of progress. But balance was my quiet rebellion.
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| My productive afternoon results today! |
Every weekend, I would make mathri, namakpaare, and meethe paare using one full kilo of maida. The boys loved these more than anything store-bought, so that one kilo batch lasted the whole week. In winters, I’d go all out—five kilos of carrots simmered slowly in five litres of milk to make gajar halwa. No shortcuts. No regrets. This ritual continued for years, until the boys grew wings.
Then came the phase of friends, freedom, and favourite outside snacks—especially those unforgettable potato patties from a bakery in Sector 28, Faridabad. Early nineties. A buzzing market. A joint so popular that even today, I remember the taste but not the name. Funny how memory works—it keeps flavours, lets go of labels.
Time, as it always does, moved on. Children flew away. Weekend snack-making slowly slipped into nostalgia. Now it’s just the two of us—and an overload of information. Thanks to food awareness (and voices like Food Pharmer), palm oil is no longer an innocent ingredient. Cooking motivation has dimmed a little, too. So I’ve found a middle path—home chefs. Reliable. Easy. Sensible.
But once in a while, the kitchen calls.
Today was one such day.
No afternoon nap. So I chose productivity. I made mathri—just twenty. A few fried, a few in the air fryer. Both turned out lovely, but I found the airfryer mathris more crispy. The aroma filled the house, and for a moment, time folded back on itself.
This is not the end of the story.
It’s a pause.
Because kitchens, like memories, never really shut down.
They just wait—for the next craving, the next afternoon, the next chapter.
Neerja Bhatnagar
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