Anand Sweets

Our sweet shop is over on the Akurdi Chikhali Road, right in that busy MIDC section near Sambhaji Nagar. It is a place where there are always people moving around, especially workers from the nearby factories. We have to start our day very early in the morning to get the milk boiling and the sugar syrups ready. The kitchen area stays warm all day long, and the smell of cardamom is everywhere. We make the usual things like laddoos, barfi, and some of those spicy fried snacks that people like with their tea. It gets incredibly crowded during the festival seasons. Sometimes we end up running out of the popular stuff before the day is even half over. We still use the same recipes that we started with years ago. Not much changes around here. The glass counters usually have some smudges on them from kids leaning over to see the different trays of sweets. We try to keep it as clean as we can, but sugar and ghee are sticky things to work with. It is a lot of standing around on hard floors all day. We know the regular office workers who stop in for a quick break. We do not go for fancy boxes or big labels. We just put the sweets in a box and wrap it with some string. It is a simple way of doing things, and we just keep at it every day. It is how we live.