Chappan Bhog
One of the traditional requirements during festivities has to be sweets and every festival has some special sweets based on the region these festivals are being celebrated. We all have our favorites when it comes to sweets. I too have earmarked few shops, which I visit for specific sweets. One of my favorite sweet shops in Delhi has been Kaleva Sweets in Gol Market. I still remember my childhood days, when our trip to Gurudwara Bangla Sahib every Monday was incomplete without the stop over at Kaleva Sweets on the way back.
Kaleva Sweets, a 30 year old establishment is situated in the heart of Delhi. They are doing 1000 varieties of sweets, namkeens, syrups, pickles.They have also ventured into eggless bakery products and have opened a shop in the same market with a sit-down facility. So it seems a regular sweet and snack shop, but that’s where the similarity ends. They do innovative packages and specialty sweets during the festivals which differentiates them from the every other sweet shop in the town. One such gift pack, which is very popular, is done on Janmashtami. Our good friend Umesh Kapoor told us about the Chappan Bhog gift pack. So we went there yesterday on the occasion of Janmashtami to check that out.
We met ever so effervescent Mr Jawahar Aggarwal, owner of Kaleva Sweets. He took us to his back office where his staff was busy in packing Chappan Bhog gift packs. These gift packs have 56 varieties of sweets. Based on the size and quantity, the packs are priced from Rs. 585 and goes up to Rs. 11000. The word ‘Chappan’, which means ‘56’ has a special significance in Hindu mythology. It was the number of meals (8 a day) that Krishna missed while he was holding up the Govardhan Hill for 7 days (8 X 7 = 56). That is the number of offerings that devotees make to Krishna.
handi cake
Mr Aggarwal made us try few of their specialty sweets like, Dhaniya Panjiri, Makhana Mithai, Gond Mithai, Dry Fruit Panjiri, Bikaneri Burfi, Cocunut Mithai, etc. The best thing we like about each of these were that it had the perfect amount of sweetness and very light on the stomach. Mr Aggarwal told us that he follows the principal that pure ingredients won’t falter. He is a passionate man and that passion fuels his ideology to offer the best of the things to his customers. He shared another example of his creativeness. Kaleva does chocolate based liquid colors during Holi which are good for the skin. They are also coming up with candy floss made with natural colors and natural fruit flavors like Mango, Strawberry, etc.‘Passion’ and ‘Intent’ are very important driving force. One drives you towards your goals and another one keeps you grounded. It was an afternoon full of great learning.
