Diwali's here

The first signs of Diwali have made their appearance. One can find a lot of vendors/hawkers selling lanterns and crackers along with the decoration items like "rangoli". Several "temporary" hawkers have come up everywhere...hopefully these guys will go away once Diwali is over. On the other hand, several "permanent" roadside hawkers have stopped selling what they usually sell and switched over to selling this new seasonal stuff.

There is high demand for sweets and other "snack items" like chiwda and chakli. Traditionally, these sweets and snacks were supposed to be made in each one's homes and then exchange them with their neighbours. While the exchanging tradition still continues in most parts of Mumbai, the making part has been now left largely to these shops that sell these items. I think this has mostly to do with women working or being very busy in whatever it is that they do.

There are some specialist shops that I would like to mention (from which I have bought these things in the past):

• Matunga (and King's Circle) has a slew of these "South Indian" shops that sell the south Indian variety of sweets and snacks. Cafe Mysore converts much of its restaurant into counters that display the various sweets and snacks. I wonder whether the restaurant stays open on these days.
• When I visited Panshikar at Dadar last year, there was a huge queue into that small eatery waiting patiently to buy these snacks.
• Sapre's at Goregaon West is another Maharashtrian favorite. This is the place I've bought most of the stuff from in the past few Diwalis. Sapre's has a large (maybe complete) variety (of the Maharashtrian kind, of course). The very unique thing is that one needs to fill in an "order form" with the quantity that one needs. (The forms are available at the counter.) The forms are to be handed over the counter to the sales person and they will find and collect all the items mentioned. They will even put it in a box so that one can carry the stuff home. Another thing of interest is that at the bottom of the "order form", they mention that no matter how big the order, one would still have to come to the shop to collect it - that they do not deliver.

Let's see if things remain the same this Diwali.