A literary festival with dessert on the agenda

To celebrate its centenary, Jugal’sA two-day literary festival was organized last weekend to trace the origins of a sweet shop in Kolkata sweet (sweets), and to discuss ways to preserve this part of Bengal’s culinary history apart from sustaining the highly informal industry. Bengal has a rich tradition of sweets, often reflected in songs and stories—The literary magazine started by Satyajit Ray’s grandfather, Upendra Kishore Roychowdhury, was called Message (Which means both news and sweet).

It was Lahna Ghosh, granddaughter of Jugal’s Founder, Jugal Kishore Ghosh, and Finance and Operations Manager, who came up with the idea of ​​organizing a literary festival to mark the occasion. “Many sweet shops in Bengal are more than 100 years old and, more interestingly, are family-run (KC Das, Bhim Chandra Nag, Nakur Chandra Nandi, Nobin Chandra Das and others). These businesses have survived war, famine, partition and other trials. I wanted to create a space to discuss the issues around talking about the industry, its future and its contribution to the history of Bengal,” she said.

art of making candy

Food historian, author, culinary expert, Artisan (artisans making sweets) and other stakeholders like dairy industrialists came together on February 11-12 at the Kolkata Town Hall to discuss the art. sweetconstruction, the need to preserve its history, the various influences and what is at stake in the future. For example, the Portuguese taught Bengal the art of cheese-making. Chhena in bangla) in 19 ^th century, leading to innovation in making sweets like Rasagulla,

One session, The Future of Dairy, raised the issue of the dairy industry being one of the world’s largest carbon footprint contributors. One of the panellists, journalist Vikram Doctor, said it might be worth seeing how sweet Industry in Bangladesh has addressed the problems even as they face the harsh realities of climate change. “It’s important to think outside the box,” she said, echoing Lahana Ghosh, who said she wanted the festival to be a starting point for such ideas. Anmol Singh Narula, director of JIS Farms, explained how the milk industry works in Bengal, with production generally at the domestic level, and said that buffalo milk is “probably a more sustainable and greener solution for the state, as Bangladesh been in.”