Mangalore: Again we are at the threshold of Christmas! With just two weeks to go, almost every Christian household smell of sumptuous, lip-smacking and mouthwateringKuswar'. Women in almost every Christian family are busy preparing sweets and savories ahead of the Yule Christmas.
In one of the silent lanes of Mangalore Divya D'Souza and her young daughters are engrossed in the kitchen. For Divya Christmas is incomplete without homemadeKuswars'.
“I have been preparing Kuswar for the past 24 years. The preparation starts a month in advance. The traditional kuswar are kidiyos, kulkuls, guliyos or marble balls, neurios - a cross between gujiyas and samosas with coconut filling, tandlache ladu or rice laddus , tukidyos, karakaddis, chakli, Naan katai, chips, Kukkisan, Kodbale, ribbon and so on. This year I have decided to complete Kuswar a week before Christmas,” says Divya who is in a hurry to finish of Kuswar preparations before her guests from overseas arrive at home.
“Once my guests are here, I will hardly have any time to prepare kuswar,” she says adding that her friends too ask for kuswar because they like the kuswars prepared by her and for her it earns additional income.
Once the Kuswar are ready, a day before Christmas they are all decorated on a huge platter and it is distributed among friends, neighbours and relatives.
It is also distributed irrespective of caste. Most of the Kuswar is often distributed among friends from other religion.
“It is the same. We give Kuswar to our Muslim and Hindu friends, the way they send us Biriyani and sweets during Eid and Diwali respectively,” says Divya.
Kuswar lost in nuclear families
Making Kuswar is no cake walk. It is a back breaking job because it involves preparing huge quantity of different variety of eatables, which demands long preparation time.
Since the younger generation is not ready to put in this kind of hard work and further since the system of nuclear families have come in, most of the people today opt to purchase kuswar from bakeries.
“Today neither do the families have the patience to prepare kuswar nor do they have time to do it. Most of the families are nuclear families now and since both husband and wife go to work, they cannot carve out time from their busy schedule,” says Jensi Lobo from Bendoor adding that somewhere the art of making kuswar is slowly being lost.
“I remember how all the women in the family used to get together and start the preparations. All the young cousins were given the task of preparing kidiyos, which was exciting as we had to spread the flour mixture on combs and roll it so that they get the shape of a worm,” says Jensi who adds that her professional commitments have often posed an impediment for her lately in preparing kuswar herself. Hence she too now buys Kuswar from her favourite bakery.
All in all the Kuswar made at home or the ones bought from bakery, the spirit of Christmas lies in sharing and that spirit is intact.
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