Gurugramwale: The candy cart magic

A stall stocked with kind of stuff not easy to spot these days.

Some experiences belong to only pre-millennial childhoods. Like being able to spend, and enjoy, an entire day without the smart phone. Or, being addicted to unbranded candies, mouth-fresheners and spicy choorans sold by street hawkers.

The Vanshraj Sweets, Supari and Chooran, a roadside shack in Gurugram’s Sadar Bazar, is manned by Dileep Kumar.(HT Photo)

Vanshaj Sweets, Supari and Chooran is a roadside shack in Gurugram’s Sadar Bazaar and is very special. It is crammed with all those aforementioned candies, mouth-fresheners and choorans that made up the early years of many of us who grew up before Gurugram re-invented itself as the Millennium City.

The cart’s bestsellers are undoubtedly the candies— the orange santre ki goli and the black sweet-sour machhli ki goli. The latter’s name is strange for it is neither made of fish nor is shaped like one.

Then there are palate-cleansing digestives such as the many varieties of saunf. You can make a nonsense verse by simply stringing all the saunf names together— meethi saunf, mixture saunf, baareek saunf, tatli saunf and so on.

Also spotted: spicy pungent choorans like the anardana (very addictive) and heeng peda (very pungent).

The stall is manned by Dileep Kumar. He says it was founded by his uncle Santosh Kumar in 2003. “Mama returned to the village (in Bihar) leaving it to my care.”

The young man reveals that these candies and choorans are supplied by the wholesale stores in Delhi’s Sadar Bazaar. Which means you can get this exactly similar stuff from other stalls too--if you are lucky enough to spot them!

Until then you may always drop by at Vanshaj, a time-tested landmark for more than a decade. This afternoon, the chooran sachets are decked up picturesquely about the cart, indicating much thought went to the display, while the little packets containing the popular orange and black golis are glimmering softly in the sunshine, tempting the unsuspecting passers-by to pause and stare at them in mild greed.

The cart serves daily from 9am to 9pm in Sadar Bazaar’s Choori Wali Galli.