Cities to me are a giant monster with arms and legs and as many heads as Ravana, for a village girl such as myself the average Indian city seems to be an exercise in the theory that organisation will rise out of chaos. But to the average Bengali, the landscape of their city, is another geography indeed. It is a geography of chance encounters in the chaos of traffic. People greet each other from shared auto to shared auto, their conversations interrupted by movement and resumed at the next traffic light. No one seems to be surprised to run into their friend seemingly randomly in a city of more than 15 million people. There amongst the horns and collisions and suicidal leaps into the traffic that are actually only people crossing the road there is the ordinary every day sweetness of life. Of shared smiles and heart connections, of the recognition that we are all part of the family of humankind and that we are all voyagers on the ocean of life. Bengali people are some of the sweetest people I have met in India. Sweet because they all seemed so kind hearted and helpful, not just to me as a stranger and a visitor but to themselves as well. Perhaps that is why their food is also sweeter than the average Indian dish. No Bengali meal is complete without a sweet, the most famous sweets of Bengal are Sandesh and Ras Gola.
To learn how to make one of the many variations of Sandesh, the famous Bengali sweet, check out this recipe
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