My long lost delights of tiffin boxes- cakes!

Some days ago I went to a local grocery shop to buy something. The shop is always decked up with all sorts of snacks, confectioneries, biscuits and stuffs that please your taste buds. A common sight in such shops is packets of chips hanging from the shop exteriors like streamers. In case you want to buy one, you pay the shopkeeper for it and carefully tear off a packet of chips from the chains of hanging packets. Anyway, I wasn’t interested in the chips. I bought whatever I needed and was heading back to my home. This is when my eyes caught the jars filled with the once familiar Bapuji cakes in the tea shop just beside the grocery shop. I remembered how these little cubes of cake were once synonymous with tiffin snacks in my schooldays.

Kids born in the 80s and 90s are better familiar with Bapuji cakes. It still comes in the same intact packaging as I have always seen it- a square cube of cake neatly enveloped within a wax coated paper. The front bears the name ‘Bapuji’ in both Bengali and English inscribed in huge letters. It also sports a bold capital ‘R’ in red, indicating that you choose only an authentic Bapuji cake and be wary of fake ones that tarnish the famous cake brand.  When I check with my oldest Bapuji cake memories, I find that the packaging still continues to come in the same prosaic blue and yellow checkerboard design. This apparently understated yet immensely popular cake was a widely preferred option for a kid’s snack. When I was a kid, Bapuji cakes were a wholesome option at a pocket friendly price. It was always available at the cheapest rate compared to any other cake that was available in the market. I remember it being priced at Rs. 2.50 initially, which later increased little by little, when Bapuji had to keep up with its standards while struggling with the inflating market prices. Now I don’t know how much it costs, maybe around Rs. 8 or 10 I guess, as it has always been the cheapest available option among tiffin cakes.

So, how did this humble Bapuji cake fare in its taste reports (Pun intended)? Well, it was tasty and cheap enough for kids (and their moms) to religiously stick to it as an ideal snacking option when they couldn’t do any better. There were always some die hard Bapuji cake fans who wouldn’t settle for anything else, or at least have the cake as a complementary option along with some other snacks. I remember that I too was a regular with Bapuji cakes in middle school when I started taking tuitions after school hours. The cake had a brown caramelised top and the rest of it was yellow. It had a crumbly texture with a distinct taste, not the usual sugary sweet taste you get in most tiffin cakes. It was pleasantly sweet with a nutty flavour. I assume that the nutty flavour was imparted to it as the cake was loaded with peanuts. It also contained dark coloured chewy raisins, very less amounts of candied papayas and some delightfully large lumps of pethas! I have an attraction for these mushy, translucent white things called ‘pethas’ since my childhood. These sinfully sweet pethas are nothing but dried mounds of pumpkins loaded with sugar syrup. The sweet syrup spreads into your mouth as you chew up the mushy petha. Pethas are common in Indian made local brand cakes (at least in my city) and also in sweet shops. They are generously used by many moms and grandmas while baking cakes at home. You won’t find these in English cakes or at least in those popularly sold brands (Yeah, you know what I am talking about, at least for those who live in India) that decorate the shelves in shopping malls. For when I had a Bapuji cake, my moments of ecstasy would be when I would discover a piece of petha in it. I would cherish it and keep it for my last bite.

There was one more cake I remember which both my Didi and I loved. It was however not as popular as Bapuji was and I remember that it was available only for short period of time in the market. However, this was the best tiffin cake I had ever tasted and I still long for it. It had a name, something like ‘jam sandwich’. I was very small and used to go to playschool at that time. But this ‘jam sandwich’ or whatever it was called, stole my heart. I faintly remember its taste but I do remember that it was very tasty. It was smaller in size compared to Bapuji. It was a plain cake, in a flat rectangular shaped. The cake actually had two slices sandwiching a delicious spread of red jam in between them. I remember having it in my breaks at the playschool. Even Didi enjoyed it, although I don’t know if she remembers. By the time I was old enough for school, this cake vanished from the shops and I was left like a forlorn lover. I regret not even remembering the brand which manufactured it.

There was one more cake-dumping-me story, and thankfully I remember its name and taste as well. This was manufactured by Great Eastern Bakery and used to be available at the Mother Dairy outlets. I remember Baba (my father) buying them for me and Didi. This one was a fluffy cake, larger than Bapuji. I don’t remember it containing any fruit bits or nuts but it had an amazing essence. Its taste was something like bubble gum but it tasted marvellous. I remember myself getting hold of the white plastic covering that contained the cake. I would rupture the covering and gorge on mouthfuls of the yummy cake. Sadly, Great Eastern stopped manufacturing these after some time and once again my cake pleasures were nothing more than a joyous stint. I remember one more cake brand which earned my Didi’s admiration very much. It was called Farini. Though I hardly remember having Farini cakes, I remember that Didi used to gloat over it. At some time we used to eat cakes of a brand named Gemini, and it was tasty. It was not excellent, but its added flavours and artificial scents were somewhat better than the other cakes. I remember Didi comparing Gemini cakes with Farini. So I got an idea of what Farini cakes used to taste like.

Nowadays this niche of small tiffin cakes comes in myriad varieties. You get sliced cakes, cup cakes, cream-filled/ jam-filled centre cakes (doesn’t taste as good as it sounds), marble cakes, and a variety of flavoured tiffin cakes- fruit, chocolate, vanilla, pineapple, strawberry and what not! There are quirky innovations like two in one cakes, and the worst combination I came across was that of orange and chocolate. Sometimes I have been greatly displeased by buying a chocolate tiffin cake and finding candied fruits in them. They made the cake taste worse than Rum balls. However, I do agree that some of them are good. There is a brand named ‘winkies’ available nowadays and its cakes are not bad. Some time back I had a swissroll they make and I liked it.

But what happened to our beloved Bapuji and their likes? They had to make way for fancy junk foods that revolutionised the whole concept of snacks in the fast food genre. Over the last two decades while we grew up, there were chains of fast food outlets expanding, often crowding at places where kids and youngsters hang out. It isn’t that the cakes and other readymade snacks we had exactly topped the ranking on the nutrition list. Oh! And I forgot about instant noodles. It soon became a tiffin staple for many, even though its nutritious value and safety were always debatable by health experts. Our moms usually preferred that we eat home cooked meals in lunch breaks. But I still feel that the whole fast food trend that satiates our taste buds while endangering our health is a major hazard to deal with. The oily, fat ridden, junk foods can easily get the kids addicted as they undoubtedly have a lip-smacking taste. Anyway, I guess people are getting aware these days as these really plump kids afflicted with child obesity run a risk of getting a heart attack like a sixty year old man!

More importantly, I feel sad that we are forgetting to appreciate and be contented with small things in our life. This is the reason I feel is why we find the humble Bapuji cake adorning the jars of a roadside tea stall and it is unlikely that it would ever make a comeback in the lunchboxes. I am pretty assured; if I ask any child to have a Bapuji cake for snack, he would most likely baulk at the idea. Eternally, mothers always have had a hard time making their fussy kids eat their food (even my mom had to coax me immensely). But with the trend of the bar rising in unhealthy plus tasty combinations, moms face even a greater hurdle!

 

A fading delectable!