It is not always that a city loses the very thing that gives it a name and an identity when it embraces a new future. Sandila was a sleepy town near Lucknow only three decades ago. Its image and its culture were shaped by a small but very popular besan ka laddoo which was easily available to all who travelled by railways. Today the laddoo is dying out as the Railways that made it famous do not include it in their vision at all.For those who have lived as children in the 1970s and 1980s the laddu from Sandila was the ultimate treat. It was made of besan (chick pea flour) and water taken from the pond of the ancient Temple of Sheetla Devi. The keora jal that gave it aroma came from Kannauj in a flask made out of camel stomach leather.Prem Gupta urf Guddu is a prominent businessman of Sandila and the owner of the Krishna Palace Hotel. According to him the Sandila laddu today has lost its charm. It is now no longer made with Desi Ghee. The laddu makers now use refined oil to keep the cost low. This effects the taste too. A laddu made from Desi Ghee was fresh and soft and firm for a long time. This laddu was the invention of Babu Lal Halvai during the time of the British Raj and was taken from Sandila to be served to the elite of Lucknow. For some time till the 1990s the laddu sold on the Sandila Railway station where trains to and from Delhi would stop. Today there is no contract for a the laddu sellers on the railway station says local resident and political activist

Abdul Wali.Kunwar Virendra Singh the erstwhile Raja of Malhera who is the block pramukh of Sandila stressed upon the need to save this tradition. Local journalist Amit Maurya was of the opinion that Geo Tagging of the product may help sell it. However, the local sweet shop sellers feel that very little is being done topromote it.According to Shiv Sweets and Natha Sweets the new highway has hidden their shops and severely curtailed their sales. They now need to promote their products in different ways to survive. The shopkeepers said that even though the product was now under the ODOP scheme they had not derived benefit from it. The local MP Ashok Rawat is also is concerned about the product, they added.

Vibha Singh prominent social worker stated that due to intense competition laddu makers have compromised on quality to make laddus cheap. “We need to first improve the quality of the product,”she insists.There are many concerned individuals willing to do a lot for the product which has been brought under the ODOP scheme. Raja Dharamraj Singh of Hardoi feels that the Railways and the UP Tourism department could do a lot to promote this and include it in their meals as a sweet dish, Nawab Khateeb A Khan from Malihabad seconds his opinion. Local journalists like K G Gupta, Anadi TV Bureau Chief Ajit Pratap Singh, Prem Tiwari urf Rajan Advocate, Senior Advocate Naval Tripathi and the proprietors of Balaji Sweets, Shiv Mishtan Bhandar, Natha Sweets and Baba Sweets are equally worried about the fact that as Sandila grows it will completely erase its past and the famous laddu of Sandila will embrace oblivion. But some insist that the railways who once made the product famous can bringit back to life. / DAILY WORLD /

(DAILY WORLD )