As soon as the trip to visit Agartala – Tripura’s capital city was made, I started making enquiries about what to do, eat and buy. I was particularly interested in the ‘what to eat’ part keeping in mind my interest in food. One of the things that a lot of websites and a dear friend of mine recommended was the peda of Matabari. It was listed as a ‘must try’. Thus, on the very first day of the trip itself, I went to Matabari – almost sixty kilometres from Agartala – to try out this delicacy.

It would be an understatement to say that it would be hard to miss the peda in Matabari. There is a peda market that welcomes you with several stores selling the famed sweet. I was struck by the sheer scale of the market as all corners of it were jam-packed with small and big shops selling pedas. There were also factories nearby, where the peda was made. I was curious to learn more and started asking the shop owners about the reasons why the peda was so popular. After all, it looked no different from most peda, made of regular cow milk and sugar.

The shop owners said that it was offered as a form of bhog or prasada in the Tripura Sundari temple of Matabari. All devotees who came to visit the temple would buy the peda from their stores and offer it to the goddess. The puzzle about the peda’s fame was solved. The reason for the peda’s fame was revealed. But my sociological inquiry began there.

Food in Hinduism cannot be separated from the meanings that link the body to God and the cosmos. For example, prasada or the food offering that is made in Hindu rituals and ceremonies is first offered to the deity and then the leftovers are distributed to the devotees (Khare 1992). Thus, the deity, the devotee, and their world are interlinked by the divine offering of prasada as it passes from the deity to the devotee. What was happening in the Matabari peda market was exactly this.

Because it was a form of prasada, it had a different meaning for consumers. It was not just a form of food. There are several divisions between categories of food. For instance, one prominent distinction that dominates the traditional Hindu food discourse is between khana or bhojana and prasada. Prasada is always a kind of food (be it the peda or payasam or ladoo), but the reverse is not true. Not every food is prasada. There is an exclusion between the two – one is secular, the other sacred (Khare 1976). It was this sacred value that made the peda of Matabari what it is.

Apart from offering the peda as prasada, devotees also buy it for their own consumption and for gifting others. Hence, the shopkeepers also invest in aesthetical packing in the traditional bamboo boxes of Tripura. What is interesting to observe is how digitalisation has entered this traditional peda market of Matrabari. With increasing demand, there has been an entry of companies that have started marketing the product to customers across the world. The peda can now be ordered online from interested buyers from far-off places as well as on Facebook and WhatsApp. There are also discussions for demanding a Geographical Indication (GI) tag for the peda, following the path of other East Indian sweets like West Bengal and Odisha’s rasgulla.

The peda shops suffered a big blow during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the lockdown and restriction on visitors. Digital marketing of this traditional product has transformed market dynamics.  Store owners are now hopeful that even if another wave of the pandemic comes, they will be able to make some money because of the option of doing digital business. As many of them said, the peda is at the heart of the region’s economy and the shutting down of the market during the lockdown really struck at the heart of it. It is not just a sacred object, but also an economic commodity.

References:

Khare, R.S. and M. S. A. Rao. 1986. Introduction in R.S. Khare and M. S. A. Rao (ed.). Food, Society, and Culture: Aspects in South Asian Food Systems. Pp. 3-18. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.

Khare, R. S. (ed.) 1992. The Eternal Food: Gastronomic Ideas and Experiences of Hindus and Buddhists. Albany: State University of New York Press.