Ramesh Sharma will need to clear the tables and chairs out of his Harris Park restaurant to cope with the Diwali week rush that will see him sell $100,000 worth of sweets.
“The street gets jam-packed,” says Sharma, the owner of in Sydney’s ‘Little India’. Harris Park, a hub for the local Indian community, will be bustling as people visit to buy sweets and supplies for Diwali.
He’ll need all the energy he can get for his biggest trading weekend of the year.
Also known as the Festival of Lights, the main day of Diwali falls on November 7 this year. Eating, giving and offering mithai, or sweets, form a central part of the celebrations.
Taj Indian sells more than 100 different varieties of mithai: there’s the vivid orange coils of jalebi, squares of burfi adorned with bits of silver leaf, spongy dumplings of gulab jamun in sweet syrup, balls of coloured ladoo, and more. Sharma finds it hard to pick a favourite, but has a soft spot for kalakand, a pure-milk fudge.
He’ll need all the energy he can get for his biggest trading weekend of the year.
Deliciously sticky gulab jamun are among the most popular sweets at Diwali. Source: Tom Donald / Feast magazine
Sydney’s Indian-run businesses buy boxes of sweets by the hundreds to give to their employees, medical reps will be sending sweets to Indian doctors, and people use mithai shops like a florist, calling up from overseas to send sweets to family members that have migrated to Australia. Taj Indian will deliver them to dorm rooms and sharehouses across Sydney for international students that are celebrating away from home.
Special days
Celebration: Diwali
During Diwali, mithai are also used as an offering to the goddess Lakshmi.
“We are a vegetarian restaurant, so people come to us when they want to make offerings or puja,” says Sharma. “You want your offering to be pure, you don’t want it cooked in a non-vegetarian kitchen,” he says.
In nearby Parramatta Park, up to 30,000 people are expected to attend the this weekend (3-4 November), the biggest Diwali celebration in the southern hemisphere.
The Deepavali festival at Parramatta Park features entertainment, food stalls and dance competitions. Source: Kiran Desai
91 Wigram St, Harris Park, NSW, (02) 9633 2118
