Dear friend in the city,
What do you usually eat for evening snacks? Do you just buy something from the shop near your house? I like shop snacks too, but here in the village, our snacks change with the seasons.
Most evenings, when we are hungry after playing, we eat bhunja. Have you ever heard the sound of chawal (rice) and chana (black gram) being roasted? My grandmother and the aunties roast them in a huge iron pan filled with hot sand over a wood fire. They stir it really fast, and the rice puffs up and crackles loudly. Then they use a sieve to shake all the hot sand away. My grandmother mixes the puffed chawal ka bhunja with the roasted chana. We eat it out of little cones made from old newspapers. It is so crunchy! The elders like to mix theirs with a few drops of raw mustard oil, chopped onions, and green chilies.
But my absolute favorite time is right now, during the harvest. The chana in the fields is still fresh, soft, and bright green.
Because it is so fresh, my mother makes something special. She mixes the green chana with some besan (gram flour) and spices, and fries them into hot, crispy fritters on the chulha. We call it bachka. My cousins and I sit right next to the fire so we can eat them the exact second they come out of the hot oil. They are so crispy on the outside, but the green peas inside are sweet and soft. We eat so many fritters that we almost never have any space left in our stomachs for dinner.
I will ask my mother to make some green chana fritters for you when you visit.
Khushi, Class 6th
