BANSAL Petha Bhandar at Dana Gulley, Lashkar, is Gwalior�s most famous address for the white pumpkin (ash gourd) cooked in sugar syrup sweet that is called Petha. It has been doing business from this address since 1950, the shop having been started by an Om Prakash Bansal. Today it is run by his son Shailendra Bansal and grandson, a young MBA aspirant called Tarun, who says that the ash gourd so necessary for Petha is available all year round for them. �We get it from different parts of the country depending on the season,� he said. �Currently, it is coming from Bangalore, but we also get supply from Kanpur, Pune, Bijapur, Agra, Bombay, Mangalore, Madurai� the quality is the same, no matter where the ash gourd comes from.� They get a truckload of 15 tons every five days and the ash gourd is stored in a godown behind the Bansal Petha Bhandar. Seven workers, starting work at 2 a.m. and working till 9 p.m., are on the job behind the scene making Petha for Gwalior, such is the demand at this shop. Business begins at 7 a.m. and not surprising, there are customers there at that hour to buy and also eat the Petha.

Petha is of two qualities, one dry and the other in semi-liquid sugary syrup. It is highly enriched with calcium, minerals, and carbohydrates. Its preparation does not involve the use of fats and cooking oils. Hence it is free from cholesterol. On the contrary, it is recommended for people suffering from jaundice because Petha is rich in glucose and minerals. And in the summer, including it in the diet is a good idea because Petha replenishes the loss of vital body salts due to perspiration. The dry Petha takes 12 hours to make and the semi-liquid one 24 hours, because there is an additional process to cook it in sugar syrup, and this Petha takes ten hours to cool down. It comes in 25 flavours including kesar, kewda, pineapple, elaichi, gulab, strawberry, and vanilla. The shelf life for the semi-liquid Petha is ten days and it costs maximum Rs. 120 a kg. The dry Petha can be kept for upto a month, it costs just Rs. 32 a kg.

The Bansal Petha Bhandar is also known for two other items of food. The Ghevar and Dalmot. Ghevar, however, is seasonal. It is made during few months in the year, and those are the monsoon and winter months, also especially around Teej � the festival that comes before Raksha Bandhan. Ghevar is a delicacy made out of maida and ghee and jaggery. The Bansals sell this wholesale to sweetmeat marts in Bhopal, Indore, Ujjain and other areas nearby. As for the Dalmot, it is a chewda, a mixture namkeen, made of masoor dal, musk melon seeds, kaju and the barik shev of besan. This is cooked in dalda and ghee and costs Rs. 120 a kg. Bansal Petha Bhandar has packets of all weights ready for people to take away. And there is a steady stream of customers always at its door, for the Petha first, then Ghevar and last Dalmot.