The Pitha Culture of Bengal

Come winter and all sorts of “Pithe” will be there to satiate us. No, you don’t have to wait for winter to arrive to savor these dessert delicacies of West Bengal, Bangladesh and some other eastern parts of India as these can be made and devoured any time of the year but as tradition has it, pithes are mainly made in the winter months, at the completion of harvesting, to celebrate the harvest festival of the new crop, called the Nabanna.

These festivities start in the Bikram month of Aghran (mid November to mid December) and continue to from a part of the “Poush Parbon”, the festival of the Bikram month of “Poush” (mid December to mid January). Climatic conditions favor one of the harvests to be held at the end of the monsoons and at this time of the year. The Bikram calendar follows the solar cycle based on the “Surya Sidhanta”, a treatise on Indian astronomy, and is 56.7 years ahead (in count) of the solar Gregorian calendar.

Pithes are cakes essentially made of rice or rice flour and in some preparations, made with wheat flour. Rice or wheat usually goes into the preparation of a pouch (called “khol”), which are stuffed with fillings (called “pur”) of grated coconuts and sometimes stuffed with sweetened vegetables. These pouches may be of different shapes – oval, oyster and flat shaped ones are the most common ones.

Generally, these pithes are fried (called pakan pithe) or steamed (bhapa pithe). Dumplings, called “puli pithe” also feature among the different varieties, which include gokul pithe, pati sapta, chitai pitha, ranga alur pithe (made of sweet potato or ranga allu), muger pulli, dudh pulli (with payesh kind of preparation of milk), and chandrapulli.

Some recipes use jaggery, date fruit juice or palm syrup to sweeten these pithes. Often different ingredients and spices like cashew, pistachio, cardamom and camphor are added to top up the flavor.

The fertile alluvial plains and delta of the rivers Ganges and Brahmaputra have rendered the region suitable for cultivation and rice is the staple crop grown in this region.