East: Mishti Wallah

Photographer Kelly Campbell traveled to the college town of Santiniketan in West Bengal to photograph Pintu Roy, a second-generation maker of mishti, Bengali sweets. Commenting on the photographs in this gallery, Kelly describes what it was like to capture a day in the life of the sweets maker.

httpswww.saveur.comsitessaveur.comfilesimport20142014-07feature_mishti-wallah_frying-sweets_500x750.jpg — By the time I arrived in the early morning, Pintu and his wife were already at work making sweets in an outbuilding near their home in a small village near Santiniketan. Inside, there was a wood-fired, hand-built clay stove. The walls were black as pitch from smoke, and the only light came in from the door and one window. When I first walked in, they were frying pantua, cottage cheese–based sweets, tossing them into the air to help them brown evenly. This was done with a flourish, and each time they tossed them a little higher than you would think. I was struck by how gorgeous the light was and took this shot.

httpswww.saveur.comsitessaveur.comfilesimport20142014-07feature_mishti-wallah_peraki-making_1200x800.jpg — For the next three hours, Pintu, his wife, and his father, Sukharanjan, who started the sweets business, made sweets together. I brought the bare minimum of equipment with me: my Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera, a small tripod, and a flash. I mostly worked with the natural light from the window and the door, but I did use the flash when I needed to capture a lot of detail, as with this shot of peraki-making. To make peraki, crunchy turnovers stuffed with oozing date-palm sugar, the dough was rolled out and folded around the filling, then fried. The bench that they're working on here was just a few feet off the floor. To get this shot, I stood on it.

httpswww.saveur.comsitessaveur.comfilesimport20142014-07feature_mishti-wallah_pintu-wife_500x750.jpg — Pintu's wife was very involved in the whole process. Here, she is transferring the fried peraki into a spiced sugar syrup.

httpswww.saveur.comsitessaveur.comfilesimport20142014-07feature_mishti-wallah_carrying-peraki_500x750.jpg — After each batch of sweets was done cooking and had cooled down, it went into the cart. Here, Pintu's wife carries a beautifully arranged plate of peraki from the workshop to the cart.

httpswww.saveur.comsitessaveur.comfilesimport20142014-07feature_mishti-wallah_sweet-cart_1200x800.jpg — By the early afternoon, the cart was full, and off we went. Pintu walked the bike most of the way so that I could keep up on foot. We spent three or four hours walking through a series of little villages, Pintu ringing a bell and calling out his wares as he went. I was a bit concerned that people might become self-conscious in the presence of the camera, but that wasn’t the case. They were far more interested in the sweets!

httpswww.saveur.comsitessaveur.comfilesimport20142014-07feature_mishti-wallah_boy-running_1200x800.jpg — It was lovely following him around. He knew all of the kids, he said, and saw them almost every day as they grew up. Each stop was a visit, not just an exchange of goods for cash. When people did ask what I was doing there, he’d say, “My sweets are going to America,” with a lot of pride in his voice. I tried to capture the joy of those interactions. In this shot, the kids had missed the cart as it passed their house, and they ran after him.

httpswww.saveur.comsitessaveur.comfilesimport20142014-07feature_mishti-wallah_saying-goodbye_1200x800.jpg — At the end of the day, as he neared the end of his route in Santiniketan, I said goodbye.

By the time I arrived in the early morning, Pintu and his wife were already at work making sweets in an outbuilding near their home in a small village near Santiniketan. Inside, there was a wood-fired, hand-built clay stove. The walls were black as pitch from smoke, and the only light came in from the door and one window. When I first walked in, they were frying pantua, cottage cheese–based sweets, tossing them into the air to help them brown evenly. This was done with a flourish, and each time they tossed them a little higher than you would think. I was struck by how gorgeous the light was and took this shot.

KELLY CAMPBELL

Travel

East: Mishti Wallah

Photographer Kelly Campbell traveled to the college town of Santiniketan in West Bengal to photograph Pintu Roy, a second-generation maker of mishti, Bengali sweets. Commenting on the photographs in this gallery, Kelly describes what it was like to capture a day in the life of the sweets maker.