NOAKHALI — Many people who live in Noakhali city for work are far from their families and rarely get to visit home. Beyond missing their loved ones, they also long for the taste of home-cooked meals. Many of them go to a roadside vendor known simply as Mohammad Milon to eat pitha, traditional rice cakes. Whether they think of their mothers as they eat the steaming cakes is not always clear, but Milon’s pitha has the power to stir memories.
At about 10 p.m. on a recent evening, thick fog covered the streets and few people were out. But a crowd had gathered around Milon’s pitha cart at the Kashem Ukil intersection on College Road. Rows of pots steamed with bhapa pitha while chitoi pitha cooked on flat pans. The air was full of the aroma of molasses, coconut, mashed vegetable sides and mustard sauce. Customers were taking hot pitha straight from the pans. The crowd kept growing despite the late hour. Milon was trying to close up for the day. He had an order for the next day’s wedding event and needed to wrap up. But few were listening.
Milon, 55, lives in the Lakshminarayanpur area of Maijdi in Noakhali district. He sells pitha at various spots in the city — along main roads, at busy side-street junctions, in front of schools and at events. The sales support his family and his children’s education. His two sons have finished secondary school and are now in college. People come from far away to taste his handmade pithas.
Milon said he has been selling pitha for eight years. He offers bhapa pitha, special bhapa pitha, savory chitoi, sweet chitoi, egg chitoi, syrup chitoi, milk chitoi, duck and white bread pitha, sweet puli, coconut puli, patishapta, chhaiya pitha and pantoa pitha. Apart from savory chitoi, egg chitoi and bhapa pitha, the rest he makes to order. He frequently caters events and home gatherings in the city.
Milon said he also sells flavorful mashes to go with the savory chitoi — including hilsa, mustard, garlic, bean, cilantro, shrimp and black-cumin. The income from pitha sales supports his household.
Milon once ran a grocery shop. He suffered heavy losses and fell into debt. Now he supports his elderly mother, his wife and his children on his pitha earnings.
Mohammad Sohel, eating a hot bhapa pitha at the cart, said he had been living apart from his family because of his job. He rarely gets home, he said, and his mother is no longer alive — she died several years ago. As a child on cold winter nights and foggy mornings, his mother used to make bhapa pitha on a clay stove. Milon’s pitha, he said, brings back memories of her.
For a recent festival, Milon took an order to supply bhapa pitha. He arrived at dawn and prepared the cakes fresh. Some customers wanted less sweet, others more, and he tailored each pitha to their taste.
Joynal Abdin, 60, brought his 10-year-old grandson to try Milon’s pitha. Together they finished several bhapa pithas. “City life now is full of busyness,” Abdin told Prothom Alo. “With pressures of children’s schoolwork and household chores, women at home don’t have time to make pitha like they once did. Milon’s pitha tastes just like home.”
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report