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Senior Reporter
For Kumarie Ramdass, making traditional Indian sweets begins long before the flour is mixed, the sugar syrup bubbles or the first batch of kurma is lowered into hot oil. It begins with faith, discipline and a family tradition she believes stretches back more than 100 years.
As Trinidad and Tobago prepares to celebrate Divali on November 8, the 64-year-old proprietor of Kumarie Sweets in Chaguanas is immersed in preparations that have defined much of her life.
For 42 years, Ramdass has continued a craft inherited from her grandparents, passed through her mother and now carried on by her children.
“The sweets business started from my grandmother and grandfather. I didn’t even born yet. They’re from Tunapuna and my grandfather used to make sweets,” she recalled.
“My grandmother continued it, then my mother and then us and then now my children. Everybody continued making the sweets. So, it’s a long generation.”
The business operates from the family home and at the Chaguanas market.
A legacy rooted in
Indian sweet-making traditions in Trinidad and Tobago date back to the arrival of indentured labourers from India in 1845. Recipes brought by them became part of the country’s cultural identity. Sweets such as kurma, ladoo, pera, jalebi and gulab jamun are associated with Hindu religious observances, weddings and family celebrations. Divali is marked by prayer, the lighting of deyas, vegetarian meals and the sharing of sweets.
For Ramdass, preparing sweets for the religious season requires spiritual discipline as well as care in the kitchen. She observes a period of fasting lasting about three months before Divali.
“I’ve been fasting for about three months in advance. As we’re fasting and getting prepared because everybody’s fasting and you want your sweets, you know, tasty. You want it cleaner, you know, to offer for Divali,” she explained.
She said cleanliness also means respecting the religious expectations of customers who buy sweets for offerings.
The work behind the sweets
Ramdass begins preparing for Divali production about two weeks before the celebration, sourcing ingredients and arranging for items such as dhal and kurma flour to be milled.
“We start like about two weeks in advance before the actual week for Divali,” she said.
“There’s things to send in the rice mill to grind like the dhal and the kurma flour for the pera, those things. So, you have to have those things prepared in hand.”
Each sweet requires a different technique. Kurma dough is mixed, kneaded and cut before frying, then coated in paag, a sugar syrup that crystallises into its familiar outer layer. Ladoo is made from flour or ground dhal mixtures shaped into balls, while pera, burfi, gulab jamun and jalebi each require careful preparation and attention to texture.
After decades in the business, Ramdass has expanded the family’s selection while retaining traditional recipes.
“Back in the days, it was just jalebi, kurma, pera, laddu and gulab jamun,” she recalled.
“Like, it wasn’t like the burfi and the rasgulla and things. My great-grandparents never used to make that.”
Her current offerings include traditional pistachio and coconut burfi, rasgulla and rot, which is prepared for religious offerings.
The cost of keeping
tradition alive
Traditional sweet-making costs extend beyond ingredients such as flour, sugar, powdered milk, dhal, ghee, butter, spices and cooking oil. Milling, electricity or gas, transport, packaging and preparation time add to the expense.
Ramdass did not provide exact costs or selling prices, but said business had changed since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Over the years, you know, since the COVID, sales dropped a bit,” she said.
Divali nevertheless remains a busy period.
“When Divali comes, well, we still have plenty of work to do still because people still order their sweets and stuff.”
She said traditional sweet-makers also face competition from commercially packaged products and convenient mixes sold in supermarkets.
“Everybody wants to try something new. You know, who don’t know to make, they are trying it to see if, you know, it would work,” she said.
Although she expressed reservations about some packaged products, she acknowledged that she had not tried them herself. Her preference is to make fresh sweets daily.
“We make fresh sweets every day because we are in the market seven days of the week,” she said.
“Keeping it the traditional way, that’s the best way for me. You know, you put your hands in it and you’re getting it dirty with all the, you know, I shouldn’t say dirty, but getting it messy with all the stuff. That’s the right way to do it.”
Passing the tradition to another generation
After more than four decades in the family business, Ramdass is considering retirement. She intends to step away from the demands of the business next year, when she turns 65, but hopes her children will continue the tradition.
“I try to get all of them involved in it because, I mean, it’s a way of making a living. It’s making an honest dollar,” she said.
“So, at least they will have something to look back on when I can’t afford it.”
She expects to remain involved, guiding her children and ensuring they understand how the sweets should be prepared.
“I would still have to be around with them, you know, to guide them and show them how it’s supposed to be and how to do it in the proper way.”
For Ramdass, preserving the business means more than maintaining sales. It is about keeping alive the knowledge inherited from her grandparents and ensuring it reaches another generation.
As deyas illuminate homes across Trinidad and Tobago this Divali, families will exchange trays and parcels of kurma, ladoo, pera and burfi. Behind those delicacies are histories of migration, adaptation, devotion and family togetherness.
For Ramdass, that history lives in recipes, years of practice and the hands of generations who have continued the craft. Her hope is that the family’s sweetest inheritance will endure long after she steps away from the daily work.
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