Nibbles in Nawalgarh

It is a culinary tour I hadn't bargained for.

'Come-come!' says Mahesh, a companionable fellow, who finds me loitering outside the Chhauchharia Haveli and invites me in to view the murals and to meet his extended family.

I am presented to the matriarch, a tiny old lady tucked up in a charpoy in an antechamber to the inner courtyard.
'This is grandmother. She is 120 years old! The oldest woman in Rajasthan - only no e-vee-dence!'
I give her my best namaste. She looks bewildered, but Mahesh is tickled, and bustles me into the courtyard where I find the rest of his family about their morning chores.
I meet his mother (poking kindling into an open stove to make me a cup of chai), his daughter (a lovely girl cuddling a delightful white rabbit), an assortment of little nephews, and a slender youth (possibly the son - who brings me various relics from the absentee owners of the haveli, including a dusty kerosene lamp, a chapped leather riding crop, and a mite-eaten volume of the Nari Sudasha Pravartak - 'for the education of the females of India').

'Come-come!' says Mahesh again, once I have been shown round the haveli and we have drunk our chai.

I follow him down a back street into a small courtyard where various pots and pans lie strewn on the ground. In a dusty corner, a woman looks up, smiles shyly, and continues kneading something, helped by a small child. A man (pictured above) stands by the stove, stirring the contents of a large wok. 'This is sweet workshop!' says Mahesh, proffering me a fistful of little sweetmeats from a tray on the counter. I recognise them as peda, a sort of Rajasthani fudge, which had the French tour group cooing with delight back at the hotel last night. I tentatively pop one into my mouth. It is good. Did the hotel source their peda from little 'sweet workshops' like this one?

Encouraged by my response, Mahesh, leads me down another alley to yet another 'sweet workshop'. This time, we enter a dark, soot-stained interior. The tableau before us is much the same as at the other place: a plump matron sat on the floor arranging sweetmeats on a tray, helped by a little boy dabbing a red dot onto each morsel with a bare finger ('saffron water', said Mahesh; food colouring, I thought); and a young man in a tatty vest stirring a large pot on the stove.
'Bengali sweets,' says Mahesh, plucking a big piece off the tray for me to sample.
I bite into it just as a little girl emerges from behind a closed door, a couple of paces away from the plump matron with the tray on the ground. I swallow slowly as I stare into the loo, while the little girl, hands not noticeably washed, crouches down to resume helping the little boy.