In my cul­ture, when a prospec­tive bride­groom vis­its a prospec­tive bride in the con­text of an “arranged mar­riage”, it is a cus­tom for the girl to pre­pare “kaande-pohe” and the guy is sup­posed to then assess her cook­ing skills based on how good they have been pre­pared. (“Kaande” is Onions, “Pohe” is flat­tened rice). This is a cus­tom that has been fol­lowed for gen­er­a­tions, so much so, that we urban boys when jok­ing about prospec­tive cou­ples just men­tion “kaande-pohe” and the rest is understood.

I have always been curi­ous why it is this par­tic­u­lar, spe­cific prepa­ra­tion that has come to be asso­ci­ated with this mar­riage rit­ual. The answer, as always, lies in the agri­cul­tural and eco­nomic roots of Maharashtra.

This is a region where rice and jowari was plen­ti­ful. On the other hand, wheat was a del­i­cacy. “Poha” is flat­tened rice, that was used by bat­ter­ing rice at home in ancient times. It was read­ily avail­able any­where you went. Cha­p­ati, on the other hand, is made out of wheat, which was a lux­ury few could afford. Also, one fam­ily vis­it­ing a prospec­tive fam­ily was not a close enough acquain­tance for a full-fledge meal, in which cooked rice, and Bhakri would be served. Fam­i­lies often went scout­ing for mul­ti­ple brides in one day.

Onion (“kaanda”) and Pohe were guar­an­teed to be avail­able any­where you went. The need of the hour was for a sim­ple snack, eas­ily afford­able, whose ingre­di­ents were avail­able uni­ver­sally, irre­spec­tive of eco­nomic sta­tus. Thus, the rit­ual of the girl prepar­ing “Kaande-Pohe” became the ‘norm’.