The beauty of this ritual is how simple it can be. A sweet or offering can be something as simple as a teaspoon of yogurt mixed with sugar (my favorite) or even a small dollop of honey that is offered to God before it is distributed. There are many different variations of the story of how this tradition started, but the story that my grandmother told me is as follows. Today sweets, aka “mithai,” are extremely popular and wide spread. Countless varieties can be purchased or made at home quite easily. But despite that, I still find myself reaching for that small teaspoon of homemade yogurt with sugar. I have had it before traveling somewhere for the first time, before going for job interviews, and have even given it to my kids before an important event. It gives me the feeling that someone or something is watching over me and the faith that everything will work out in the end.
In the old days, when human beings were living in the forest, sweetness was an indication that a particular thing was safe to eat. We knew fruits were safe because they were sweet. There is probably no food in nature that is both sweet and toxic. So the brain developed a reward pathway that made eating sweet foods pleasurable, and forced people to eat such things more and more when hungry.