Gajak and regional sweet trades: winter workshops, gifts and variations

A workshop prepares for Lohri

Manav Mander’s January 2026 Ludhiana report describes large batches of sweets being prepared before Lohri at Nathu Mal Ghudoo Mal. A shop salesman lists changing flavours, including sesame, peanut, rose, dry fruit and chocolate. The article’s photographs and caption identify workers making bhugga and gachak. The report therefore locates the sweet within an actual workshop’s seasonal work, rather than treating every product sold under the name as one unchanged formula.[1]

Presentation was changing too: the report describes gift hampers arranged around miniature trucks, bonfire replicas and traditional manji. A resident planning her granddaughter’s first Lohri wanted hampers as return gifts. A Ghumar Mandi groundnut seller also stocked gachak and reodi for the season. These examples place specialist sweet shops, occasional household celebrations and small street businesses within the same period of demand. The seller described the season as bringing extra income.[1]

A named version uses peanuts

Gopal Jha’s peanut gajak, published by NDTV Food with his Grand Mercure Bangalore credit, combines jaggery, peanuts and ghee. The written preparation melts the jaggery with ghee, incorporates peanuts, and lets the mixture set in a greased pan before breaking it into pieces. This is a particular published version: the ingredient and shape differ from individually formed sesame-coated rewari, although both can appear among winter sweets. In this version, the jaggery and peanuts form the body of each piece.[2]

Morena is another documented association

The Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority lists Morena Gajak under application 681, with the Morena Gajak Nirmata Association as registered proprietor and Madhya Pradesh as the geographical area. The listing distinguishes the application’s filing date, 30 December 2019, from the certificate date, 31 January 2023. It provides a documented institutional association outside Punjab; these dates concern the registration record and are not dates for the invention of gajak itself. The government listing identifies the goods as class 30 and names the producers’ association.[3]

A longer view of seasonal retail

A UNI dispatch from the Chandigarh region in January 2007 already described gajak in roadside stalls, shops and department stores. It distinguished ordinary jaggery-sesame or jaggery-peanut versions from more expensive dry-fruit mixtures, and quoted a Phagwara dealer on customers’ attention to quality. The account demonstrates variety across price and retail setting at that particular moment, rather than supplying a price list for today.[4]

The earlier report and the later Ludhiana account both connect the sweet with winter retail, while recording different sellers, ingredient variants and forms of presentation.[4]