Habilchacha’s palms are dark pink. “This is what happens when you have to fight fire,” says the little old man in light pink shirt. No, he is no fireman, he is a candy man and the fight he is talking about is the one he wages every day with boiling hot sugar syrup to shape it into clear-as-glass twisted sticks of candy, known to older generations as barley sugar.

Why barley sugar? Because the candy was made with water in which pearl barley was soaked or cooked. In Victorian England, these twists of red and yellow with a white stripe running through, often enough, were also used to decorate Christmas trees.

Eighty-year-old Sheikh Habil is, however, adamant that his craft did not enter India with the East India Company. “This art is 400 years old. It came here much before the English,” he insists. But he admits that it was the sahibs who bought barley sugar. He talks about how it used to be one of the things visiting Europeans always took home. These days, people from people from the hills — Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Gangtok — stock up on the glassy candy when in Calcutta.

It is the second week of December and Habilchacha is in New Market to deliver his goodies. This is the time when his candy is most in demand; he makes multiple trips from Soaluk near Tarakeswar in Hooghly district to Calcutta every week. A man comes up to him and asks him to deliver 10 kilos of candy the next time he comes. Habilchacha makes myriad excuses, hems and haws, and finally fobs off the insistent man with a “we shall see”. It seems another vendor from Habilchacha’s village is his regular supplier, and that is why the old man will not oblige him. “He is unwell so he hasn’t been coming. But he is now better and will return soon,” he says.

Habilchacha started learning the art of candy-making when he was 14. It meant saying goodbye to education but then it had never appealed to him anyway.
“My guru learnt this art from my grandfather, Karim Baksh,” he says, before going on to explain that his father preferred to farm the extensive fields he had inherited in the village of Soaluk.

Habilchacha still lives in Kelepara in Soaluk, known locally as the neighbourhood of candy men. The extensive fields are a thing of the past. “Water wasn’t so easily available then. We could only grow one crop of rice. The fields were sold, and at very cheap rates too,” he says seemingly without any regret.

But he retains a link with the field. Candies are in high demand during winter but are bought only sporadically the rest of the year. That’s when he grows groundnuts, a crop much in demand locally because many of the candy men make peanut chikkis or nut brittles in the slow season.

His day starts at 4 in the morning. The first thing he does is light the chulha on which he makes candy. Then he puts on a pan with three kilos of sugar — and other mal mashla which he is loath to specify — to heat. Once the sugar solution reaches 150°C — not that he needs a thermometer, he knows from appearance — the solution is poured onto long and textured stone-topped tables that have been oiled. After the candy has cooled down enough to be handled — by Habilchacha’s standards, the rest of us are sure to get blisters — he takes a length, pulls it and stretches it until it goes from murky to opaque white. Then, colour is added to the rest of the candy, which is cut into strips, the white is ribboned around it and the whole thing doubled and stretched before being cut into twists that are four inches long. Some of it is snipped into inch-long pieces and rolled into marbles. These marbles have to be stirred constantly. Habilchacha uses a hand fan to cool them, otherwise, they tend to clump together.

Habilchacha cannot get the whole process done singlehandedly — he has four helpers in his daughter-in-law and three grandchildren. The youngest of them is around 11 and it is on his shoulders that Habilchacha’s dreams rest. “My son has a variety of skills, he can do embroidery, he has apprenticed with an electrician, he can do the work of a stonemason, but he refuses to learn candy making... he says it is too hot for him,” he says.

Habilchacha himself started making candy independently when he was 25 years old. “There used to be a bakery opposite Nahoum’s in New Market. The owner gave me a job and set up a workshop for me on the terrace above the meat market,” he says. Things were trundling along until the young and feisty Habil decided he wanted to set up his own business. “I went back home, got some tables made, a huge clay oven too and started on my own,” he says. He has zero regrets about taking this decision half a century ago though he has gone through many ups and downs.

As he puts it — “It is much better to be your own boss.”