When Cake Took Over India

Once upon a time in India, celebrations came in flavors as wide as the country itself. Birthdays meant laddoos, weddings meant motichoor, and exam results (good or bad) meant someone thrust a plate of jalebis at you. Then one day, cake arrived — first politely, then persistently, and finally like a buttercream bulldozer flattening everything in its path.

Suddenly, no milestone was complete without cake. Babies’ first words? Cut a cake. A politician switching parties? Cut a cake. Neighbour’s dog learning to sit? You guessed it — cake.

At first it felt modern, maybe even aspirational. A bit of vanilla sponge was harmless, after all. But soon came the era of fondant fortresses and “fusion” nightmares — rasmalai cake, paan cake, and, for reasons known only to a few experimental bakers, butter chicken cake. Traditional sweets were pushed to the margins, dismissed as too oily, too desi, too passé.

And in this sugary conquest, something quietly died: variety. That strange thrill of moving from one home to another and being surprised by a different sweet dish? Gone. Festivals that once tasted of countless textures and traditions began to blur into one frosted uniformity. Every occasion looked eerily similar, reduced to sponge, cream, and candles.

It’s the same story that fast food giants like McDonald’s played out worldwide — marching in with their golden arches and erasing the aroma of street food with the smell of standardized fries. Cake, in its own polite, frosted way, is doing the same to Indian celebrations. Uniformity always wins the first round, but it kills the spice of difference in the long run.

It’s not that cake is bad. Cake is delightful, in the right moment. But when cake becomes the only language of celebration, it tells us something deeper: that sameness is seductive, even when it flattens culture. The very thing that makes India’s food — and life — interesting is its refusal to be one-note.

So maybe the next time you’re tempted to slice into a predictable black forest at a puja or a wedding, pause. Reach instead for that jalebi dripping syrup, that peda shaped by hand, that modak offered with devotion. Because cake may have taken over India, but it doesn’t have to silence the symphony.

Wandering Butterfly