A Mouthful of Sky
Before it disappeared from modern tables, it was a ritual that symbolised
complete hospitality. Grandmothers roasted spices and seeds,
cut slivers of nuts and sundried petals to handmixed their own mukhwas blends.
Vandana Chamaria, co-founder AfterEats, on reclaiming the legacy.
By Vandana Chamaria
Before the era of chewing gums and post-meal mints,
India already had a ritual of after-meal freshness —
mukhwas. The word comes from mukh (mouth) and vas
(smell; to perfume), but its cultural meaning ran deeper than
that. Mukhwas was not merely a digestive; it was a gesture
of care, and completion of hospitality. While the practice of
eating a few fragrant spices post a meal may have had its
roots in Ayurveda, where ingredients like fennel, coriander,
sesame, and ajwain were prescribed to aid digestion, over
centuries, offering a blend of some of these ingredients at
the end of a meal evolved into an emblem of Indian dining
etiquette and refinement.
Across India, regional expressions of mukhwas reveal
as much about geography as they do about culture. In
Gujarat, for instance, mukhwas bursts with colour— bright
sugar-coated fennel seeds and roasted coriander, often
flavoured with menthol or saffron. It’s festive, like the state.
In Rajasthan, where desert heat shapes diets, mukhwas leans
on the earthy: roasted ajwain, cumin, and carom seeds mingle
with dried dates, rock salt, and hing to soothe and cool the
stomach in hot climes. In Lucknow, with its delicate nawabi
lineage, mukhwas is an extension of the paan ritual, as also
Avadh’s fabled perfumery. Fragrant gulkand (rose preserve),slivers of betel nut, cardamom, silver varq, and dried fruits
are mixed together and offered to guests post a stylised
meal. Punjab prefers the robustness of roasted saunf and
anise, while Maharashtra embraces the mellow sweetness of
coconut, sesame, and jaggery mixes called til-gud mukhwas.
Down South, in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, mukhwas tends
toward the cooling — blends of coriander, cumin, and dried
coconut — often seasoned with jaggery and cardamom for
both taste and digestion. Each version mirrors local climates,
culinary traditions, and even social customs. What binds
them together is the belief that a meal is not complete until it
ends on a note of well-being.
In many Indian homes, and certainly mine, the mukhwas
dabba was often as familiar as the salt shaker. It sat on dining
tables, its metallic lid opening with a comforting click.
Children learnt early that the end of a meal was never abrupt
— there was always that little handful of colour, texture, and
flavour waiting to be shared.
Heirloom flavours, handcrafted continuum
In the last few decades, this gentle tradition has receded. In
urban homes, meals are shorter, tables are bare, and time
is the first ingredient lost. It was from this sense of absence
that AfterEats was born. My father and I founded this small
creative business as a way to preserve and revitalise the
heirloom recipes of our Marwari heritage. I remember my
grandmother crushing fennel and cardamom in a mortar,
drying dates in the sun, and roasting seeds to perfect her
after meal mixture. When this was passed around the table
after dinner, it seemed like a benediction. But this homemade authenticity was missing the market — there were
some industrial, synthetic versions but nothing matched the
quality or innovation of the mixes that we looked forward to
in our childhood.
So a small team and I travelled across India to source the
best ingredients, paying attention to provenance as it would
be done in our homes decades ago: the sweetest khajoor from
Rajasthan, saunf from Gujarat, the most fragrant elaichi from
Kerala. We also decided to partner with artisans who work
slowly, by hand, to preserve the tactile intimacy of traditional
food-making. The result: small-batch, 100% tobacco-free,
naturally flavoured mukhwas blends.
Each of our mixes evokes a region, a family, or a table.
Pushkar Gulab is for those who like floral sweetness, Jaipur
Soiree for aromatic traditionalists, Purani Dilli for those
who prefer richness and the elegant Calcutta Paan for those
who want to stick to the classics. We also work with natural
ingredients — roasting, sun-drying, and curing in small
quantities. But perhaps a deeper achievement is reclaiming a
small bit of culture.
