Alongside many memes that poked fun at soan papdi, several people have also come out to defend the dessert.
Distributing sweets is an important part of Diwali. People often use Diwali-special packages of snacks and sweets for gifting purposes. However, in recent years, the once popular sweet ‘soan papdi’ garnered a bad reputation after people began passing it around in circles. Unlike other sweets, like rasgulla and kaju katli, that were fit for instant consumption, soan papdi became a recyclable dessert, meaning it kept getting passed around like an unwanted gift. Now, every year, as Diwali inches closer people start making memes and jokes about the dessert’s unpopularity. Brands like Swiggy and Flipkart have also posted social media engagement content surrounding the soan papdi discourse.
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Talking about the back-and-forth passing of the soan papdi boxes, an X user wrote, “Some indian relatives literally play passing the parcel game with soan papdi boxes during diwali festival”. Another person expressed this sentiment by tweeting, “‘Money is never yours, it is just your turn to spend it’ ‘Soan Papdi is never yours, it’s just your turn to pass it’”.
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Many people were also quick to point out that the crispy and flaky sweet got a bad reputation because many brands started selling it with too much processing that made it unpalatable. Making this point, a person wrote, “Traditional Soan Papdi with desi ghee is pure delight, while factory-made ones are”. A person described soan papdi as the ‘an ugly duckling’ of sweets.
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However, despite the extreme backlash against the sweet, some people openly proclaimed their love for it. A person tweeted in mock seriousness but sincerity, “Diwali is coming. Thus I would like to reiterate that Soan Papdi is an elite dessert. And most of you guys pretend to not like it because dissing it is cool on the internet. It is time to come out of the closet and reclaim your love for Soan Papdi. I am there to support you.”
People also used different analogies to explain soan papdi. An X user wrote, “Do you ever feel like a Soan Papdi? You are sweet and all, popular too, but a huge faction of society just seems to hate you..?”. Another person wrote, “Soan Papdi is that unfortunate son who helps everyone in need but never gets appreciated and even more often ridiculed.”
Soan papdi is made across India with different variations. It is also known as patisa, san papri, or sohan papdi. It is believed to have originated in Maharashtra.
