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Pilgrims purchase coconuts, sweetmeats, flowers, and incense for their ritualistic offerings.

Gifting new clothes and sweetmeats is a key part of the celebrations.

Media footage showed a man feeding the convicts sweetmeat outside the jail after touching the feet of one of them, a mark of respect.

While my parents devoted their time and energy to the service, I daydreamed about the forthcoming sweetmeat, a symphony of tabla and harmonium scoring my reverie.

So Meg wrestled alone with the refractory sweetmeats all that hot summer day, and at five o’clock sat down in her topsy-turvey kitchen, wrung her bedaubed hands, lifted up her voice and wept.