Gournadi Correspondent
“Gournadir Doi”, which means yogurt of Gournadi is a favourite taste of food lovers. Once a person has eaten this yogurt, he cannot be fully satisfied without eating it a few more times.
Thousands of buyers from different parts of the country are flocking to Gournadi every day to buy this yogurt. The owners of this industry are not able to maintain the quality of their products as the price of raw materials including milk, the main ingredient of this industry, is increasing day by day to compete with the unbridled mad horse of commodity prices in the country. Even then, they claim that the traders of Gournadi Yogurt, Sweets and Ghee are trying their best to preserve the old tradition of this industry.
Talking to the locals of Gournadi, it is learned that the people of Ghosh dynasty of of Gournadi have been preparing yogurt, sweets and ghee here since ancient times. Traditional yogurt, sweets and ghee are made in different places of the greater Gournadi Upazila including Gournadi Bus Stand, Gournadi Bazar, TorkiBazar, Batajor Bazar, Bilgram Hat, Pingalakathi Bazar, Nalchira Bazar, Sarikal Hat, Hosnabad Bazar, Gaila Bazar.
Notable among the sweets made are Rasgola, Kalojam, Rasmalai, Chamcham, Rasmanjuri, Mohanbhog, Khirpuri, Sandesh, Dry Sweet and Ghee. At one time Gedu Ghosh, Jiban Ghosh and Nirmal Ghosh of Gournadi made this traditional curd, sweet and ghee and supplied it all over the country. At that time, the main feature of Gournadi's yogurt, sweet and ghee was that it would not be spoiled even in 10-15 days under normal weather.
In the lineage, those who are still engaged in the preparation and marketing of this delicious yogurt, sweet and ghee have retained the business of their ancestors with a great reputation. They are Sachin Ghosh, Sushil Ghosh, Nani Ghosh, Srikrishna Ghosh, Shyamal Chandra Ghosh and many others. Seeing them, besides the Ghosh dynasty, the slaves of the Hindu community and the people of the Saha dynasty have also fallen into this business.
Among them are Dilip Kumar Das and Chitta Ranjan Saha, a yogurt and sweet trader from Gournadi bus stand, and their successors. At the same time, some members of the Muslim community are also involved in this business. Among them are Md. Farid Mia and Md. Ibrahim Sikder in Gournadi bus stand. Among them, Sachin Ghosh's Gaur Nitai Mistanna Bhandar has retained his positional excellence in terms of quality and business expansion.
According to the locals, proper patronage is needed to maintain the reputation of the traditional curd, sweet and ghee of Gauranadi across the country. Every day hundreds of maunds of yogurt, sweets are being shipped from the upazila to different places including Dhaka-Barishal, Chittagong, Khulna, Dinajpur, Sylhet. Outside the country and extensively, Gournadi has a reputation for yogurt, sweets and ghee.
