Tucked away in a cozy little corner in Tando Adam is an unassuming mithai (sweetmeat) shop known for its speciality — the Badayuni pairray. Pairray are of course sweetened milk solids moulded into round, brownish, cookie-like shapes.

Now the question that arises is: why travel all the way to Tando Adam in interior Sindh to get a taste of the Badayuni pairray at Hafiz Sweets? D-uh! Simply because it’s there, and also because they are the best you will ever taste in your entire lifetime.

I was treated to the heavenly pairray by a friend of mine who lives in Tando Adam but I didn’t think much of it until another friend travelling through Sindh made a stopover at Tando Adam to pick up a few boxes of the same sweets from Hafiz. It got me wondering. What if I was missing something that had been right under my nose all along?

As it turns out, I was right. I had been missing out on the discovery of the century! The pairray are made from curdled milk (khoya) after passing the liquid through a process that separates the whey from the curds. Then it is cooked until it adopts a light brown colour, with sugar and other fragrant ingredients added to enhance the flavour.

Don’t be fooled by these muddy-looking, little, sweet, flat balls available at Hafiz Sweets in Tando Adam. They contain all the goodness, happiness and satisfaction that are to be had in one’s lifetime.

The whole process can take a considerable period of time if the pairray are made at home. So why not go for the next best thing: simply have someone buy them from the Hafiz sweetmeat shop and save yourself a whole world of trouble!

The melt-in-your-mouth pairray are widely believed to have originated in Budaun, Uttar Pradesh, India, hence the name. A lot of mithai places claim to make these pairray, but only few have mastered the art to perfection, as Hafiz Sweets has.

A ball of the solidified cookie dough is flattened on both sides and sprinkled with finely ground milk solids before being presented to customers. The business of making sweetmeats goes back generations at Hafiz, and it’s great to see the tradition thriving and doing good business as well.

But if what it takes to sample these goodies is a five-hour trek into the interior of Sindh and negotiating traffic and messy roads, then it is fair to ask oneself if the sweet treat awaiting at the other end of the painstaking journey is really worth it in the end.

As I said in the beginning, you need the absolute resolution and conviction of a die-hard foodie adventurer, or the urge to travel to explore new grounds and seek new opportunities. For the more meek and timid, the best option may perhaps be to stay put and stick it out until some generous friend or relative pampers you with a box full of Badayuni pairray of Hafiz on his or her way back from a road trip.

The best option, in my opinion, is still the road trip, mind you.

The writer is a member of staff.
He tweets @faisal_quraishi

Published in Dawn, EOS, July 16th, 2023