Deoghar, Nov. 26: The route to economic bounty for Ghormara village is blessed by lord Shiva’s sweet tooth.

Tucked between two prime pilgrim sites of the country, Baidyanath Dham in Deoghar and Basukinath temple in Dumka, Ghormara village — standing at an equidistant 20km from each holy site — is prospering the peda way, as huge quantities of the traditional sweet are bought everyday by devotees to offer as prasad.

In fact, almost each of the 100-odd households in the village makes and sells pedas, the single most important source of livelihood for the village since the 1940s. On any given day, Ghormara sells around two quintals of peda at around Rs 178 per kg, which works to around 40 pieces. If pieces are bought individually, the price comes to Rs 7 per peda.

Sales surge to around eight or nine quintals a day in the holy month of Shravan.

The ripple effect of this cottage industry is felt by around 50 surrounding villages on both sides of the Ranchi-Giridih-Deoghar-Dumka road, which everyday supply 1,500 litres of milk to make khoa, the raw material for the sweet, getting Rs 30 per litre. Five litres of milk is used to make one kg of khoa.

The peda owners ascribe their sweet windfall to divine blessings.

“I set up my peda shop in 1980 and never looked back. It gives me good income and I have managed to educate my children with my earnings,” said Bholanath Mandal (65), owner of Mandal Peda. One of his sons, Santosh Kumar, is an officer in Indian Army, while another, Anup, has joined the shop.

“I have supplied pedas to chief minister Arjun Munda’s family. Whenever Guruji comes here, he buys from my shop,” said Prakash Kumar (40), owner of Sukhari Mandal Peda, the first known shop in the village.

“My father Sukhari Mandal started the trend more than 70 years ago,” claimed Kumar.

The village has plenty of such success stories, evident from the mushrooming wellmaintained concrete houses dotting it. It is tough to imagine that in the 1940s, it had a few huts and a single dirt track.

Sellers also claim that Ghormara’s pedas are unmatched in taste and quality. Thousands of devotees — some even from Nepal and Bhutan — travel to the village to buy fresh pedas to offer to Lord Shiva.

“I travelled 20km from Deoghar to come here and buy the famed pedas,” said Patna resident Yogendra Singh.

The only sour note? Peda sellers would like the state government to lift the four per cent Value Added Tax from the sweet.