A platter of traditional sweets from Bhim Nag Pandal troopers on a cell talkathon

Sweet tooth and swift fingers. The post-Puja hours saw an overdose of both, with mishti and mobile being the highlights of the Bijoya Dashami bonanza. Saturday and Sunday were sore-finger days, thumbing through the keypad, sending and receiving Shubho Bijoya messages or tucking away the sweet somethings.

Be it sentimental goodbyes (?ananda dharar ei shesh ratey, thakbo shobai ek shathey?) or cheeky ones (?aaj raate Shiber ki haal?), SMS sensation peaked among the close-to-10 lakh Hutch and Airtel subscribers. ?There were around 25 lakh messages sent over the four Puja days on our network,? said a spokesperson for Airtel ? a ?huge jump? from last year. The rise in Bijoya picture messages and logos was ?phenomenal?.

At Hutch, compared to other days, the SMS jump was ?five to six times? on Dashami. Last year, the average rise was only ?two to three times?. If around 12,000 picture messages are usually sent each day, that figure, too, saw a climb by ?10 to 12 times? on Dashami. ?To ensure that not a single message delivery failed, we had a temporary upgrade of our message centre,? revealed a Hutch official.

The temptations for users were many, as service providers offered a range of Puja specials ? from the festive plans of celebrities recorded in their own voice to pandal information and Puja parikrama through video clips. Logos, ring tones and caller tunes (the latest fad where you call someone and instead of a ring, you hear a song) were the other Puja picks.

The journey from mobile mania to mishti mouthfuls was but natural. ?Sales are better than last year,? confirmed Prasanta Nandy of Nakur, the north Calcutta sandesh specialist. ?Our norompak is selling particularly well,? he added.

Pandal troopers on a cell talkathon

At central Calcutta?s Bhim Chandra Nag, the Bijoya rush is expected to carry on till Lakshmi puja, at least. And the new trend is towards low-calorie, sugar-free sweets. ?Keeping the demand in that category in mind, we tried something innovative this time,? said Pradip Nag. Sugar-free sandesh with chocolate syrup was the result. The syrup had to be imported from abroad, but the super sales more than compensated for the cost. ?Bengalis are becoming more health conscious, even in their mishti,? observed Nag.

Sales surged at the non-Bengali sweet shops, too. ?Sales are quite good,? said Rajesh Gupta of Gupta Brothers. But the real gain was in smoothness of operation. ?Traffic was significantly better during the Puja days and we could have all our deliveries on time this year,? continued Gupta. Another first was the willingness of Bengalis on Bijoya overdrive to look beyond the traditional taste. ?There is less demand for kucho goja, chhanar goja or mihidana as people are experimenting with other kinds of sweets.?

Gift packs are moving well, too. And with offices reopening on Monday to a week of post-Puja platter, the sweet sales are sure to stay.