NEW DELHI: Bengal, known for its rich culture and heritage of sweets, has witnessed an evolution. With the rise of consciousness around health and innovation in sweet making, the traditional sweets of Bengal are dying a slow death much like the culture of joint families which are slowly losing relevance in today’s fast-paced lifestyles.

Zee Bangla has always pioneered Bengal’s indigenous ingredients and revived intricacies of Bengal’s heritage so that they don’t become extinct. A classic example of the same is bringing back the folk and kirtan forms into its mega musical reality show Sa Re Ga Ma Pa which beautifully emphasises the brand promise – ‘NotunChondeLikhboJibon’. And with its new launch – Mithai, the brand has embarked on a journey to revive the lost traditional sweets that Bengal was once famous for.

Mithai is a warm, ‘mishti story’ of going back to the roots, celebrating family values and rituals. It revolves around a business family which has stood strong for over 50 years by staying true to self. The Modak family, residing in south Kolkata, is known for its traditional Bengali sweets and has many franchises across the city. They are a joint family celebrating relationships and every occasion in the true sense. But Siddhartha (Adrit Roy), of the current generation of the family, had a difficult childhood with losing his mother at a young age and staying away from the family for an impressionable amount of time. He has grown up dreaming of going beyond and doing things on his own. He is the modern-day health-conscious man who doesn’t like sweets and has no interest in being part of the family business.

While our male lead has a worldly outlook, our female protagonist Mithai (Soumitrisha Kundu) comes from rural Bengal. Mithai was born to a sweet-making karigar family and is a karigar herself. She makes delicious monohara sweet and comes to Kolkata every day to sell them. On one such day, she is introduced to the Modak family. As she immediately wins everyone’s hearts, she takes up the challenge to get Siddharth to lover her sweets. Thereon, she embarks on a journey to bring Siddharth back to the family beliefs and take the business to greater heights.

The concept is entirely developed and produced in house and directed by Rajendra Prasad Das and written by Shaswati Ghosh. The show will premiere from 4 January, Monday-Saturday at 8 pm.

This show will revisit many forgotten parts of Bengali culture specially sweets like monohara and showcase the rooted nostalgia of a joint family. It will also have an eternal love story following the most basic and relatable concept of human relationships- opposites attract via portrayal of two sides of Bangaliyana - the urban and the traditional.

ZEEL cluster head – east Samrat Ghosh said, “As a brand, we are deeply rooted in Bengali values and cultures – and we put continuous effort to bring it alive both in our fiction and non-fiction offerings into new rhythm. We are sure that such efforts of ours would help our viewers to relive and reconnect with the strong culture and value of Bengalis. Mithai is a story of Bengali culture of “togetherness” in staying in a joint family, a story of exhibiting strong family values, a story of sharing happiness and sweetness– and all these will centre around in the revival of a traditional mishti called monohara.”