Parle-G is not just a humble biscuit. It’s a part of India’s cultural consciousness
Swastika Jajoo wasn’t sure if her grandfather was going to make it. At 86, he was admitted to Aurangabad’s Kamal Nayan Bajaj Hospital with dementia in December last year.
“He had very little control over his actions, and things became really difficult for him,” she recalls. “At its base, dementia is forgetting — things, people, your own stories are rendered unrecognisable to you.”
The doctors had all but given up hope, and Swastika’s parents even signed a set of definitive papers, declaring that they were forgoing ICU care to “lower the degree of his suffering,” the linguistics student studying in Japan tells ThePrint.
“He was in a lot of pain, he was being fed through a nose tube, and doctors were finding it impossible to find veins in his body to inject medicines,” she says. “However still, we tried to keep his spirits up, and we’d often ask, ‘Dadu, you’ll come back home very jaldi (quick), and when you do, what would you like to do first?’”
“‘Eat Parle-G biscuits and drink chai’, he said,” Swastika says through a smile. She shot a small video of the interaction on her phone and sent it across to Parle on their Instagram page.
By January, her grandfather was showing rapid signs of recovery. “It really was like a miracle,” she says. “We had called relatives from everywhere, because we had to prepare ourselves, and suddenly we were told that we can take him back home.”
“It was a delight to see him being able to drink his tea and eat his Parle-G biscuits — he eats one whole packet a day, has been for decades now. I sent a photo to Parle to thank them again, and this time, they responded by sending him a large 2.3-kg crate of Parle-G biscuits, a red Parle branded cup for his tea, and a personalised letter.”