Mumbai: Is 50 years a considerable length of time to cultivate a sweet tooth? Maybe yes.

Or at least that's the story Mumbai's popular Brijwasi Sweets has to tell.

From kaju katlis to rasgullas to gulab jamuns, if there's one place in Mumbai that screams out 'Mooh Meetha Keejiye', it’s Brijwasi Sweets.

The owner of the sweet shop started with a humble puri bhaji stall just before Independence. It might well have remained just that, if it was not for owner Ramniwas Goel’s sweet dreams.

This Republic Day, as he looks back at the past 50 years, he is a satisfied man with all the achievements he aimed for.

Today, Brijwasi Sweets is a place that's defines Mumbai's sweet tooth.

"Indian sweets should sell across the world. People will love it," beams Ramniwas Goel, owner of Brijwasi Sweets.

Goel’s roots were a far cry from his current high-rise apartment on Pedder Road. He came to Mumbai as a young boy in the 40s with his father and uncles from Mathura with no money and a number of mouths to feed.

The large family of eight lived in cramped quarters in Kalbadevi and earned their living selling puri bhaji at a lunch stall.

Goel’s puri bhaji stall used to be right at the place where Brijwasi Sweets stands today. Six puris with unlimited bhaji, that was the deal. But one day, along came a Bengali who offered to make Ramniwas Goel the best rasgullas he’d ever had.

Goel remembers the rasgulla expert was a drunk, but hired him anyway. Popular Bengali sweets at that time used to be imported from Calcutta. Young Goel knew he'd have a monopoly in his hands.

"Before we came, people in Mumbai used to eat only chevda," Goel recalls.

It's at that point of time that puri bhaji made way for ras malai, and the poor migrant family soon had the city's best and brightest eating out of its hands.

"There used be a line of cars outside our Kalbadevi store on Sundays," Goel reminisces.

Goel is just one of many entrepreneurs who came to the city with a Mumbai dream. Fifty years on, like many of them, he is still reluctant to let go of what he built from scratch.

He may be a borderline diabetic, but clearly, Goel can't get enough of the sweet taste of his success. And he won't let out the secret of his energy so easily. "There's no secret. I walk for one hour and eat two rasgullas."