In search of particular Pongal meals like Ven Pongal and Paruppu Vadai. Girija Venkatachalam runs ‘Girijapaati Meals’ to supply unique home made podis, snacks, chocolates, pickles, and savouries.
As Pongal approaches, Girija Venkatachalam’s domestic is full of festive pleasure. The air is wealthy with the smell of ghee-fried cashews, raisins, and cardamom. Paati (Tamil for grandmother) and her ladies helpers are energetically getting ready particular dishes for the pageant. In spite of running onerous, fatigue doesn’t display on their faces; the house is full of life with pleasure and laughter.
This 72-year-old runs ‘Girijapaati Meals’ the place she sells conventional home-style South Indian meals pieces with “secret circle of relatives recipes which can be over 100 years previous!”
Underneath the logo, she provides round 40 forms of unique home made podis, snacks, chocolates, pickles, and savouries — together with garlic paruppu podi, bisibele tub, thengai podi, vepillai katti, black ulundhu laddu — and the checklist is going on.
To make the pageant extra joyous for city citizens, she lately introduced ready-to-cook Pongal must-haves like Chakkarai Pongal, Ven Pongal, and the crispy Paruppu Vadai.
“At the moment, many kids transfer out for research and jobs. Whilst they crave conventional meals, they lack time to prepare dinner it, so I determined to offer them with simple get admission to to unique home-style meals. Even if it’s best when you prepare dinner your meals at domestic to reside an extended wholesome lifestyles. However when you lack time, then you definitely come to me as a result of I’ll provide you with what I devour and what my circle of relatives eats,” she says.
Without reference to the massive collection of orders the trade receives, Girija says she prepares all meals pieces simply the best way she chefs for her grandchildren.
Surely then that her telephone is repeatedly ringing as call for for her South Indian delights is everywhere. However right here’s one thing attention-grabbing, this Chennai resident had no longer at all times been keen on cooking. Then how did she arrange a emblem this is enslaving other people’s tastebuds?
In dialog with The Higher India, paati stocks all about her entrepreneurial adventure.
A kitchen mishap that ended in a satisfying culinary adventure
Born in Chennai, Girija used to be the eldest of six siblings. Her circle of relatives hailed from Kalpathi village, positioned at the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border.
“We lived in a large joint circle of relatives of 40 other people. My mom could be occupied within the kitchen. So, I used to be entrusted with the tasks of taking good care of my siblings — from waking them up, taking them to college, and serving to them end their homework to feeding them and placing them to sleep,” she says.
Girija by no means entered the kitchen till 1968, which is when she were given married. Her husband’s circle of relatives comprised 100 individuals, and the 18-year-old bride used to be requested to fry papadums for them. “I had by no means cooked earlier than. This used to be the primary time that I had stepped within the kitchen. I didn’t know what to do however I used to be scared to inform it to my partner’s mother,” she remembers.
“Anyway, I poured oil into a big pan and stood like part a foot clear of it. I threw a work of papadum into the overheated oil. It splattered over me. In consequence, my shirt were given caught to the outside and I suffered critical burns on my shoulder. For the following month, I couldn’t pop out of my room as I couldn’t put on a shirt. So, this is how my first day of cooking at my in-laws’ went,” she laughs.
However that day, Girija determined she should discover ways to prepare dinner.
“My partner’s mother began instructing me the fundamentals and nuances of cooking. Ultimately, she taught me the standard circle of relatives recipes. On every occasion I’d discuss with my mom, she would additionally proportion her culinary abilities with me. I used to be finding out various recipes from either one of my moms. Actually, my grandmothers additionally handed on their wisdom to me,” she says.
That used to be how Girija’s culinary adventure started. And nowadays, a grandmother herself, she makes use of her circle of relatives’s secret recipes to feed hundreds of people that crave home-style South Indian meals.
It’s by no means too past due to run a trade!
Earlier than beginning the meals corporate, Girija have been cooking conventional delights for her family members and buddies for over 5 many years. She commercialised her merchandise when the call for for her merchandise grew outdoor her prolonged circle of relatives.
The speculation to run an organization got here to her amid the COVID-19 pandemic when males from low-income backgrounds in her group began dropping their jobs. “Their other halves would come to me for jobs as they misplaced their method to feed their households,” she says.
Lovingly known as paati (Tamil for grandmother), Girija began using the ones ladies in her kitchen. Along, because the call for for her merchandise grew, she formally introduced her corporate ‘Girija Paati’s’ in 2021.
Each festive season, the staff caters to no less than 2,000 orders from around the nation from states like Chennai, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Gujarat.
In the meantime, Girija, even on the age of 72, continues to devote no less than 10 hours to cooking each day. Her day begins with cooking foods for her employees, then experimenting with meals pieces within the kitchen, supervising the employees, and polishing off the day by way of checking the accounts.
“If it used to be no longer for this trade, I don’t know what I’d were doing. About 10 years again, I misplaced my husband, and steadily, all my kids and grandchildren moved out one after the other. I had not anything a lot to do. As soon as, I had 100 individuals in my prolonged circle of relatives, now I didn’t have sufficient other people to deal with. Everyone were given busy. However now I’ve such a lot of other people to feed,” she smiles.
“I agree that I want to decelerate. I do know that during 10 years, I would possibly not have this power degree. However I don’t want to take retirement until my ultimate day,” says paati as she is going directly to cater to her subsequent set of orders for Pongal.
If you need to take a look at Girija Paati’s South Indian delights, you’ll be able to order right here.
Edited by way of Pranita Bhat. All footage: Girija Paati.