These young-at-heart women are challenging age stereotypes, one dish at a time.
These young-at-heart women are challenging age stereotypes, one dish at a time.
NEW DELHI — Urmiladas Jamnadas Asher is no ordinary Septuagenarian. With a perpetual smile on her face, she is a granny on a mission. Her mission? Setting up a future for her 31-year-old grandson Harsh Kamlesh Asher with the help of a skill she’s confident of — cooking.
After India first announced lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19 in March 2020, Harsh’s corporate gifting business took a hit. That’s when he turned to his 77-year-old grandmother to cash in on her pickle-making skills.
“She readily agreed, and soon our house turned into a godown of sorts. Within 20-25 days, we churned out over 1,100 pounds of pickle ready to be sold,” Harsh told Zenger News.
The duo didn’t stop there as homemade meals, and savory snacks were on demand. So, Gujju Ben Na Nasta, a small food catering cloud kitchen, was born in a few months.
A small team entirely managed by Urmiladas runs this cloud kitchen, which sells hot packaged vegetarian meals across Mumbai, a city on India’s west coast.
Soon followed an outlet, selling dry Gujarati namkeens (savory fried snacks) including chidva (a dry, savory snack made with puffed rice), potato and banana wafers, chips, thepla (whole wheat or millets flatbread with spice), diet items, bakery items, and more.
Urmiladas is not the only one swearing by her ladle.
In a country that’s reeling under the aftermath of one of the worst second waves of Covid-19, many elderly home cooks have entered the professional arena of culinary art to stay afloat financially, emotionally, or to do what they love — feeding.
Pandemic born
The pandemic has been a turning point for many. Mumbai-based Pratibha Kanoi was looking for a fresh start. The 67-year-old grandmother says she felt a sense of void after her husband died in 2017.
“I got involved in yoga, meditation, and satsang [spiritual prayer meets], but the lockdown changed it all,” Kanoi told Zenger News.
To keep herself engaged, she started spending more time in her kitchen, dishing out her Italian specialties for the grandchildren. Then, one day, her children demanded her signature pizza, which re-ignited her love for the dish.
“Within a week, my sons designed and arranged everything from the packaging, menu, and all the equipment needed, and Mommy’s Kitchen was born on May 2, 2020. I now look forward to the next day with a lot of excitement,” she said.
Kanoi’s bestsellers including the Margherita pizza and Mommy’s Special. She says Mumbai’s film stars, including the Bachchan family, and politicians, including former Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, have eaten from Mommy’s Kitchen.
“Our pizzas have been taken all the way to Dubai and all over India,” said Kanoi.
Humble beginnings
However, even before the pandemic, grannies across the country have been using their often underrated cooking skills to launch businesses. Take, for example, Harbhajan Kaur from the northern Indian state of Punjab.
It was a simple conversation that changed the course of life for soon-to-turn-90 Kaur.
Kaur told her youngest daughter, Raveena Suri, about her life’s unfulfilled desire to make a living for herself. She wanted to know was how being independent felt. Her daughter had a solution.
“I suggested she start preparing besan di barfi [sweet chickpea cake], and tomato chutney [a popular condiment] that her family loves,” Suri told Zenger News.
Hailing from Tarn Taran, a small town close to northern Indian city Amritsar that houses the Golden Temple, Kaur had to give up studies in Class-VIII (a common course for Indian girls back then).
She learned her way through and got involved in household chores like knitting, sewing and discovered the joys of simple, homemade, and flavorful cooking.
Her daughter felt it was perhaps time to reignite that passion. It started with one or two fortnightly pop-ups within Chandigarh, Punjab’s capital, back in 2016. Her homemade goodies sold over the counter instantly.
Next, she added sherbets (sweet drinks), jams, and pickles to her repertoire. The pop-ups made her popular in the city. Orders started pouring in, and 90-year-old Kaur became quite a celebrity. To date, the family has sold about 1,100 pounds of besan di barfi, whose recipe Kaur inherited from her father.
The products are now retailed from a family-run supermarket, Stockhome under Harbhajan’s Made with Love, and are also shipped out of Chandigarh.
Kaur’s story is a lot like Alamelu Ammal aka Ponnu maami (aunt). This 84-year-old has been winning hearts making pickles in a small house in the picturesque Palakkad, a city in southern Indian state Kerala.
But like Kaur, Ponnu maami, didn’t start making pickles to earn a living.
“It was in 1995 that my husband and I sold our huge house in Kannur [northern Kerala] and moved to a much smaller house in Palakkad,” she told Zenger News. “The money saved then is enough for me to survive.”
With no children of her own, the octogenarian has been living alone since her husband died in 2012.
Back in Kannur, she used to make pickles but never sold them. In Palakkad, she felt she could follow her passion for pickles and earn some money out of it. Once the idea clicked, she became famous as Kalpathy’s achar maami (pickle aunt).
Apart from the people who bring the mangoes and wash and give her, she manages the entire pickling process independently.
“I prefer no one else touches my pickles.”
It’s been 30 years that she’s been making and selling pickles. Her pickles have traveled all across Kerala and have some loyal customers in the U.A.E. and U.K. She was delivering through travelers till just before the pandemic struck.
Long live the legacy
But the pandemic threw its own share of challenges at all these women. If Ponnu maami’s pickles stopped traveling abroad, Kaur tested positive for Covid-19 and is currently recovering well.
Kaur’s mission has become a family-run business. Her daughter-in-law Supriya Kaur told Zenger News: “The past one year has given us time to reflect and bond over the passion of food.”
The pandemic, in fact, came as a blessing for the family. “Our orders started peaking in June 2020, and by November 2020, we started shipping pan India,” Kaur told Zenger News.
What also helped is that her grandson is a trained chef, and they make a great combination of experience and practicality.
“With the volumes increasing with demand, we are setting up a kitchen separately under her guidance and will be launching an e-commerce portal for her products,” said Supriya.
The Kanois are also doing their math as the popularity of Mommy’s Kitchen increases.
They recently opened in eastern Indian state Kolkata and plan to set an outlet soon in Bengaluru, the capital of India’s southern Karnataka state. By the end of 2021, they plan to set up cloud kitchens in Mumbai and other cities.
“We have been flooded with people requesting franchises,” Kanoi said.
Harsh is emphatic that his grandmother is working day and night as she doesn’t care how much money they can make from Gujju Ben Na Nasta.
“All she bothers about is quality. She wants the freshest ingredients. I have a treasure trove in her. I really want to keep her legacy alive,” Harsh told Zenger News.
They manage to sell about 40 meals a day, but the shop is bleeding.
“I’ve put all my savings in it. And now, because of the lockdown, forget profit, I’m incurring losses,” said Harsh. But the family is striving to keep the name alive.
(Edited by Amrita Das and Gaurab Dasgupta)
