KOCHI:So what is feeding one crore hungry children like? Easy or a piece of cake, one would wonder. Penny for your thoughts, people. Anyone? “It’s a difficult job,” Pazhayidom Mohanan Nampoothiri testifies to Express.
Pazhayidom and his team have been preparing meals at all state-level school events organised by the government for 15 years. And this year, he was recognised for covering a unique record: Feeding one crore children over this span of his career. “I had already covered one crore after the state school youth festival in Kannur last year,” Pazhayidom says.
In April, he was honoured with the first-ever ‘Pachaka Shreshta’ award, instituted by the state government, in the presence of Education Minister C Raveendranath and Agriculture Minister V S Sunil Kumar at a function held in Thrissur.
Since 2002, Pazhayidom has been the go-to person for meals at the state school youth festivals. However, his job is not an easy one. “There are a lot of responsibilities,” he says. “Each school fest lasts for seven days. One mistake can cause a lot of trouble. Because I have been consistent, I have been asked every year.”
Now, let me do the math for you. For each youth festival, scores of students, teachers and parents are present. With the number of participants increasing every year, over 50,000 people need to be fed in a day. Which means, in a school fest lasting seven days, Pazhayidom and his team have to feed over 3.5 lakh people. And that’s just one event. Whew!
While the meals he prepares are vegetarian, he exclusively serves non-vegetarian food at school sports events organised by the state government. “The children need their proteins and energy,” Pazhayidom says. “Neither I nor my usual team prepares non-vegetarian food. I bring in a separate team for it and they prepare the food using separate utensils.”
So what makes his food so special that keeps clients coming back to him always? “All the ingredients I use are natural and organic. And the methods I use are traditional,” Pazhayidom says.After serving food to children for all these years, Pazhiyidom is an undying testimony that there is no better way to one’s heart than through his or her stomach. “During a youth festival, a teenager approached me,” he says. “He has been seeing me for all the years he has been participating. And he thought I was a teacher at some school and commented well about my food. That was really refreshing for me.” He says it is the only profession that can satisfy one’s hunger.
A native of Kurichithanam in Kottayam, Pazhayidom has been in the catering business since the 1990s. “After I finished my post graduation in Physics, it was either the food business or being a priest,” he says. “When you are a priest, you are just a mediator between God and the faithful. When you are in the food business, there is a direct connection between people. Through your work, you can show the way God works and the results are generated on the spot.”
After learning the ropes of cooking and professionalism from his mentor Anantharama Swamy, he entered the catering business with his team. Now he runs his own company Pazhayidom Food Ventures Private Ltd, which will soon be exporting frozen vegetables to Australia.He also prepares fests for weddings and other private functions. No, hold your pants. It may not be great news for the last minute wedding planners, however. His schedule is overflowing till September.