KOCHI: Good morning! Inniki thenga paal rasam eppidi pannarudhu nu kaamichi tharen (Today I will show you how to prepare thenga paal rasam),” announces the frail voice of 89-year-old, Bengaluru-based Saraswathy Narayanaswamy, on her Instagram page, @theiyerpaati.
Draped in enviable South cotton, wearing a simple gold chain around her neck, and sporting a small black bindi topped with a vibhuti, Saraswathy projects a kind of disposition that’s rare to find among her contemporaries.
Her warmth-filled voice, spirited demeanour, and granny sass reveal that she’s ready to take on age-related matters with audacity and assert her presence on social media. All with an intent and grace to share what she loves - recipes that warm the tummy and the heart.
Saraswathy paati, as she is fondly known among her followers, is the ninth of the 16 children born to her parents. Her twin sister passed away six months after birth, and her mother, when paati was 11. With her father not keen to hire a cook for this large family in Kozhikode, paati who found motherly love in her maternal aunt, had to pick up the ladles as a little girl.
“My chitti (maternal aunt) didn’t particularly teach us cooking but I learned by observation and inquiry. I watched her make sambar, rasam, molagutal, erissery, mor kozhambu, and vettal kozhambu, etc. But she did teach me to make sweets,” she shares.
Not just cooking, paati attributes her learnings of kitchen etiquettes too to her chitti. A clean towel tied around the waist while cooking and a different cloth to wipe hands were habits she adopted from her aunt.
“Mysore pak first-class aa pannuven (I make Mysore pak really well),” she adds with a coy smile.
Years went by and food became her unfettered self-expression. “Everyone used to say, I have magic in my hands,” she reminisces.
Married in 1959, paati moved to Bengaluru, as her husband had a transferable bank job. Eventually, word spread about her cooking skills. And her house became a landmark, known as ‘maami mane’.
As we delve into her love for food, it’s evident that paati’s life is not governed by her age, but her values and love for feeding people. “I befriended a lot of people. I would teach some of them a few recipes. A few others would come home to eat, and learn Narayaneeyam and music,” paati recalls.
Her granddaughter, Meenakshi, chimes in, “After my thatha (grandfather) retired, he helped my paati in chopping vegetables, brooming, and other household chores. Together, they would make pickles.”
“Kadu manga and maahaani are my favourite pickles,” paati instantly chirps in.
Getting on the gram
While Gen Z may be considered as the de facto leaders of Instagram, paati believes there is space for everyone. Old is not what it was perceived to be. A scroll down the comments on her 280 posts on her Instagram page reflects the love, gratitude and appreciation she’s been attracting with her easy-to-make, nutritious and homely South Indian dishes.
“Paati is full of ideas. In 2023, when my sister gave birth to her first child, paati recorded a video of how to make and tie an aranai kair (black thread). It is used to ward off evil eyes from children. That was kind of our Eureka moment. She asked me if we could record recipes and showcase them on Instagram,” narrates Meenakshi.
Initially, the grandmother-granddaughter duo began by cooking basic everyday vegetarian recipes. But Meenakshi insisted on digging into paati’s rich repository of South Indian, especially Palakkad dishes. While paati was apprehensive, “I convinced her to just talk about the recipe steps, and I took care of the production part,” reveals Meenakshi. Gradually, there were improvisations.
“We even blended my paternal grandparents’ Tirunelveli recipes into paati’s recipes and came up with some innovative dishes,” Meenakshi adds, indicating paati’s open-mindedness and feistiness in her approach to everything in life.
From the traditional - ven pongal, tomato rice, mor kali, manga thokku — to the more experimental - pumpkin chapathi, vazhakkai chaat, lauki dosa and orange peel chutney - paati’s recipes are flavourful and not capriciously smothered in spices. They seem to deliver happiness and childhood nostalgia to her followers, who keep sending her requests to post different dishes.
“I didn’t expect to get recognised at the age of 89. I am not very articulate because of age, but I am happy with the love I am receiving,” she shares teary-eyed, while recalling her life journey.
The abundant warmth has left Meenakshi with a sense of pride for her paati. “I know the amount of effort she puts in for every recipe to be recorded well, but she’s passionate,” she says.
From kootu to pasta
As the interview steers to the quality of modern-day food produce, paati remembers simpler times. “We ate a lot of vegetables - white and yellow pumpkin, yam, jackfruit, Chinese potato, mango - that were grown in our large backyard.
We had coconut trees; we also had cows and buffaloes for our everyday milk essentials. We were taught to use everything - from the flower, fruit to the stem, root and peels,” she shares.
As Meenakshi hands this writer a plate of paati’s homemade goodies, paati talks about her love for Chinese and Italian cuisine, and goes on to share a detailed home remedy for acidity. As I keenly listen on, she slowly breaks into a Thyagaraja keerthanai, turning the so-far story-telling room into a private concert.
Music, she says, is her other passion. With time to wrap up the interview, paati’s handmade love-filled morsels of wheat halwa don’t satiate me as much as her appetite for living life with ingredients of patience, generosity and age-defying vivaciousness.