BHUBANESWAR: From the looks of it, Jihowa Taza Tawa - a hotel in Brahmnigaon village of Kandhamal district - appears just like another nondescript roadside eatery. Inside though, its owners Ananta Baliarsingh and his brother Sumanta Baliarsingh have come up with a menu for social change. Interestingly, the highlight of this menu is the delicious and flaky Kerala Parotta!
In the hilly Kandhamal, which has in the past witnessed communal conflict, Kerala Parotta cooked at Jihowa Taza Tawa by the Baliarsingh brothers has been breaking the unbending caste boundaries.
Natives of Sandimaha village, 10 km from Brahmnigaon under Daringibadi block in the district, the Baliarsingh siblings are Christians belonging to the SC community. At a time when caste debates rage, the taste of parottas cooked by Ananta and Sumanta has been drawing people from across the social strata. They serve the parottas with sides of chicken, prawn, mutton, eggs and fish. There are vegetarian options too. Today, the hotel has become a fixture even with the upper caste people in the area.
Having dropped out of school after failing Class X, the brothers had turned into labourers who migrated throughout the country to work in hotels.
“Our first job was at a dhaba in Berhampur (175 km away from Kandhamal) where we cleaned plates. After a few years there, we shifted to Pune to work at construction sites. But neither of us liked the work and we took up jobs in a local hotel to cut vegetables,” recalled 33-year-old Sumanta.
A few years later when a relative suggested they shift to Bengaluru to work in a multi-cuisine restaurant, the two readily agreed.
The relative was in charge of the parotta section in the restaurant and Sumanta began assisting him. “I was fascinated by the flaky flatbread,” he says.
Anantha, on the other hand, learnt the other non-vegetarian recipes. “In 2017, the entire workforce of the restaurant decided to quit because of some issues with the owner. Some of them moved to the north and we went to Kerala to work in another restaurant that just served Kerala cuisine,” said 36-year-old Ananta. Here, Sumanta learnt to make parottas.
Having migrated from one state to another in search of work for close to 18 years, the brothers decided to return home in 2018 and start something of their own. On April 14 that year, the duo opened a roadside food stall near an abandoned panchayat office building in Brahmnigaon. They started with fried chicken items and made a profit of Rs 1,350 on day 1.
As the starters were a hit among the locals, Sumanta proposed to open a hotel in Brahmnigaon serving meals. But this was when their caste weighed them down. “We needed funds and a bigger place to operate but no one was ready to help - neither the banks, landlords nor our own family. The former judged us from our caste and not skills, and our family members dissuaded us from the hotel plan as none would eat rice-roti from the hands of SCs,” Sumanta recounted.
However, he was ready to take the risk and had Ananta’s support. The first help came from Sumanta’s wife and nephew who provided Rs 35,000 and he got a small place to start the hotel. Their problems, though, did not end here as no one was willing to work under them. “Since we knew cooking, my brother suggested that we start on our own. And as no one here had tasted Kerala Parotta before, we decided to introduce it as the highlight of our menu,” Sumanta said.
The brothers opened the hotel last year and since then, Kerala Parotta has been its biggest draw.