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Journalism of Courage
Pernamput, might not figure on any of your maps, but the place has some fond memories for me from a quarter-century ago when I did a brief stint there as an intern. Back then, tea stalls served up succulent, piping hot, and very affordable biriyani. Today, neighbouring Ambur is going great guns. Its traditional leather industry is booming, with shoe manufacturers from a host of European countries making a beeline for the small town. A recent newspaper article highlights how new hotels have sprung up to cater to cosmopolitan tastes, and that pizza and food of that kind are readily available everywhere. What ever has happened to good old biriyani?
The process of globalisation has opened up the floodgates and I suspect that even the food patterns in rural areas are undergoing a change, albeit a slow one. Some 15 years ago, I was posted in a backward-area mission hospital. There, the teashop became a favorite haunt and eventually I befriended the proprietor. Here was a hardworking man who woke up well before the newspaper boys delivered their periodicals and retired to bed late. 8220;The work in a hotel is never finished,8221; he would remark with the air of a philosopher. His restaurant had delicious 8216;appams8217;: some laced, some like string hoppers and some just plain.
When I visited him recently, he was in the process of winding up his enterprise. He confided that he was getting on in years and that his son was not too keen on taking up a venture so labour-intensive. With paddy cultivation shrinking, the bulk of his clientele of farmhands and duck-herders was gradually thinning out. There was also considerable competition from wayside 8216;thattu kadais8217; mobile fast-food joints that got going at sunset. Is this priceless legacy, the rural eatery, quietly fading out?
