These days, when 75-year-old Chithra Viswanathan goes to Marina Beach for a walk, people stop her. They pause and look at her like they’ve seen her somewhere. And then, they recognise her as the ‘Internet maami’, a sobriquet she’s quite at ease with now.
A few of these co-walkers — regulars at the beach — are friends now. But that’s just a handful. When she logs on to Facebook, she has more than 1,200 friends. “I do not usually accept anyone as a friend unless we have many mutual friends,” she says, adjusting her glasses and skilfully sifting through the numerous windows on her iPad.
She’s 75 and lives alone in Mylapore but this overtly confident use of technology, which you’d normally associate with youngsters, has helped her showcase her passion, cooking, on a global platform.
If Meenakshi Ammal brought out the revolutionary Samaithu Par , a cookbook in Tamil, more than half a century ago, Chithra uses technology to help people all over the world. Her mobile phone application, called AskChitVish Premium, which was launched a few years ago, already has 2,300 recipes and 200 more waiting to be uploaded.
She always had a passion for dishing out new stuff from the kitchen for her grandchildren. But it was about a decade ago when, the Internet boom had just started and she was getting familiar with the computer, that she noticed a query on a website for the recipe of ‘poosanika kootu’. “It was unanswered for three days,” she recalls, “I just took it upon myself to answer it and give her the right recipe.”
There was no looking back after that — she started writing a cookery column for Indusladies.com that had a huge traction among Indians settled abroad. She cooked, she blogged, she wrote and she shared her experience online.
‘Chitvish’ soon became a hit. So much so that she had ‘fans’ across the world. One of them — a 45-year-old woman from Atlanta — actually came down to Chennai just to meet her. “She had been following my recipes,” says Chithra, “When she came to India, she made it a point to come to Chennai especially to see me. I was a little hesitant and clearly told her that I was no fancy chef but just a housewife. It was special to have someone come all the way just for me.”
Her everyday routine begins quite early, just like any other homemaker, but there’s a key difference. When she enters the kitchen, she’s armed with an iPad and her Samsung Galaxy — to take notes and pictures of what she does. “If I see something different on TV, I immediately try it out,” she says, “I never post any recipe online without trying it.”
Baking is very close to her heart as well. “I’m very passionate and experiment more with breads than cakes,” she says. It’s not a new-found passion but one that she started indulging in quite a while ago. “It was in 1967,” she says, “I saw an ad for a baking course in the Polytechnic Institute, Taramani, and immediately went for it with a few friends. It was perhaps the first course for baking in the city. The instructors taught us well and we were fascinated by the concept.”
Another concept that’s caught her attention of late is fusion cooking. She’s tried out Au gratin dosa and Punjabi pesto pizza, besides others . “It helps people try out new things,” she says, “The most exciting part is to add your own touch to a tried and tested recipe. For instance, in dishes that need eggs and ingredients that aren’t available here, I look for an alternative.”
Chithra doesn’t eat out, but doesn’t mind heading out once a while to check out what’s new and in. “Why do we like eating out?” she asks, “Not just for the taste but also the way the food is presented. I believe that we eat with our eyes — it’s important to dress up what you’ve made.”
When a friend or neighbour makes a sarcastic comment about cooking, it upsets her. “It (cooking) is very creative,” says Chitra, who credits her late husband, Viswanathan for encouraging her a lot, “That’s not all… there’s a science behind it. Cooking is about how much you add and in what quantities. A little more or a little less makes all the difference.”
A few years down the line, she hopes to come up with more innovative recipes. But not all of them are saved on her computer and iPad. “They keep crashing…can’t trust them too much,” she says nonchalantly, “I prefer storing them all on Cloud.” For this 75-year-old, the sky’s the limit.
