The circle of life

Srinivasa Ramanujam meets Uma, 42, who has been making adhirasams at The Grand Sweets and Snacks for 23 years now.

On a sweet note: Uma K. arranges the adhirasams at The Grand Sweets and Snacks Photo: M. Moorthy

There’s a heated contest going on inside a busy, sultry factory off OMR. Six ladies are feverishly trying to dish up some appetising adhirasams . Speed is essential — Deepavali orders are galore — but taste is the priority.

Not far away, six other ladies are busy with kai murukkus, another ‘hot-seller’ this season.

The

adhirasam team is faster and wins the contest. They’re headed by Uma K., who has been part of the sweet business for more than two decades now.

“I hadn’t cooked a single

adhirasam in my life,” reveals Uma, when she was recruited to The Grand Sweets and Snacks in Adyar 23 years ago. “I learnt it from a maami and did quite a good job.”

Today, her life is full of adhirasams . Almost 8,000 pieces of them every single day during festival time. “The days leading to Deepavali are the most hectic for us,” she explains. “We have to work extra hours — but the owners ensure that we are taken care of and dropped back home.”

Growing up in a small village called Murungai near Arakkonam, Uma came to Chennai with a lot of dreams. “The city was very different when I came,” she recalls, her voice nostalgic. “It was due to my work in the factory that I got exposure to the outside world and to different kinds of people.”

They include her current team — of six members — who she has to supervise and manage. Is it a tough job? “It has its challenges, but I’m used to it now,” she says. “If any of them has a complaint, I’ll have to take it up with my superiors.” The factory, she says, operates much like a corporate set-up, except that the teams aren’t human resources, finance and administration. They’re murukku , marundhu and thattais !

Many employees have come and gone but Uma has remained — through tough times — at this sweet shop that’s a household name in Chennai. With her husband passing away a few years ago, it was upto her to support her only daughter, who’s now in college, financially. “She’ll grow up to be an accountant someday,” Uma says hopefully.

But that’ll be sometime in the future. For now, Uma’s aim is to churn out adhirasams by the dozen so that her owners meet the crazy orders lining up. “From experience, I can tell when it has turned out well,” she states matter-of-factly.

That’s quite an achievement as making the perfect adhirasam is a dream. Tell her that and she says shyly, “You can practise. Once you keep making them for festive occasions, you can get the hang of it even if you are an amateur when it comes to cooking.”

What was her most memorable Deepavali, we ask her. “Well, it was my ‘ thala Deepavali’,” she replies immediately, “I came to the factory and was working on my adhirasams then too!”