Purushothama Pai, one of the four founding brothers of the acclaimed Kochi-based eatery chain, Pai Dosa, died at the Medical Trust Hospital of cardiac arrest here on Friday around 5 a.m. He was 76.
He was suffering from breathlessness-related complications following which he was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday night. The body was cremated at the funeral ground for the Konkani community in Pulleppady in the evening.
Purushothama Pai, along with his mother Manikyam, was instrumental in the brothers starting an eatery exclusively for dosas. In fact, their loss of the right to operate the canteen at the Cooperative Hospital, now the Indira Gandhi Cooperative Hospital, had forced them into the business, with which they struck gold, said Sudhakara Prabhu, a relative.
They started their first shop by offering 36 different varieties of dosas on M.G. Road in 1987. People identified their shop by their surname and the name Pai Dosa stuck. “When they introduced egg dosa, it was a fusion of sorts of a vegetarian food and a non-vegetarian dish, which was a rare innovation back then,” said Mr. Prabhu,
From 36, the number of their dosa variants has now soared to 180, including the ones named after their late mother - Ruby Dosa (ruby being the English for Manikyam) - and every new born in their extended families since then. Apart from their first shop on M.G. Road, there are now two more shops at Kadavanthra and Edappally looked after by the children and grandchildren of the four brothers. They ran a similar eatery at Karama in Dubai for about a year. Only Sivananda Pai, the youngest of the four brothers, is alive now. The eldest brother, Narasimha Pai, and the third brother, Anantha Pai, passed away earlier.
The deceased is survived by his wife Geetha and sons Pradeep P. Pai and Dileep P. Pai and their families.
