Meet G. Thavalingam, Coimbatore’s jow mittai man He is among the last few sellers of the popular candy in Tamil Nadu.
How is jow mittai made?
The first step in making jow mittai is boiling the sugar syrup. Thavalingam adds 1.25 kilograms of sugar, two tumblers of water, and the juice of two lemons into an aluminium container.
He gives this a good stir and places the mixture on a stove and lets it simmer for 20 minutes to half an hour.
Once the syrup is thick to the consistency of honey, he pinches a little to test it by rolling it into a pea-sized ball.
Thavalingam tips it onto a plate greased with groundnut oil and lets it cool. He then stretches it repeatedly, pulling it like elastic, until it becomes a pearl-white rubbery mass.
He then shapes it into a gigantic rectangle. He takes a little of this candy, adds pink food colour, and makes a long strip of pink candy that he sticks in between the white one.
Thavalingam says jow mittai has its origins in Mumbai. The late Kannuchamy from Coimbatore was also the first to learn the craft.
Thavalingam adds that most jow mittai makers in the city follow Kannuchamy’s methods.
Apart from the colour and taste, an attractive feature of the jow mittai is that it comes in various shapes and sizes.
Another variant of the jow mittai is hard and solid, cut into small cubes of pink, yellow and deep brown sold in cane baskets with a typical kerosene lamp, by road-side vendors.
And jow mittai squares in plastic wrappers are also sold at shops.
After two years of unpredictability due to the pandemic, several men who sold the candy have either retired or moved on to other jobs.
But that hasn’t stopped Thavalingam from continuing to do what he is best known for
