Kadakkavoor in Thiruvananthapuram is home to a four-decade-old family-run halwa business
The Hindu
broken wheat halwa made by a family in kadakkavoor in thiruvananthapuram has many takers
Does Thiruvananthapuram have a signature halwa? Yes, it has. It was a social media post that took me to Kadakkavoor, nearly a one-hour drive from the city, where a family has been making and selling homemade halwa for over four decades now.
At Chekkalavilakom junction, behind the now-defunct Kadakkavoor market, is Sheeja Nivas, where Shibu Sudevan is carrying forward the legacy of the halwa business started by his maternal grandfather, Gopalan Natarajan.
With a huge ladle, two men are taking turns to stir the halwa in an uruli (huge brass vessel) when we reach Halwa Veedu, as Shibu calls it now. “This is the first batch of the day. Usually, we start by 5am and it takes at least five hours to get the halwa in the right consistency. Today, we are running late. Once we take this out, we will start preparing the second batch,” says Shibu.
Gopalan, who ran a hotel and had a catering business, used to prepare this halwa for functions, including weddings. When he passed away, his wife, Premalatha Natarajan, and their daughter, Sheeja Sudevan, took over. “It was difficult to continue the catering business and so we decided to concentrate on the halwa. That was in 1995,” says Premalatha. In 2013, her younger son, Shajan, took over. A few months ago, he moved on to start a separate halwa outlet. That is when Shibu, the elder one, who was working in Dubai, came back to run the business.
“I have been watching my grandfather at work since I was 12 and I couldn’t just let it go. That’s why I decided to return home and keep the business afloat,” says the 46-year-old Shibu.
The halwa has two variants — the dark chocolate-coloured halwa with jaggery and the light brown variety with white sugar. The rest of the ingredients are the same — broken wheat, rice flour, cashew nuts, ghee, oil and cardamom. “There is no refined flour, which is commonly used to make halwa,” he explains.
Broken wheat is soaked for two hours in the evening. Then it is ground well and strained to get the milk, which is kept aside for six hours. “It is then mixed with rice flour and sugar or jaggery syrup and cooked in the uruli. We keep stirring it without a break to prevent it from sticking to the bottom of the uruli. Coconut oil, ghee and nuts are added at different stages of the preparation. Cardamom is added just before it is taken off the stove,” Shibu explains.
Pakistan coach Gary Kirsten stated that “not so great decision making” contributed to his side’s defeat to India in the Group-A T20 World Cup clash here on Sunday. The batting unit came apart in the chase, after being well placed at 72 for two. With 48 runs needed from eight overs, Pakistan found a way to panic and lose. “Maybe not so great decision making,” Kirsten said at the post-match press conference, when asked to explain the loss.
“We are judges and therefore, cannot act like Mughals of a bygone era ... the writ courts in the guise of doing justice cannot transcend the barriers of law,” the High Court of Karnataka observed while setting aside an order of a single judge, who in 2016 had extended the lease of a public premises allotted to a physically challenged person to 20 years contrary to 12-year period stipulated in the law.