The idea of cooking a meal usually gets an office-goer’s brains cooked. Akhila Sundaram Iyer and her mother Meenakshi prevents such mishaps every day.
In a city which walks up casually to a woman bartender for a Cosmo or comes home in the midnight BPO car-drop discussing friends with female colleagues, boundaries of career choice are bound to be blurred, bastions shaky. DNA speaks to women who are trying out jobs once un-glam or unexplored.
Two for tiffin: The idea of cooking a meal usually gets an office-goer’s brains cooked. Akhila Sundaram Iyer and her mother Meenakshi prevents such mishaps every day.
The two work from their homes in Ghatkopar, making tiffin for employees and offering catering services at marriages and parties since the last 11 years. “We make both south and north Indian meals,” says Akhila, adding that they do not take orders for non-veg food since they are “pure” Iyer Brahmins.
A meal includes payasam, kakadi-pachdi (kakdi and dahi with coconut and jeera), cabbage bhaji, potato bhaji, aviyal, sambhar, rasam, pickle, curd or papad in a south Indian meal; puri, pulav, gulab jamun or paneer bhaji for a north Indian one. “People in the service industry don’t have much time these days to cook, and don’t have much space at home either. Our service thrives on such a lifestyle,” she adds.
In graphic detail: When her fierce career needs blended with the sensibilities of her conservative Gujarati family like mashed peas in oondhyo, she knew she had got it right.
Ending the late shifts at the media company she was working for, 24-year-old graphic designer Poonam Botadra has started out on her own. After finishing her bachelors in fine arts from the JJ Institute, a couple of animation courses and a job stint, she started Poonam Design three months ago.
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