You often had them with lunch or dinner. Sometimes with chai or snacks. Sometimes in the middle of the night, when everyone was fast asleep you tiptoed across the kitchen and dug into the dabba containing fried papads from dinner.
Fry ‘em or roast ‘em, Lijjat papad which for long has been a staple diet of Indian households, turns 50. [BBC] (via Über Desi’s twitter)
She seems more agile and active than her grandchildren.
“I don’t want to stop working,” she says with youthful determination.
Mrs Popat is the only survivor of a group of semi-literate Gujarati housewives who founded Lijjat Papad 50 years ago.
She will be celebrating the Lijjat golden jubilee on 15 March with 45,000 other women who are part of the women-only co-operative.
The cool part about Lijjat papads, besides their scrumptiousness, is their history.
Mrs Popat says: “We were semi-literate which restricted our chances to get jobs. But we realised our papad-making expertise could be used to earn small amounts of money to help our husbands reduce their financial responsibility.”
On 15 March 1959, they gathered on the terrace of an old building in a crowded South Mumbai locality and rolled out four packets of papads to sell.
The “seven sisters”, as they are fondly remembered, started production with the princely sum of 80 rupees (now $1.50), borrowed from a good Samaritan, Chaganlal Karamsi Parekh, a social worker with entrepreneurial brains
Unlike similar social efforts, Lijjat’s success lies in the sustainability of its model. For one Lijjat has a whopping workforce of 45,000 and over $100 million in revenue. The all-women workforce consists of mostly rural, illiterate but skilled women. The skill – papad making – has enabled most of these women to become financially independent.
So here’s to you, Lijjat, the real papad. He he he, Lijjat Papad.
Loading ...