Janjivan Bureau / New Delhi : The world is full of chefs who are superstars. They have their own special recipes, are paid very well, run blogs with lakhs of subscribers. None of them is likely to be 106 years old.
Karre Mastanamma knows just one skill, really. It became a trade last year. Cooking. She loves it, and is making a living out of it. In the process, she has also become probably the world’s oldest and most popular YouTube star.
But first cooking. Laxman is Mastanamma’s grandson. Along with his friend Srikanth, they opened a shop in Guntur, where Mastanamma hails from. And is it doing well? Indeed yes. Her scrambled eggs in Andhra style, very hot, very soft, and very good, draws lines of people to her shop. Everything is cooked in wood fire and dry leaves. Mastanamma believes that cooking in the open air, next to the paddy fields, gives food a special flavour.
Lakshman and Srikanth had been looking for an idea whose time had come. Before it was gone, they had to capitalize on it. Last year, they decided there was a market for food. Their target audience was the typical, young, Indian bachelor, whose idea of great food is Maggi noodles, mixed with whatever is at hand, and some cheese grated into it.
Because the internet was a part of everybody’s life, they started a show, Country Foods for Bachelors. They rummaged through their memory, spoke to their relatives and friends and rustled up some simple recipes. But there were not too many takers. Besides, the two young men had soon run out of ideas.
The two idled around a while hoping for the best. The best did not befall. They took a break and went to Laxman’s village home in Guntur District in Andhra Pradesh. And there they saw Mastanamma doing her favourite thing, visibly enjoying it. Srikanth is quoted as saying: “We saw granny cooking traditional food with such ease at such an old age.”
They did not, of course, stop at watching Mastanamma making food. They also ate it. And found it better than anything they had anywhere.
The idea then must have struck them almost at the same time: they were watching a star at work. The two made a couple of videos of Mastanamma bringing to life stuff you couldn’t have enough of over coal fire. They uploaded these on YouTube.
The response according to them was “brilliant.” The comments and reactions of viewers poured in. Most of them seemed to have tested out the prescribed formula and found it worked for them. Laxman and Srikanth sensed a business opportunity. They made more videos.
And now she has over five lakh subscribers and is possibly the oldest YouTube star.
Before her rather late switch in career, Mastanamma was a daily wage labourer in paddy fields. It just means no matter what the welfare schemes of the government, Mastanamma was earning her keep, and not being ‘drag on the economy’, as supply side pundits might phrase.
A blog, The Better India, reports that Mastanamma was married at the age of 11, to a man named Bhushanam and that she was widowed at 22. By this time, she had become the mother of five children, and to bring them up, Mastanamma became a daily wage labourer. Then tragedy struck again. In a cholera outbreak, four of her children died. The one that survived lost his vision. It is a measure of how brave a person Mastanamma is that she continued with her life, emotionally and financially still determined not to be dependent on anyone.
The blog quotes her as saying in a video: “My husband was a nice man. I miss him sometimes. At his deathbed, I asked him: How will I survive alone with our five children? He held my hand and said, you are a very intelligent and strong woman. You will survive.”
And so she has. Her first video was on how to make Andhra style eggplant curry, and it went viral. It would not be entirely wrong to assume that in the local markets eggplant for a while must have been much in demand. So far her “watermelon chicken”, an item that serves you chicken roasted in a watermelon shell has drawn the most number of viewers. Her other popular dishes include chicken biryani cooked in smoked bamboo, curries made with lamb intestines, lamb head and beef paya (the last of which is still possible in a few states like Andhra and Kerala ).
Mastanamma’s video style is engaging. Mastanamma talks to herself and to the viewers without the least self-consciousness as she cooks, and throws in the spice like some magic ritual which it is, because what comes out is more than the sum of its parts. She is assisted by her granddaughter. And for a good reason: Mastanamma has cataract in both eyes.
If India must have a goodwill ambassador, it has got a great one in Mastanamma, from Gudiwada.
