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.
Premalatha recalls that her father had learnt this preparation from Thirunelveli, famous for its halwa.
Fifty to 100 kilograms of halwa is prepared daily. “It does not have a long shelf life like the one made with refined flour. It will stay fresh without refrigeration for three days. However, it becomes hard as the days go by,” Shibu says.
During festival seasons, especially Onam, at least 1,000 kilograms of halwa are made and the men work in multiple shifts to meet the demand.
Regular orders come from those travelling to West Asia, or from families in and around Kadakkavoor and the nearby Anchuthengu village. “There has been a dent in the orders for weddings over the years because caterers prefer to serve ice creams or cakes or other desserts to halwa,” says Shibu.
While the jaggery-based halwa costs ₹180 per kilogram, the sugar-based one is priced ₹170 for a kilogram. It will be delivered across Kerala. Contact: 7025000425, 7306653872
