It is therapeutic to watch M G Vedhavathi make aappams. She ladles caramel-coloured batter onto a hot iron skillet that hisses as it gets to work. Dollops of white butter come next: she drops small scoops onto the aappam, that has now turned a mild brown, folds it with a steel dosa turner and serves it on a plastic plate. Butter karupatti aappam is served. She will break an egg on it if you like, or add ghee if you prefer it over butter. The aappam is soft, almost like gauze, and is fragrant of karupatti and jaggery. When we stop by her stall opposite to the Sourashtra Boys Higher Secondary School on Kamarajar Salai in the city one Sunday morning, we lose track of the number of aappams we polish off.
Vedhavathi has been selling aappams for 12 years from the same place, and her spot is popular on social media as ‘Akka kadai’. Madurai is known for early morning streetside aappam and puttu, and Vedhavathi took after her grandmother who sold the dish in front of her home in Villapuram, four decades ago. S Vardhani was a wedding cook, and when she didn’t have orders, she sold aapams.
“She would offer me the first aappam when she set up her stall at 5.30 am,” recalls the 48-year-old, adding with a laugh, “But nothing more. For grandmother, business came first.” Vedhavathi remembers spending hours seated next to her grandmother, watching her swirl her clay aappam skillet to spread the batter. When Vedhavathi looked for ways to earn a decent living — she is from a family of weavers — she decided to follow her grandmother’s business idea.
She now takes orders for weddings, sometimes setting up live counters at the venue. She sells from 6.30am to 9.30am, and on Sundays, till 10.30am. Vedhavathi makes the batter every day, and says that she adds karupatti and jaggery in equal proportions. She also sells kara paniyarams with coconut chutney from her home in the same neighbourhood in the evenings.
Now that she in on YouTube, Vedhavathi has customers coming in search of her from as far as Chennai. “Grandmother made much better aappams,” she recalls. “She used only karupatti to sweeten them, and no matter how hard I try, I know I can never get there.”
