Occupation: Server
As the wedding season is in full swing in Kerala, I have been on my feet till late afternoon serving sadya to hungry guests. There’s an order to serving a typical Thiruvananthapuram-style sadya on a leaf. Banana chips, sharkara varatti, and pappadam are the first items that go on the leaf- in its left corner. Then goes inji curry, followed by lemon pickle, mango pickle, chammanthi, pachadi, kichadi, madhura curry, thoran, avial, koottu curry, theeyal and olan, clockwise, in that order. Finally, rice is served with parippu. Rice is again served, this time with sambar. The payasams follow; ada, kadala, and boli with palpayasam, in that order. We finish off with pulissery, rasam and moru.
My father was a Naik in the army and I have lived all over the country. I completed my schooling at Kendriya Vidyalaya, Pattom, and I fell into this job when I was at a loose end. I am 46 now and have been working as a server for the past 16 years. I am now the captain of a crew of servers and work for a handful of catering companies, primarily for Ameen Caterers in Nanthancode. Ideally, each crew comprises 40 servers for every 1,000 diners. Many of my crew are students and several hold undergraduate and post-graduate degrees. We also have on our rosters engineers, policemen, firemen, taxi drivers... all of whom come to help us out whenever they get free time. It’s an easy way to make a quick buck, you see. Three to five hours of work in the morning usually nets a server Rs. 450. If it’s lunch service, it’s Rs.500 and the evening service, Rs.650. That’s a pay cheque three times a day, plus free food!
Ladling out food, however, is not an easy task. It requires a certain knack, the cardinal rule of which is not to let the spoon touch the plate/hand of the diners. The portions must also be uniform. For example, while serving chicken curry or mutton curry in a buffet, we try to include two pieces in every portion. The turn around rate for a sadya, meanwhile, is 20 minutes per panthi (batch), which means we have to get some 500 meals set and ready to go in that time frame. It must all go like clockwork.
I live in Nanthancode, which, incidentally has a culinary tradition that is said to go back decades. A number of cooks, caterers and servers employed by the royal family of erstwhile Travancore used to live in this area in the olden days. The tradition continues even now; just about every catering/serving crew in the city will have at least one member from this locality.
I have two sons, Ebin, a commerce student, and Alan, a student of class nine. My job gives me a good living but I don’t want my children to follow in my footsteps, because at the end of the day a server is a server, however much you whitewash the title with fancy uniforms and top-notch food. I’d rather my sons study and get themselves white collar jobs.
(A weekly column on the men and women who make Thiruvananthapuram what it is)
