And Correctional Home in the city has been taking orders for food

ollamo (is it good)?” asks Sujatha (name changed) as I try the soft idlis, tangy sambar and chutney on my plate. We are at the food unitandkitchen of the Women’s Prison and Correctional Home at Attakkulangara in the city. She is among the four prisoners working at the unit.

Prisons and correctional homes across the State have been selling food products prepared by the inmates under the brand, Food for Freedom.

The ageold structure, once the stables of the erstwhile

Travancore rulers in the mid19th Century, has 46 inmates at present.

“KThe food unit is a small room with minimal facilities. All that you see are two stoves, a refrigerator and cooking utensils, besides a shelf stacked with packets of banana chips, munthirikothu, pakkavada, madhuraseva, cookies, vettucake,

mixture, mango pickle and roasted groundnuts. “All snacks are made by these four women.

Idlis are sold from a counter near the prison entrance from 6am onwards and they get over by 10am. A packet, costing ₹35, has five idlis, sambar and chutney,” says Minimol PS, Superintendentincharge.

By 4.30am, the women get busy in the kitchen, clad in their uniform – long blouse and mundu

offwhite colour, a dark green apron and cap.

“They grind enough batter for two days at a time. At least 30 idli packets are kept for sale every day,” says Rakhi Raghavan, assistant superintendent. The unit has also been preparing food products on order. “On the day of Attukal Pongala, we had an order to prepare upma for 1,000 people. We also distributed free lunch for over 500 devotees on that day,” says Minimol.

Recently there was an order for 1,500 idlis and 500 ila ada from a church in the city. “We regularly supply evening snacks for the staff of a jewellery store at East Fort,” Rakhi says.

The snacks, besides being supplied via the counter at the jail till 7.30pm, are also sold through a counter inside the KSRTC bus terminal complex at Thampanoor and at the cafeteria on the premises of the Central Prison and Correctional Home at Poojappura.

Source of livelihood

“Getting a job is not easy for prisoners once they finish their sentence because of the societal stigma. That is why we rolled out a slew of training programmes to make them selfsufficient; food production is one of the important initiatives,” says Balram Kumar Upadhyay, DirectorGeneral of Prisons and Correctional Services.

Training in food processing is an ongoing activity because some convicts may get bail, some others parole, and some are released. “This year we have two projects – food processing and stitching/tailoring. Food processing classes are led by faculty members from Central Polytechnic, Vattiyoorkavu. It is a 60hour certificate course and 15 convicts are attending it. They are learning to make juice, cakes, fried rice and other dishes,” says Rekha K Nair, Welfare Officer.

Rekha points out that working in the food unit has brought about significant changes in the behaviour of the inmates.

“Initially they had sudden outbursts of anger and severe mood swings.But now they are so engaged in running the unit that they hardly have the time to get depressed,” says Rekha. They earn a daily wage of ₹127, which is transferred to their bank accounts.

Minimol observes that the food unit is currently working within a lot of limitations. “It would have been nice if we had a bigger room and more stoves. Also, if we had a vehicle, we could have delivered the food products to more places,” Minimol says.

saraswathy.nagarajan@thehindu.co.in

Contact 9446899548 or

0471- 2452781 to place orders. ho will say no to Mala Jogi?” Nimisha

Sajayan laughs as she asks the rhetorical question. Nimisha says director Richie Mehta is someone she has always wanted to work with. So, when he approached her to play the lead of Mala in the eightpart crime thriller Poacher, she did not have to think twice to say yes.

Her role as the tough, nononsense Mala, a Kerala Forest range officer, in Poacher is winning accolades.

The series is based on a reallife incident in the nineties when officers of the Forest Service busted an international ivory smuggling racket that targeted elephants in the Western Ghats.

“Mala is an amalgamation of three officers in the Indian Forest Service. I talked to one of them for more than an hour to understand how he interacts with his colleagues and his family,” says Nimisha, speaking on the phone from Mumbai.

“There was one question I asked him that helped me get under the skin of Mala. I asked him ‘Chetta, how do you react when you hear of such cases (of poaching)? Then he asked me ‘Nimisha, how would you react if something close to your heart is taken from you?’ I told him that I would

“Wand a variety of instruments in the mix.

New rhythm

be heartbroken. He told me that is how he feels when he hears about such cases. He told me ‘The jungle is my home’. That one sentence helped me understand him and how emotionally connected he is to the jungle.”

Nimisha has had a happening year in 2023 with the actor making her debut in Tamil and Hindi films and topping it with the multilingual

Poacher, streaming on Prime Video. Last seen in Malayalam in Dr. Biju’s

Adrishyajalakangal, Nimisha has been busy making a mark in Tamil cinema. SU Arun Kumar’s Siddarthstarrer

Chithha,was followed by Karthik Subbaraj’s Jigarthanda Double X.

On her long absence from Malayalam cinema, she says, “That is because I am exploring different characters. The characters I am getting in Tamil cinema and Mumbai are very different from what I have done so far.”

After the threefilm anthology Lantrani on Zee 5, next up for Nimisha is Dhaba Cartel, a Netflix web series, starring Nimisha with

Shabana Azmi and others. Although tightlipped about her character, she talks about her fan girl moment while acting with Shabana Azmi. “I got goosebumps. It was like a dream come true working with her. ”

Nimisha has much to look forward to in

2024.

“There is a Tamil project, one Bengali film and one British Indian project,

Footprints on Water.” she says. Jay Shah, vice president (cultural outreach), Mahindra Group, says that percussion has always been language agnostic and can be attributed to the sound of civilisation.

VG Jairam, founder, Hyperlink and the festival director, says that a sense of raw energy from contemporary musicians can be expected at the festival.

The Mahindra Percussion Festival, in association with The Hindu, is co-sponsored by Mahindra Finance, Paul John Visitor Centre and Carlsberg Smooth Soda and promoted and produced by Hyperlink Brand Solutions. Tickets are on bookmyshow.com