I closed the account book and sat still for a long while. Darkness had begun to settle in the room, but I didn't feel like turning on the light. A friend's words from the day before echoed in my ears again — "Enough. Why don't you stop now?" For a moment, I felt they might be right.
That was when a smell came rushing back into my memory from somewhere — oil, chilli heat and tang woven together, a taste I still crave. A small bottle of kannimanga pickle, handed to me by a neighbour years ago.
That memory carried me back across the years.
The Kannimanga Pickle I Never Stopped Craving
A new house. Days that felt like the beginning of a new life. Between arranging things and welcoming relatives, the days simply passed. When the rush finally settled, I felt I should get to know the neighbours I would now be living alongside. I went from house to house, and eventually arrived at Santi's.
It wasn't just an introduction. I sat down thinking I'd stay two minutes, and got up hours later. Once we began talking about food and kitchens, the words simply wouldn't stop flowing.
As I was leaving, Santi placed a small bottle in my hand. "I only made it yesterday... you can open it after two days."
She had asked me to wait two days. But every time that bottle caught my eye in the kitchen, it tested my patience a little more. In the end, I opened it the very next day. The moment I saw the red of the kannimanga pieces and the oil glistening on top, my mouth watered. When the smell reached me, my mind ran off to some childhood kitchen — a taste I thought I had forgotten. I only meant to try one small piece. But the heat touched my tongue first, then the tang right behind it, and finally the softness of the oil — everything in harmony, like music. I never noticed the spoon going back into the bottle again and again. When I looked, the bottle was empty.
Until then I had carried a quiet belief — that no one could outdo me at making pickle. It wasn't simple arrogance; it was an identity I had built over years of work. That single bottle of Santi's brought it down in a moment. But there was no hurt in it — only a craving to know such a gifted hand more closely.
I walked straight over to Santi. "How did you make this pickle? It tasted wonderful." She smiled for a moment, then slowly began to tell me — the story of a little girl beside her mother, standing at a vessel taller than she could reach, trying to stir with a ladle too big for her hands. Hers was a family that had cooked for a large math nearby for years. Pickles, vadukapuli, chammanthi podi — she never had to learn them. They had settled into her through watching and doing.
The Beginning
Over the years our friendship deepened. As happens in any group of friends, the idea of "why don't we start something of our own?" came up between us many times, but nothing ever took hold. I never imagined it would take hold because of something so small.
It had been two months since Santi went to her mother's house. The pickle she had given me was long finished. I felt its absence at every meal. I tried many times, but I couldn't get that taste. Every time I called her and asked "when are you coming back?", the truth is there was also a craving for a bottle of pickle behind that question.
That was when a question suddenly rose inside me — "So why don't we start a pickle business ourselves?"
The moment that thought took hold, a small hesitation came with it. No business background. No family money behind us. Accounts, licences, markets — none of it was a world we knew. "Two ordinary women" wasn't just a description back then; it was a challenge.
Even so, I was certain about one thing — Santi's gifted hands. Everything else could be learned, but that taste could never be taught to anyone.
I called Santi without delay and told her everything on my mind. She was in the moment she heard it — with more certainty than I had. Knowing I wasn't alone was enough to shrink every other doubt.
With a small amount of savings and some money borrowed from friends, we began. We gave the first few bottles away to people we knew, with a single request — "taste it and tell us honestly what you think." The words that came back were better than we expected.
Then one day, someone called and asked — "Can I buy this?" Someone was willing to pay for something we had made. We put down that phone and said nothing for a long while.
The Craving in the Name
When we felt we needed a proper label, we thought about a name. What came to mind first was that old feeling — the craving that tested my patience while Santi's bottle sat in my kitchen. Every time someone opened a bottle, they should feel that same craving. That was what we wanted.
When we asked our regular buyers to suggest names, the one that filtered through was exactly that — 'Kothi'. The very word we had been carrying inside us, they handed back to us.
When we applied for the trademark, that name wasn't available. That is how 'Nadan Kothi' was born — a craving that began with one bottle of pickle finally had a name and a label.
Closed Doors
We learned very quickly that making pickle at home and selling it in shops are two different things.
We packed the morning's pickle into boxes and went from shop to shop in the afternoon sun. The same sight in every shop — shelves full of big brands that had stood there for years. Many didn't even glance at the box in our hands before saying: "We already have other pickles here."
Some would taste it, nod, say "it's good." Then in the same breath, "but a new brand won't sell here." The taste was never the problem. The problem was that we were nobody.
Walking back in the evening carrying the same weight we had left with, we didn't talk much. There were days we couldn't get into a single shop. And still, the next morning we lit the stove again and filled the boxes again.
Slowly, some doors opened. One shop, then two, then a few more. People who had bought once began calling back. "It's finished, we need more" — those calls grew. In between, bank accounts, licences, legal paperwork — a world we had no experience of, handled with half-knowledge.
And so, two years. Good sales, returning customers, growing orders. We believed we were winning.
One day we sat down to add up the accounts properly. We added and subtracted, checked again and again. Every time, the same answer.
A loss of over three lakh rupees.
Two years of work. A stove that never went cold for a single day. All those shops walked to. And at the end of it all, what remained was a loss.
Everyone who heard said the same thing. "Enough. Why don't you stop now?" The people who said it weren't enemies — they were the people who loved us. That is exactly why those words hurt the most.
That night I couldn't sleep. Had I been fooling myself all this time? Had I simply thrown away my family's money and my friends' trust? For a moment, I felt they might be right.
Something That Can Be Learned
The next morning I called Santi. There was sleeplessness in her voice too. For a long while neither of us said anything. Then she said: "Let's try again. I can't stop now."
Then one thing became clear to me. It wasn't that we had no customers. It wasn't that we had no orders. There was nothing wrong with the taste. We knew how to make it — we didn't know how to run a business. That was all. And that was a relief, because that is something that can be learned.
"Where did we go wrong?" — with that single question, we began again. Days in the kitchen, evenings at the government's industry classes.
It was there that we found the answer for the first time — all this while, we had been calculating the price of a bottle by looking only at the cost of the ingredients. Packaging, travel, electricity, wastage, and above all our own labour — we had put no value on any of it. The reason we kept selling and kept losing money was sitting right there.
Then we learned one thing after another. We learned the legal work by doing it ourselves. We built connections with people in the field. We stopped hesitating to ask. We recalculated the real cost of every product.
Finally, with a bank loan, we made one more decision — we had to move out of the home kitchen. Our own small production unit, with proper hygiene protocols.
This time, when we set out, we were carrying more than just pickle.
Today
More than two lakh bottles have now reached more than ten thousand homes. We were chosen as one of the best stalls at the "Ente Keralam" fair. But the greatest joy isn't in those numbers — it's that when a bottle runs out, someone calls us again.
That evening, sitting in the dark with the account book, what held me back from stopping was the memory of one small bottle of pickle. Perhaps you carry a taste like that too — something your mother made, something your grandmother taught. That craving is this brand's name, and its life.
Our promise is that every bottle will be filled with the same love and purity that first bottle held — today and always. With heartfelt gratitude to every one of you who stood by us faithfully. ❤️