Former TRS vice-president R. Umadevi has turned to cooking to spread awareness on Telangana cuisine. Her cookery show, Telangana Shakam, which airs on V6, is a big hit.
“I never thought that I would start a cookery show. I cook whatever I eat regularly at home, and there is nothing new that I invent. It’s the age-old practices, and the dishes that I learnt from my grandmother and my mother,” says Umadevi, who was a senior assistant with the department of Aviation before she joined the TRS.
“When K. Chandrashekar Rao was forming a political party to demand a separate state, I decided to join the party to do my bit. Since I can’t handle both work and political commitments, I resigned from my job.
“While working too, I was the chairperson of the Women’s Wing, so I used to approach KCR with the problems that employees who hail from Telangana face. He later suggested that I join the party,” she says. Umadevi joined as the state general secretary in 2004 and was later appointed as the party’s vice-president.
Coming back to the cookery show, Umadevi says, “I started the cookery show because I wanted people to know more about Telangana cuisine. But the idea came when a certain minister from Andhra Pradesh said that the dishes we eat today in Telangana Sate were in fact part of Andhra cuisine. So I wanted to show them the flavour of Telangana and how many dishes one can cook. I started the show in 2014,” she says adding,
“I have cooked almost all the dishes on my show including pappu, pachi pulusu, sarva pindi (popular evening snacks), biyampindi atlu, mokkajonna garelu and pala padiyam to name a few.” Umadevi doesn’t charge a penny for the show.
“If it’s related to Telangana, I don’t want to extract money for my services. I left my job and decided to serve my state, so money is not important here,” she adds.
“I get a lot of feedback for my show. Sometimes people stop me at public places and ask me about doubts they have regarding recipes, a few even call from abroad to convey how much they like my show and how much they learn from it. Recently a cop, too, recognised me and appreciated my show,” she adds.
