At Manapatty, a village in Tamil Nadu, almost everyone is a wedding cook

A lone man is taking a nap under a tree in the deserted village square of Manapatty in Melur taluk, Madurai. He wakes up, rubbing his eyes, to introduce himself: Kalyana Sundaram, a wedding cook. It is a little past 8am when we arrive at this village, which is considered southern Tamil Nadu’s headquarters for wedding caterers.

A man stops by on his way to the bus stop: he too is a cook. Another young man, S Bala Murali, pulls over on his bike: he has worked for several masters and his father is a master himself. Soon, we realise every other person we meet in the village is either a master with his own army of cooks, or is a cook with several decades of experience.

“Last minute family wedding in the works? All you need to do is visit our village to arrange a team to take care of the cooking,” says Bala Murali. “There will be one master or the other here who can help.” Cooks from Manapatty travel across the State to prepare mammoth feasts for functions through the year. They are sought-after for their mutton biryani and mutton nei chukka, a dish of slow-cooked meat with a smattering of crushed ginger, garlic, red chillies, and plenty of gingelly oil.

Cooking is entwined in the psyche of the inhabitants of Manapatty. “In India, especially Tamil Nadu, it is common practice for people from rural districts to shift to bigger cities for better work opportunities when crops fail them,” says M Balasundhar, the son of P Murugesan, among the most reputed names in the field from the village. “But our people took to cooking instead.”

In the 1960s, a great drought hit the region. Rains failed them repeatedly and their lands turned dry. A man arrived on a bicycle from nearby Melur one morning, shirtless and pot-bellied, dressed in just a lungi. Vairavan, a wedding cook, was looking for extra hands. A handful of men from Manapatty, more than happy to have found work, volunteered to join him.

Among them, was Murugesan’s father Periya Panayan, better known as Thondhi, Mandayan, Ayyan Kaalai, and Sellaiyya. “Vairavan was the guru who initiated our ancestors into cooking,” recalls Murugesan, seated at a table near the wood-fired kitchen of his company MS Caterers’ unit in Madurai’s Pandi Kovil neighbourhood.

“He taught them the nuances, and each of them eventually started their own catering business, training more men in turn,” says the 56-year-old. The village, home to 650 families, has over 25 masters, with most inhabitants related to cooking in some form or the other. Murugesan has been in the field from the time he finished school. His catering company MS Caterers has cooked at weddings across Tamil Nadu, in places such as Madurai, Theni, Chennai, Coimbatore, Tiruchi, Sivaganga, Thanjavur, Ramanathapuram and Dindigul. They have even travelled to the Andamans and Singapore on cooking assignments.

Their largest feast was for 40,000 people at a political gathering and he has cooked for several such events. “We once cooked at a wedding reception at the Guindy Race Course for 2,500 people,” he recalls, adding that around 120 people travelled to Chennai for the event. His company also cooked for 4,000 people at MGR’s birth centenary celebrations in Chennai.

A typical Manapatty non-vegetarian feast, apart from the biryani and chukka, consists of chicken kootu varuval, kudal kulambu, elumbu kulambu, rice, rasam, buttermilk, and the sticky chinna vengaya oorga, a Madurai wedding staple.

Balasundhar, an engineer by education, has opened a take-away outlet in Madurai called Manapatty Biriyani serving biryani and their signature chukka, and is using social media to establish their brand @manapatty_biriyani. He hopes to bring all the cooks in the village together to form a collective and standardise recipes to establish Manapatty biryani’s name. Balasundhar offers us a serving of the dish to try: it is mild, fragrant, and is different from the Dindigul variation since it is comparatively less spicy and richer in flavour.

“Our masters never follow written-down measurements,” he says, pointing out how his father goes by measurements by hand. To take things to the next level, Balasundhar feels their recipes have to be documented down to the finest details. Their chinna vengaya oorga, for instance, a dish of finely chopped shallots, slow-cooked in plenty of oil and tamarind water, is so time-consuming that only a Manapatty cook knows the exact moment it has to be removed from the fire.

While Manapatty is home to skilled cooks, Balasundhar points out that masters hire people from 18 surrounding villages such as Palkudi, Vallalapatty, and Kailampatty for tasks such as chopping vegetables and serving guests. Catering is a seasonal business. “Which is why in our village, farmers work as cooks at functions during weekends, and will go back to tending to their crops on weekdays,” says the 27-year-old, adding that most women in their village are not part of the cooking business.

Usually, when a catering team gets a wedding order, they provide a list of ingredients required. “We also offer the option of doing everything end to end, including sourcing ingredients, and charge ₹650 onwards per plate,” explains Balasundhar. The cooking happens over wood-fired stoves in gigantic pans, and preparations start the previous evening. Murugesan explains that to cook for 1,000 people, he requires a team of 40.

“I can cook for 500 people just like that,” says A Balakrishnan, who is preparing to leave for a cooking assignment at Melur. “All I need is a handful of my men from Manapatty,” he adds. The 61-year-old is happiest when he is standing in front of a large iron vatta, a wide pan, stirring its contents with a ladle double the size of his arms.

V Ramaiya, a retired headmaster from the village, remembers seeing Vairavan during his younger years. “He was quite the character,” says the 82-year-old. Vairavan would simply sniff a dish bubbling on the stove to identify if it needed more salt or spice. He also had a flamboyant female assistant. Balakrishnan recalls how she would light a fire and fling an empty vatta over it from a distance. “It would make a perfect landing every time,” he chuckles. “I don’t know how she did it.”

Published – June 19, 2025 01:17 pm IST