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Thursday, July 10, 2025

kfChulha sales hot for Shanti in COVID-19

by

CHARLES KONG SOO
1805 days ago
20200801

Shan­ti Ram­samooj, 54, a moth­er of four and grand­moth­er of eight from La Brea Trace, Siparia, can be seen on her daugh­ter's Face­book page bon­jay­ing a large pot of cur­ry crab on a chul­ha she made.

In this fast-paced, tech­no­log­i­cal world of gas and elec­tric stoves, mi­crowaves and in­duc­tion cook­ers that are a part of mod­ern life and con­ve­nience, many peo­ple say that food cooked on the hum­ble, tra­di­tion­al chul­ha or clay fire­side stove is the most de­li­cious and im­parts that spe­cial taste and tex­ture that present-day cook­ing ap­pli­ances can­not du­pli­cate.

Once com­mon­place in East In­di­an fam­i­lies' kitchens from our grand­par­ents' time go­ing back to In­den­ture­ship, the chul­ha can still be found in sev­er­al peo­ple's back­yards for sen­ti­men­tal and tra­di­tion­al rea­sons as well and al­so at riv­er limes for the cus­tom­ary cur­ry duck cook up.

The chul­ha is al­so emerg­ing as an emer­gency back­up stove and oven for when the elec­tric­i­ty goes, nat­ur­al dis­as­ters like storms and floods, when you run out of LPG, the sup­ply is dis­rupt­ed or you lost your job and can't buy fu­el.

The fu­el is "free" from moth­er na­ture, easy to find, safer to store and wouldn't break down like gas and liq­uid fu­els. You can gath­er pieces of wood, tree branch­es, twigs, char­coal and dried co­conut shells from out­doors, add lighter fu­el and you can start the fire.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has caused many busi­ness­es, large and small, to col­lapse.

With no in­come com­ing in from her snack sales to school chil­dren since March 13 when schools were closed in an ef­fort by the Gov­ern­ment to con­tain the coro­n­avirus, Ram­samooj had to in­no­vate or evap­o­rate. She had to find a way to pay her in­creas­ing bills and feed her fam­i­ly.

Her eco­nom­ic sal­va­tion came from some­thing that she was fa­mil­iar with grow­ing up; the chul­ha.

She said she grew up in an earth­en house and was ac­cus­tomed cook­ing on the fire­side.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day, Ram­samooj said "I just start­ed mak­ing chul­has from Ju­ly 18 be­cause of the COVID-19 lock­down and the loss of my job.

"I used to sell pholourie and soft drinks by the Siparia Se­nior Sec­ondary School, but since C0VID-19 forced schools to close down, with no school chil­dren, there's no busi­ness.

"I in­tend to make up for that, I told my chil­dren bet­ter we start mak­ing fire­sides re­gard­less of COVID-19. Af­ter elec­tion things will get even hard­er than how things al­ready are and we have to be pre­pared.

"My son Sham Ram­samooj, daugh­ter Bindia Shyam and grand­chil­dren all help me in mak­ing the chul­has. It's al­so a good way to use up old wood, as a back­up cook­er, and you can even bar­beque on it."

Ram­samooj said she was get­ting good pa­tron­age from peo­ple in the area and out­side as well. She said af­ter they viewed her prod­uct on her daugh­ter's Face­book page called Nan­di Shyam, some peo­ple come from as far away as To­co, Port-of-Spain, Cou­va and Ch­agua­nas.

Her chul­has go for a rea­son­able $100 and there are Trinida­di­ans in the di­as­po­ra like the USA and Cana­da who ask on­line if she can ship over­seas.

Ram­samooj said she can make a chul­ha to any size, or cus­tomise it for a cus­tomer and even make a do-ail­lah, a two-pot chul­ha.

Her chul­has are built a lit­tle more ro­bust than the tra­di­tion­al fire­side, be­sides the sap­ate clay, her earth­en stoves al­so in­clude wire mesh, needle­grass, sharp sand and a lit­tle ce­ment, not too much to pre­vent crack­ing and she can make 15 in a day.

Ram­samooj be­lieves in self-suf­fi­cien­cy, catch­ing the crabs that went in her pot her­self from the Los Iros man­grove. She works hard plant­i­ng her own crops such as toma­toes, caraili, bo­di, ochro, corn and rear­ing cat­tle, sheep, chick­ens and sell­ing the eggs.

She said vir­tu­al­ly every­thing can be cooked on a chul­ha from toma­toes, dahi, ghee, roti, prayers food, duck and ground pro­vi­sions.

When asked if some­one want­ed to or­der a meal from her like what she cooked on her chul­ha for her fam­i­ly, Ram­samooj said they can call and place the or­ders and arrange for pick-up ob­serv­ing coro­n­avirus safe­ty pro­to­cols.

She said from the time she saw COVID-19 im­pact­ing T&T, per­haps the virus was a cat­a­lyst for a resur­gence or new-found in­ter­est in home gar­den­ing.

Ram­samooj said with Gov­ern­ment ad­vo­cat­ing for cit­i­zens to grow their own food and see­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley har­vest­ing pro­duce from his home gar­den, cit­i­zens should take heed and pre­pare them­selves for any even­tu­al­i­ty.


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