The other day my brother in law bought a packet of dry fruit mixture from his home town. Being the lazy bum that I am, it took me few days before I opened it. When I tasted it, it is easily the best spicy stuff I have ever tasted. The mixture, with its own aroma laced with right mix of various dry fruits and treated with special seasoning, tasted like heaven. I casually enquired with my brother in law on where he bought them and I was surprised to hear that they are made on order by a family in a rural village near Sattenapally, Guntur district. I kept wondering if this dry fruit mixture with all its Guntur spice will go well with a glass of, well, whatever !!

Now the story literally took a different direction. When my friend Ramesh and I were travelling through those blessed districts of Godavari, we had to turn the car to inner heartlands to by pass an unusual traffic jam on the highway. We were passing through narrow lanes of a village where we accidentally bumped on to a middle aged person who happens to make the best ‘pootharekulu’ I have ever tasted. It is even more fascinating to learn that his family is into making this famous sweet for generations. I was lucky enough to witness those pots that they use to make those sugar wrappers. A few more kilometers to Anakapally where I first saw raw jaggery that is so different from what we get in the stores.

It just got me into thinking that these findings are nothing short of a treasure hunt. I so hope to make tiragali.com a platform for such wonderful people and families. The planning has already started. Until then, you still have ghee sunundalu.