This brand will always be close to my heart. It provides employment to so many women. Their pune factory (known as mandal) employs hundreds of them. They make a particular quantity of papad every day and deliver there, and get paid for it per kg. Buy the raw material again. 1/n https://twitter.com/palakzat/status/1280800436019027974

Take the atta home. Again make the papad, dry them in the noon, pack in the evening, go and deliver in the morning. My mom is from Pune. When she was very young, her family lost everything in a business loss. From a huge house of 8 bedrooms, they moved to a single room. 2/n

My naani took care of her 4 kids, 2 brothers in law who were just a few years older than mom as her grandfather got married the second time. Thus a family of 8 stayed in a 200 sq ft room in a wada in pune. Naani started from the scratch with making papads every day. 3/n

Mom, being the eldest, started helping naani as she grew a bit older. This increased the quantity, and thus income. Slowly, everyone started helping them in making papad. Things started improving for them. Naani saved money and opened a garment shop in pune. 4/n

And they even bought a slightly bigger house. But kept that small kholi in the wada. Naani also started this system of selling clothes on credit to ladies working in the mandal. Every morning, she would sit there from 6 am (when the first lot would arrive) till 10 am. 5/n

Till the last group of ladies left. Every day they would give her their order and specifications - what garment they wanted, what colour, only saree or blouse and petticoat too, or shirt piece pant piece or clothes for children. Naani would note down their oders 6/n

Against their names and carry them next day. Now, she knew the names of each and every one of those ladies (and some men would come there as well). They would buy the garment and pay in installments every day. These installments were 10rs and 20rs. Minimum profit margin. 7/n

This ensured that they got new clothes at an affordable rate, they could pay for them at an affordable rate too. This was naani's way of doing something for all those ladies. Slowly, naani's financials improved. She extended this credit business to sabzi market as well. 8/n.

Again, same model. Buy something and pay 10 rs every day. After coming back from mandal, she would go to sabzi market and collect the installment. She knew half the pune city people from lower class background because of this. She didn't know where they lived. 9/n

She was never worried about them defaulting it. Because her model was convenient to all. These people rarely ever sent back the stuff they ordered. Even the wedding sarees and shirt pant they ordered this way and paid the same way. Naani must have earned many blessings. 10/n

Years have passed. Naani is too old to step out now. Mama continues this tradition. Even now, they remember the names of everyone. When I was young, I would visit them in pune. I would go with naani to the mandal and watch her in awe. How do you remember so many people! 11/n

To the young me, they all almost looked the same, because they dressed the same way, spoke in the same way, they all were tanned as they would make papad in the direct sunlight. Somehow naani remained extremely fair. My mom still has sunburnt back. 12/n

It's a kind of reminder of her days of struggle. Our pune home house help stays in the kholi next to ours in that wada. I would go there to play with her children. They taught me to ride bicycle. I even made papads with them. Everyone there does it for a living. 13/n

So yes, lijjat papad and mandal will always be special to me. My naani will always be my biggest inspiration. The way she helped all those people, the way she rescued one girl from prostitution will always stay with me and inspire me to help women as much as I can. 14/14