By Nisha Nath
Though skyscrapers, widened roads and a faster lifestyle have transformed the city, Santha Bakery at Pullimodu junction remains unchanged. For most grown ups in Trivandrum, the aroma of freshly baked cakes and biscuits and taste of delicacies behind the glass shelves come with a dose of nostalgia. Santha Bakery, one of the first bakeries in the city, has successfully completed 80 years and is moving towards a well-deserved century.
As I entered the bakery, I was welcomed by a brawny gentleman in his sixties. Santha Bakery is currently helmed by P K Premnath, scion of the Mambally Family which made cricket and cakes famous across Kerala. While Premnath was a fast bowler in his youth, his brothers Mohandas and Reghunath represented the state in Ranji cricket. Premnath, fondly called as Ronchu by his brothers, couldn’t stop his zeal as he unfolded the stories from over to oven. It was like a sneak peek to the history as he leaned onto a teak chair and began narrating stories of the legendary bakery. The wall behind Premnath had a big picture of his father PM Krishnan, the third generation of Mambally Bapu, who had migrated to Trivandrum in 40s and founded not just Santha Bakery but also the famous Travancore Cricket Association. They lived in Mampally lane (Mambally muduku) in Pulimood named after their family.
The photographs present in the bakery made me travel through the rich history which Santha Bakery holds. “We are the third generation of the Mambally family. The people of Thalassery can’t forget Mambally Bapu, the man who baked the first Christmas cake in India in 1883. Bapu, who mastered the art of biscuit making from Burma, started a biscuit company in Thalassery,” Premnath recalls . “Bapu set up his small bakery and named it Royal Biscuit Factory. He began producing almost 40 different varieties of biscuits, rusks, bread and buns.” Premnath showed the picture on the wall and explained the story of Bapu baking the cake for Murdoch Brown, a European planter at Malabar, upon his request and that was the start of the baking industry in Kerala.
“Now anybody with money and infrastructure can run a bakery, but things were not that easy in earlier days. People needed good baking skills and there was no machinery for it. It took 7- 8 days to bake bread then and we used only natural preservatives,” said Premnath. “We have customers ranging from film stars to politicians and bureaucrats. Actors Suresh gopi, Menaka, Mallika Sukumaran, Maniyan Pillai Raju and Mohanlal’s mother were regular customers of our bakery. As kids, actor-siblings Indrajith and Prithviraj used to visit the bakery with his mother,” Premnath said.
Former President and Missile Man APJ Abdul Kalam had ordered a rocket-shaped cake to celebrate the success of PSLV launch. A young Kalam cutting the ‘rocket cake’ at Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre was carried prominently by major newspapers then. “In 1957 we had made a cake in the shape of Secretariat and won a gold medal from Thiruvananthapuram corporation,” he said. When V V Giri became the president after serving as Governor of Kerala, Santha bakery cakes used to be airlifted to the Rashtrapati Bhavan. “My father was interested in Communist movement as most youngsters during that time. He even secretly gave shelter to P Krishna Pillai, AK Gopalan and EMS when the party was banned in India. So, whenever they visited they used to visit Santa bakery. We still have three stools in our bakery where they used to sit when they visited the bakery” Premnath added.
Santa bakery is named after PM Krishnan’s niece who passed away at an early age due to meningitis. “I wanted the bakery to always and only sell traditional bakery items. I want to get popularized only through our tradition that our bakery holds. That’s why I still have not renovated the bakery with any modern look,” he said while serving hot delicious cutlets.
I stepped out wishing that the Bakery could hit several centuries.
Nisha Nath is a techie who is an avid writer and traveller.
