An engineer's culinary dream

It's strange how food stories get to us; some come past those unfamiliar paths, taking routes that are unheard of, yet enticing, and making us a quiet witness to the colours and flavours of cultures going through many a culinary change. They make up inspiring stories; Nimi's story took such a trip on the winding roads as well. Nimi wanted to be an archaeologist during her school days in Abu Dhabi, but instead, she took up engineering in Electronics and communications. However, today, she is a cookbook author, food blogger, culinary demonstrator, food photographer, food stylist, free-lance writer, dietician and teacher all rolled into one! Yes, Nimi from Munnar seems to have had a rather exciting journey to realise where her taste lies. So, as the story began, a young Nimi was very attracted to the historical stories and wanted to be an archaeologist and writer. She lived in the world of books, paintings and music. Her penchant for all these started to become visible when she became a writer for children's magazines. She won many competitions during her college days as well for essay writing, short stories and so on. Post marriage, she continued as freelance writer on many socio-political issues for magazines _Women's Era_ and _Alive_. However, Nimi's life now revolves around food and everything related to it. She has been an ardent foodie. She also teaches cooking for kids at Tata High Range School, Munnar. Nimi wrote her first cook book on authentic Kerala cooking, _Lip smacking dishes of Kerala_. The first edition of this book was published in 2010. The revised edition of the cook book released in 2013 bagging the third place in the 'Best Local Cuisine Book, contested for 'Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2013-14' held in Beijing. She started her classes on traditional Kerala cooking, 'Nimi's Lip Smacking Classes' in 2012 for foreigner national students. Her classes are listed and ranked 1st of attractions in Munnar on Trip Advisor, world's largest travel site as per the rating of reviewers. This year, her class is awarded for being the winner of '2015 Trip advisor Certificate of Excellence'. It has also been recommended by Sharell Cook on 'Go India About.com' in the top 12 recommended culinary courses in India. After a few years of marriage seeing Nimi being quite involved in cooking, one day her husband, Sunilkumar, teased her asking why she couldn’t write a cookbook. That talk struck Nimi and she ended up taking it as a challenge. That's how books she wrote were brought to life. These self-published books forayed into the market with no official release. Nimi is passionate about writing more cookbooks and in the process, sharing more authentic cuisine with the world. She states that Sunilkumar (a businessman by profession), her husband, who is a foodie himself has been a good critic and that really has helped her bring that spark into her passion. It gave her the impetus to explore different facets of the culinary world. She also has good friends who are very supportive of her. Nimi, mother of two young school going children, Surjeeth and Sivasankar, also conveys a message to women in general that they should wholeheartedly find out what their passion is and strive hard for it to happen—“Strive hard in bringing life to things that you really feel for without expecting things to happen.”