07 Jul 2020 | 03:27am IST
Humble ross omelette’s egg on Goa’s culinary entrepreneurship
The plight of ross omelette makers during the COVID lockdown was highlighted by distributing 1000 omelette paos in North Goa. If international flights were landing, a team from the Guinness book of world records were expected to come to Goa to watch the production of the world’s biggest ross omelette
Team Café
Freshly made omelette’s dunked in
xacuti or other gravies is a quintessential Goa high. But most highs are at an
all-time low now. Hence the community of ross omelette makers, used to
serving these delights daily to Goans, especially after office hours, went out
of work.
Nor in order to kickstart their
businesses and to highlight their problems, some enterprising people in Mapusa
decided to make the world’s biggest Ross omelette and make it to the Guinness
Book of World records. But naturally, with COVID related restrictions, that
didn’t quite happen. But the folks were “egged” on with their never die spirit
and look what they did.
Mapusa-based aspiring actress
Poonam Karekar Govekar and her team distributed one thousand
ros
omelette pao's in Mapusa and other parts of Goa on Sunday, June 5. The
Ros Omelettes were prepared by Prajot Khedekar distributed by Pralhad Govekar,
who are residents of Mapusa.
According to Poonam Karekar
Govekar, hundreds of families who sustain themselves on making and selling the
traditional Ros Omelette in Goa are out of work due to the COVID 19-induced
stop in tourism activities. The
ros omelette was and is the
staple snack for thousands of tourism-related workers in Goa, akin to what the
Vada Pav is in Maharashtra. “Hundreds of families in Goa are without income
because all they did was make ros omelettes at the
gaddas. We want
to highlight their plight and the fact that they have lost their livelihood”,
she explained.
Govekar said “Our initiative evoked
a very good response. We distributed
ros omelettesi in Siolim,
Guirim and Mapusa. The people were very happy and it also gave me a very clear
idea as to what the situation on the ground was. When we were
distributing the ross omelette the look on the people’s faces was priceless.
They did not expect it. It was very emotional for me”.
She has now decided to make double
the effort and distribute 2000
ros omelettes on Tuesday. It
will be distributed at the Mapusa bus stand, the market and other places. She
intends to serve it to the small businessmen who sit on the road and sell daily
necessities. She said it would be distributed for free but they would be paying
all those who would be helping her in this initiative. She said “We shall pay
them the cost of making the
ros omelette. We will be funding it
ourselves, this is social service”.
Flynn Remedios who was also
involved in this exercise said due to the non-resumption of international
flights the Guinness World Record adjudicators could not travel to Goa. This
will mean the world's biggest
ros omelette attempt will be
held in August, after international flights resume. He said “ We are lobbying
for a GI or geographical indicator for the
ros omelette as it is unique to Goa along with the Xacuti gravy, is
sometimes spiked with chicken pieces”
Till the guys from the Guinness book of world records come,
let us thank the kind souls of Mapusa for infusing culinary oxygen into
many Goans. Our ross omelette is indeed nothing short of fresh air
.