A summer date with sherbet

After almost a year, K Ondipulia Pillai’s family is smiling again. With the onset of summer, after the lull of the pandemic, business is resuming for Ondippili syrup, the multi-coloured sweet concentrate that the Pillai’s make with nannari root extract. Not that the tiny shop on the busy Amman Sannathi, close to Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple, is buzzing with people or activity yet. But N Guha Ganapathy, the fourth generation sherbet maker is optimistic. He says, the company is named after their family deity Ondippili which means ‘the lone tiger’. In the last 11 and-a-half decades, the sherbet has survived competitors, dip in sales and bounced back much like the fighter animal.