In an inspiring video about her life, Mastanamma talks about how she lost four of her five children, but continued to live to fight another day. She boasts about how, as a young woman, when two men tried to misbehave with her, she ‘threw one of them into the river and threatened to do the same with the other man too’.

She talks about how, though she cannot read and write, she still knows how to count money well and make a success of anything.

And she did, as is clear from the much loved cooking recipes.