Meet Mastanamma, a YouTube sensation

Publish Date
Thursday, 18 May 2017, 1:03PM

As breakout YouTube stars go, a 106-year-old great-grandmother from Andhra Pradesh, one of India's south-eastern states, was an unlikely one.

Yet that is precisely what has become of Mastanamma, whose cooking videos have now amassed 300,000 subscribers and 52 million views.

Filmed by her great-grandson, K Laxman, and his friend, Srinath Reddy, the videos show Mastanamma making recipes from watermelon chicken and emu egg fry to snake gourd and milk curry and bread omelette, via plenty of traditional recipes.

Mastanamma, who used to work as a chef in her son's hotel, is said to have been puzzled at first by YouTube but is reportedly delighted to learn that her recipes are being enjoyed by so many people.

She has outlived her husband and four of her five children, and in a video in which she tells her life story she says she was married at 11, never went to school and used to carry 100kg bags of rice on her back.

 

 

 

 

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