Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) recently featured ( by Helen Greenwood ) a successful tamil business in Sydney, who lost his business when Sri Lankan Military invaded Jaffna in 1987. He is now running a successful business in Croydon , New South Wales, Australia.

Full text of the article follows,

"Call me Nathan, Kumar Nathan," says the mustachioed man behind the counter of his spice and grocery store. "It's much easier than my full name, Muttukumar Paramanathan." Shame, but it's true that most people would have trouble remembering it, let alone pronouncing it.

Paramanathan is Sri Lankan-born and grew up in Colombo where his father ran a grocery, not unlike this spacious shop with the sacks of rice out the back and the packs of snacks in the front window.

He has been in this spot for 15 years, having migrated to Australia as a 24-year-old in 1987 because of the political situation in his home country. Paramanathan says he lost his jewellery business in Jaffna when the military took over.


 
































Returning to his family's roots, he began selling spices in this genteel strip of red-brick shops. Five years ago, he opened a restaurant two doors down called Hotel Saravana Bhavan, which bakes the paratha and lentil patties on the counter. At his shop, Paramanathan caters for Malaysians, Singaporeans, Fijians and South Africans as well as Indians and Sri Lankans with curry pastes, pulses, marinades, sauces and packets of prepared masalas.
Choice is all important for Paramanathan's customers so he has six brands of tamarind, four types of jaggery (palm sugar) and nearly a dozen different basmati and other rices. There are dried coconut halves for northern Indian cooks, extra long cinnamon quills from Sri Lanka, short grain Jyothi rice for southern Indians, Malaysian powdered coconut milk, frozen cassava for Fijians and ghee from Singapore.

Paramanathan organises the aisles according to cuisine and nationality. Down the middle is the biggest range, Sri Lankan naturally, where I spot jars of preserved white pumpkin, ginger and chow-chow (choko). Paramanathan says his customers use them to make Christmas cakes and promises to send me a recipe.

Cooking advice comes with the territory. A woman, on her way to pick up her kids from school, drops in for green masala paste and asks about mango chutney versus mango pickle. Paramanathan explains that the former is sweeter, the latter more salty.

He reckons his Australian customers have become more adventurous over the years but says a butter chicken sauce is "still the Australian favourite". The more culinarily advanced will find tinned drumsticks in brine, sago-pappadums, a premix of gulab jamun sweets, vacuum-packed fried sprats, 10-kilogram tubs of yoghurt and frozen idli and dhosa batter, made locally - and more. Paramanathan is proud of the fact that "people come here because they know they'll find what they want".

Courtesy : By - Helen Greenwood
http://www.smh.com.au/news/good-living/sri-lanka-via-croydon/2006/11/27/1164476117658.html