She may be 94, but Mariammah Muthu still makes muruku from scratch

Mariammah still makes murukku the same way she did when she learnt her mother's recipe 74 years ago. - YAP CHEE HONG/The Star

Evolution is an interesting thing. In many ways, it has yielded technological advances that we now simply cannot live without. But in other situations, it has rendered age-old methods either obsolete or left by the wayside.

The art of making muruku, for example, once involved pounding rice and urad dhal to a fine flour using an ulakkai, an implement that resembled a long pole that was used to stamp the rice at the bottom of a receptacle (ural) - sort of like an extra-large pestle and mortar.